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Move Your Back-To-School Marketing Campaigns To The Head Of The Class


By Brett Bair, Monetate 

The back-to-school shopping season generates more than $70 billion in revenue for the retail industry each year, with roughly a third of that total being spent online. That’s big money. It’s also a big opportunity: For some retailers, back-to-school can be the beginning of a long-term partnership between new customers and their brand.                                                                       

Though back-to-school shopping is similar to its big brother, the holiday season, in that it near-perfectly aligns customer priority with retailer opportunity, there are key differences. Notable among them is this: Back-to-school shoppers aren’t as willing to open up their wallets and pocketbooks — at least not without some coaxing — as they are during the holiday shopping season.                       

So, how do you get an A+ in back-to-school retailing?

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It’s pretty straightforward — build a plan that allows you to target customers’ needs, test the messaging, and deliver the products they’re seeking in an easy-to-find, simple-to-buy format. Here are a few specific web personalization tactics to consider as you prepare your campaigns to get the most out of this back-to-school season.                                   

Marketers are most effective when they team up with other members of their departments to build out clear, focused landing pages to optimize an ad campaign. The key, though, is picking a desired action for the customer to take and building your page around it. A hero image with multiple click zones can allow a visitor to select his or her appropriate grade level. Using this tactic will help you quickly highlight more relevant products and give you more information on your customer to leverage for return visits. If you’re using paid search to promote a specific product or category (like backpacks) don’t just direct your website visitors to that product or category page. These visitors may be browsing, or, depending on the specificity of their search, ready to buy. In either case, serving a generic page is a missed opportunity to highlight why a customer should be shopping with you. 

Another major part of web personalization is store locator pages. From a strategic standpoint, there’s a huge gap in what’s being done and what can be done. Consider: There’s a dearth of information available as to how much share of a web site’s traffic a store locator page gets. And there’s even less information out there on strategies to improve that page. When it comes to back-to-school shopping, your store locator page can be a place to unobtrusively promote key messages through banners and hero images. Such messages can include in-store pickup, in-store coupons, free shipping, and exclusive online savings. 

According to the National Retail Foundation, back-to-school shoppers looking to buy for college planned last year to spend 40% more during the shopping season than their high school and grade school counterparts. As a result, it’s critical that you not only segment your customers by device but by demographic as well. Four groups that can be easily targeted with relevant products are K-5, middle school, high school and college.                       

Though you may be able to pull historical data to determine which of these segments a customer falls into, you can easily create a “user sort” that allows your customer to tell you where he or she falls. From there, you can customize their experience, starting with a landing page and adjusting other site elements to meet their browsing behaviors and product preferences. These are just a few tips to help you move your back-to-school marketing campaigns to the head of the class. For more best practices and helpful insights, be sure to check out the Monetate blog at www.monetate.com/blog.   


Brett Bair is Monetate’s Senior Director of Digital Marketing Insights. With nearly 20 years of digital and multichannel marketing experience at new business startups and top e-Commerce firms, Bair has spent much of his career building results-driven teams designed to meet the needs of today’s agile businesses. That work has driven more than $2 billion in incremental revenue for more than 200 customers.  

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