Holiday Tips & Tricks GuideWhat to keep in mind this holiday season
While the holiday season is a time for joy and celebration, for consumer brands, it brings a surge in consumer demands and operational challenges. During this critical sales period, staying ahead of the curve isn’t an advantage for consumer brands – it’s a necessity.
This guide is crafted to equip you and your team with the strategies and innovative solutions needed to exceed customer expectations during this bustling holiday season. We’ve asked some of Anvyl’s trusted partners to provide actionable tips and proven tricks to ease your holiday worries. In this guide, you’ll hear from experts at:
Join us as we unravel the keys to unlocking efficiency, resilience, and customer satisfaction this holiday season!
1
As teams are working to drive growth, what is the #1 thing they should know to succeed operationally?
Rodney Manzo, CEO and Founder, Anvyl
A lack of real-time inventory monitoring hinders real-time tracking of inventory and orders and can cause massive delays. Investing in supply chain visibility enables real-time inventory tracking and production insight, allowing swift adjustments to meet demand, and preventing crises during peak sales periods.
Kristina Lopienski, Sr Director of Content Marketing, ShipBob
Detail your forecast volumes daily or hourly to manage capacity effectively. Establish a contingency plan for potential disruptions and share carrier cut-off deadlines with customers proactively. Consider spreading inventory across multiple warehouses to reduce shipping costs and handle demand spikes efficiently.
Adar Granot, COO, Factored Quality
Conduct quality control inspections on products before shipping from the manufacturer to catch any visual or functional defects. Ensuring product quality can reduce defect rates and customer returns while increasing customer ratings and satisfaction, which all have a massive impact on a brand’s bottom line.
Jamie McCroskery, CEO, Bluebird Climate
Abandoned carts are a huge opportunity to dramatically increase sales during Black Friday. Customers will be exploring new brands, and they’ll need a reason – beyond discounts – to get over the finish line. Empowering those potential customers to make a positive environmental impact through your products is a potent way to stay relevant and turn abandoned carts into purchases.
Kara Zawacki, Marketing Director, Endear
Make it personal and understand all your available sales channels. You’ve got to make sure the messaging actually matters to the audience, and you’re engaging customers across every available touchpoint – from text, email, and social media, to your retail stores and website.
Térence Delahaye, Co-founder & COO, Shipup
Retaining holiday shoppers is key for sustained growth in sales in the new year and beyond. According to our study, 58% of customers cite tracking information that is not helpful, clear, or accurate as the main reason for dissatisfaction. Implementing a post-purchase solution provides smart delivery notifications and alerts for unexpected events, keeping customers informed and satisfied.
Frank Garcia, SVP of Operations, Flowspace
Don’t risk running out of stock and ruining the holidays for your customers. Use omnichannel fulfillment solutions that allow for real-time activation of inventory to ensure prompt, reliable delivery from any location to any end customer.
Brenna Curran, Co-Founder, Waivr
Kickstart promotional activities early and optimize your website for conversions. Personalize your outreach through segmented email and SMS campaigns, ensuring a smooth shopping experience for both new and returning customers. Conduct thorough website audits to guarantee a flawless user journey and ensure everything is working.
2
What top metrics should brands keep in mind to elevate their holiday performance and set them up for next year?
Rodney Manzo, CEO and Founder, Anvyl
Monitoring supplier performance, especially overseas, is important for brands. Key performance metrics like On-time Rate, Responsiveness, Document Centralization, and Completion Rate are vital indicators of supplier efficiency and reliability.
Kristina Lopienski, Sr Director of Content Marketing, ShipBob
Metrics including On-time in-full (OTIF), Average time to fulfill orders, Average orders per hour (OPH) picked, units per hour (UPH) picked, Order Accuracy Rate, and Variable Cost per Order (VCPO) are crucial for optimizing the fulfillment process.
Adar Granot, COO, Factored Quality
Brands should be tracking all data points surrounding product defects and returns.
They should also gather quality control data on a more granular level by looking at supplier and SKU analytics. Monitor supplier performance by tracking the number and types of defects at each location.
Jamie McCroskery, CEO, Bluebird Climate
Abandoned cart rate and repeat purchase rates are key for success on Black Friday and beyond. Key drivers for these metrics are communicating packaging recyclability and climate impact on product pages and in cart. By giving the right sustainability message at the right time, you’ll measurably drive increased repeat purchases and reduced abandon cart rate while also staying relevant.
Kara Zawacki, Marketing Director, Endear
Beyond measuring web traffic or the ROI of Instagram ads, brands should track reply rate for text/email campaigns, customer order frequency, and lifetime value. These metrics are the driving force behind strong customer retention. How you engage with customers now will be the difference between one-time holiday shoppers and brand loyalists.
Térence Delahaye, Co-founder & COO, Shipup
60% of online shoppers value accurate delivery estimates over speedy delivery. Aggregate and standardize carrier data to monitor deliveries in real time and measure your partners’ overall performance during the holiday season to make the appropriate adjustments to your 2024 strategy.
Frank Garcia, SVP of Operations, Flowspace
Minimize time from click to deliver. Shoppers expect speedy delivery, and by fulfilling product from optimized locations closest to your end customers, you can improve delivery times and reduce costs. Track and optimize time to delivery to ensure maintain reputation for reliability and customer satisfaction.
Brenna Curran, Co-Founder, Waivr
Tagging customers who make purchases, analyzing ad ROI, examining conversion rates on key landing pages, and measuring engagement from email and SMS campaigns are vital steps for better campaign and inventory planning for the year ahead.
3
How can Anvyl’s partners help brands secure a competitive edge during the holiday season?
Rodney Manzo, CEO and Founder, Anvyl
Anvyl’s intelligent purchase order (PO) management solution uncovers insights that you might not be fully leveraging. This includes providing a comprehensive view of your supply chain, enabling quicker and more confident decision-making. By partnering with Anvyl, brands are better equipped to optimize inventory levels, plan for growth, and explore alternative sourcing options.
Kristina Lopienski, Sr Director of Content Marketing, ShipBob
ShipBob brings a suite of features to simplify holiday fulfillment. Of these, the Automated Fulfillment Rules and Auto-Generated Picking Lists, are game-changers. These tools streamline operations, making order preparation and processing faster and more accurate, crucial for meeting tight delivery timelines during the holiday rush. Brands can now handle the increased demand effortlessly, ensuring a delightful customer experience.
Adar Granot, COO, Factored Quality
Factored Quality makes your quality control – simple! We send boots to the manufacturing floor and ensure your products are meeting top-quality standards. Factored Quality has access to any manufacturing location and offers help at any stage of the production process. Upload previous quality control reports and track new data points in our software during the holiday season to inform your 2024 planning!
Jamie McCroskery, CEO, Bluebird Climate
Bluebird makes it super fast and easy to prepare your site for Black Friday with data-based sustainability messaging that align with customer values and drive increases in cart conversion and repeat purchases. It takes a matter of minutes from signup to updating your site, backed by Bluebird’s AI that makes onboarding almost instant.
Kara Zawacki, Marketing Director, Endear
The Endear team is committed to helping brands not only navigate but thrive during the holiday season. In fact, we launched 3 major features to help brands crush their sales goals. 1) Messaging with Endear AI – reply to customers, get fresh campaign ideas, summarize existing convos with built-in AI capabilities 2) SalesChat – our first live chat feature 3) Real-time Business Insights – customizable and visually interesting insights.
Térence Delahaye, Co-founder & COO, Shipup
Implementing a post-purchase solution and developing a proactive communication plan allows you to decrease contact rates and increase customer loyalty. On average, Shipup clients that proactively leverage tracking data for customer updates and internal use see a 50% decrease in WISMO (Where Is My Order) tickets, and 30% of time saved per ticket resolution.
Frank Garcia, SVP of Operations, Flowspace
Provide a seamless fulfillment experience across all channels to keep customers satisfied. From checkout to delivery, ensure quality and commitment are consistently maintained. Utilize an omnichannel software platform like Flowspace to gain real-time visibility into customers’ needs and shopping habits, allowing you to meet their expectations with efficiency and precision.
Brenna Curran, Co-Founder, Waivr
Brands are looking toward payment optionality this season to increase conversion. Waivr provides customers with 1.5% cashback on their purchase when they choose to Pay by Bank, providing a credit-free payment option for customers. Bank payments also have a lower risk of fraud and failures that are associated with credit cards, helping to increase successful payments. And finally, we use the Real Time Payments network to provide brands with direct payouts in 24 hours so brands are never short on cash.
4
Final Thoughts for a Successful Holiday Season
The insights shared in this guide lay the groundwork for success against today’s market challenges. From PO management to fulfillment and quality assurance to sustainability, it’s important to make sure that not only your tool stack but also your internal departments are running smoothly and succinctly to get through this busy yet profitable holiday season.
Rodney Manzo, CEO and Founder, Anvyl
We all wish you the best of luck this holiday season!