Many internet marketers were pulling out all the stops as they developed unique internet marketing strategies which turned out to be successful resulting in higher sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year compared to 2006.
Early indications are that the online holiday shopping season (Black Friday, Cyber Monday) is off to a strong start. Analysts note, however, that retailers, online and off, pushed promotions aggressively over the past few days, raising questions whether the strong sales can be sustained, reports Internet Retailer.
“Sales Rocked” said Jeffrey Wolfe, chief operating officer and CFO at Moosejaw Mountaineering. Wolfe says online sales were up 70% over last year, making it the biggest sales day ever for the e-commerce site crediting the increase to an e-mail marketing campaign that was very personalized and highly targeted promotions based on buying and browsing history.
Ice.com boosted sales by 82% over last year by using aggressive marketing strategies that included getting affiliates fired up about the day, which resulted in 7,000 affiliates downloading Ice.com’s banner for Cyber Monday deals. Additionally, Ice.com’s offered 20% off and free earrings to every 100th customer shopping the site that day, advertising deals on MSN and AOL that were focused on Cyber Monday.
Sales at BabyAge.com on Monday were up 231% over the same Monday a year ago due to “a concerted effort this year to develop specials for Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” says president Jack Kiefer.
Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research says the aggressive discounting is part of the reason the numbers were as strong as they were. “So far, so good”, says Mulpuru, and “the strength of the season will depend on whether the momentum is maintained regardless of discounting in the coming weeks.”
Patti Freeman Evans of JupiterResearch points out that more than 500 retailers posted special deals on the CyberMonday.com site hosted by online retailer organization Shop.org, a unit of the National Retail Federation, compared to a few hundred last year. Traffic to that site Cyber Monday was five times higher than last year, 1.5 million unique visitors vs. 300,000, Shop.org reported.
