Now, if you’re looking for tips on marketing, the big man in red may not be the obvious place to start. But look behind the bushy beard and you’ll see an astute marketer who has some smart tips to share on making Christmas a roaring success
Those toys don’t all appear by magic on Christmas Eve. When the reindeer are all back in their stable, on Christmas Day, he and the elves have a confab about what worked and what they could do better next year. Now for marketers in the real world, this conversation probably needs to happen in January when everyone’s back in the office, and there are some stats to review. But the principle is still the same.
Santa has a direct line to every single one of his customers. Admittedly, communicating by burning a letter in the fireplace and reading the smoke particles may not work for every organisation. But the customer insights he gains from reading each and every one is invaluable.
Santa has a very simple segmentation for his customers. Naughty or nice. An ecommerce business may need to dive a bit more deeply into the database, but he saves himself a fortune in time and resources by only delivering to the Nice kids.
Santa has an army of partners promoting his image, from Coca Cola to department stores and garden centres with grottoes. They begin promotions as early as October, building excitement for the big drop on Christmas eve.
Santa has high brand loyalty, thanks to consistently sticking to his core brand values of Christmas cheer, magic, and peace. Remarkably, all his affiliates uphold all the corporate brand guidelines too, always referring to the pantone charts for the colour and style of the uniform to and appropriate expressions to reinforce the brand values including 'Have you been good this year' and 'Ho, Ho, Ho’.
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a profitable New Year.
Thanks to Mel Henson for sharing her thoughts and opinions in this post, a light-hearted read for Xmas Eve. Mel runs copywriting agency WordsThatSell, and is a specialist writer for many multichannel retailers, including Scotts & Co, House of Bath and the Royal Mint, as well as an in-demand speaker at conferences and events. She is also known for her acclaimed book 'Flicks and Clicks: how to create websites and catalogues that sell more'. You can connect with Mel by Twitter @flicksandclicks
By Mel Henson
Mel is an author, consultant and copywriter specialising in multichannel retail and Amazon. She is Head of Content at Optimizon, an Amazon consulting agency and Head of Creative at AWA digital a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) agency. Her personal website is www.wordsthatsell.co.uk/, and you can follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn
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