Love is in the Air...and online!

Happy Valentines Day!

February 14th represents a big sales day for many online retailers, and not just flowers and jewelry sites. Email marketing leading up to today has increased with retailers in all industries using Feb 14th to promote their gift sales. The National Jeweler Network polled more than 600 small business owners between Dec 31st and Jan 9th and the survey showed that 68 percent of small business owners are planning special promotions for the holiday, compared with 53 percent last year. Also, according to those polled, 46 percent expect consumers to shop the week of Valentine's Day, and 11 percent expect consumers will wait until the final day to pick up gifts.

Online retailers must be ready to deal with this influx of calls and visitors to their website. In a recent article  InternetRetailer.com describes a potentially disastrous situation for Vermont Teddy Bear, a multi-channel retailer of stuffed animals and other gifts, whose land line phone service went out last February in the area of their contact center, during on of the busiest times of their sales year. Fortunately the retailer was prepared and had contracts with multiple outsources to handle customer calls and e-mails during this time. One of their outsourced partners was able to get the agents taking calls in less than 45 minutes.

Want to learn more about trends online during one of the busiest gift giving days outside Christmas? One Up Web published a great white paper last year. One Up Web President and Founder Lisa Wehr comments, "Valentine’s Day is such a short sales season—different from Christmas where purchases may be made months in advance—that I expected paid search to play the larger role. For many of our clients, Valentine’s is second in revenue to Christmas and bigger than Mother’s Day. Clearly the data shows that e-commerce companies that don’t optimize will miss out on a huge part of the market.”

- MK