• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 13, 2022

Email will be the workhorse of this holiday season, judging by From Digital Sales Cheer To Consumer Spending Fear, a study of retail and brand executives by CommerceNext, in partnership with The Commerce Experience Collective (CommX) and Sucharita Kodali, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

Firms in in the $100 million+ revenue category expect these strategies to drive the most sales (respondents were asked to select 3):

• Email marketing — 89%
• SMS marketing — 63%
• CRM based retargeting — 54% 
• Direct mail/catalogs — 35% 
• Mobile app — 24%
• Organic social — 17% 

Companies below $100 million in revenue were even more likely to select email:

• Email marketing — 96%
• SMS marketing — 64%
• CRM based retargeting — 41% 
• Direct mail/catalogs — 23% 
• Mobile app — 9%
• Organic social — 23%

Compared to 2021, online sales are expected to be: 

• Much worse — 3% 
• Somewhat worse — 34% 
• Same — 20%
• Somewhat better — 37% 
• Much better — 6%

And compared with 2019, this year’s sales are forecast to be" 

• Much worse — 1%
• Somewhat worse — 20%
• Same — 8% 
• Somewhat better —37%
• Much better — 34%

Meanwhile, total retail sales are expected to be: 

• Much worse — 0% 
• Somewhat worse — 29%
• Same — 25% 
• Somewhat better — 35% 
• Much better — 10%

The main concerns going into this season are:

• Consumer spending levels down on gifts and holiday and products — 63% 
• Generating marketing ROI — 47% 
• More discounts and sales throughout the industry that we must match — 45%
• Changes to ad targeting for marketers — 38%
• Inflation will force us to raise our prices to consumers — 31%
• Supply chain issues (having enough to sell) — 19%
• Increased inventory levels (having too much to sell) — 16% 
• Late deliveries by carriers/shippers — 13% 
• Labor shortages in fulfillment — 9% 

What do brands plan to deal with this issues? They say:

• We’re encouraging consumers to shop earlier — 45% 
• We’re increasing the overall promotions for the season compared to last year — 32% 
• We’re increasing prices — 28% 
• We’re offering access to our best customers first — 28% 
• We’re encouraging shoppers to buy gift cards — 14%
• We have been forced to change to products that we are promoting for this season — 12%
• We’re reducing shipping offers because we are concerned about on-time shipments — 11%
• We’re offering ‘personal shopping’ on behalf of consumers — 11% 
• We’re reducing our overall promotional volume for the season compared to last year — 10%
• We’re price matching competitors — 10%
• We plan to have big promotions in Q1 2022 — 6%
• We aren’t doing anything special — 4%

What kind of volume are brands looking at for Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and Cyber week?

They answer:

• Don’t know yet — 8%
• Promoting less — 11%
• Promoting the same — 48%
• Promoting more — 33%

And for December? Brands say:

• Don’t know yet — 9%
• Promoting less — 12%
• Promoting the same — 43%
• Promoting more — 36% 

The study is based on responses from 100 retail and brand executives.