Generating a +330% Increase in Traffic with a Unified Boxing Day Campaign

Key Takeaways

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Originating as a brick and mortar shop in Quebec, Altitude Sports has since expanded into ecommerce with a strong online presence and tactics for a successful Boxing Day sale online, seeing a +330% increase in website visitors on December 26, 2020 (Boxing Day). 

1. Targeted Promotion Channels: The Boxing Day Campaign was mainly promoted on email, paid search ads and social media ads. 

2. Unified Branding: Across the three channels, verbiage, imagery, fonts and colours all remained consistent, creating a coherent campaign with strong brand recognition. 

3. Sale Content: Altitude Sports focused on three main avenues of content to promote their ad across channels. 

• ‍Membership: Unique verbiage was created to incentivize current members to earn higher rewards during Boxing Day ‍
• Non-Branded Messaging: Generic quantitative sale content was used explaining the type of discounts Altitude was hosting‍
• Branded Messaging: A focus was placed on one or two major brands carried at the store and their associated discount 
  

4. Accessibility: Altitude Sports generated their ads in English and French so they would be accessible to all regions of Canada. An FAQ landing page dedicated to Boxing Day questions was also generated to help guide visitors in their shopping journey. 

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Altitude Sports, a Canadian retailer, specializes in selling the top outdoor gear from a variety of brands such as Arc’teryx, The North Face, Patagonia and more. 

Originating as a brick and mortar shop in Quebec, Altitude Sports has since expanded into ecommerce with a strong online presence and tactics for a successful Boxing Day sale.

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On December 26, 2020, Altitude Sports saw a +330% increase in website traffic to the site to celebrate the Canadian holiday, Boxing Day. The three main channels used to promote the sale include email, search ads and social media ads.

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Email Campaign:

Launching Boxing Day

Altitude focused on three main content strategies within each email to launch the campaign.

1. Building Awareness: Two days before the launch Altitude sent out an awareness email to let subscribers know when to expect the Boxing Day deals. 
   

2. Branded Messaging: Altitude launched the sale a day earlier than usual on December 25, with a brand focus approach to draw subscribers in with deals on their top brands.
   

3. Membership Benefits: On the actual Boxing Day, December 26, Altitude sent out a minimal email focusing on membership benefits. 

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Boxing Day Extension

Before e-commerce became a norm, Boxing Day generally last one day, December 26th. Over the past few years the sale has been extended into a ‘Boxing week’. Altitude Sports rolled out their extension by using: 

1. Quantitative Values: The day after Boxing Day on December 27, Altitude sent another email with a quantitative value “40% off” to help provide context about the sale. 
   

2. Building Urgency: On the last day of the sale December 31, Altitude sent out a final boxing day email to build urgency with a countdown timer to let subscribers know how much time is left before items go back to full price. 

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Search Ads:

In December 2020, Altitude Sports spent $1.45M on search ads, +267% more than October and November’s 2020 search spend combined. 

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12% of Altitude Sports’ search ad copy in December 2020 referenced Boxing Day in the title or body copy. All Boxing Day ad copy was focused on presenting quantitative sale discounts, savings and free shipping to viewers.

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Branded Keywords

Altitude Sports’ keyword strategy on search ads for Boxing Day are primarily branded and location focused. None of the keywords on the ads reference sales or boxing day for ranking but rather focus on the brand mentioned in the ads and their top products. Keywords are also used to target ranking for Altitude’s competitors such as Sport Chek.

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Social Media Ads:

Focusing on Social

In December 2020, Altitude Sports spent $168K in Canada on display and social media advertising. The majority of the budget allocation went to social media ads on Facebook and Instagram (71%) where the rest went to desktop display (19%) and mobile display (5%). 

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Social Creative

47% of all social ads in December 2020 were related to Boxing Day messaging. Altitude Sports created two versions of every ad, one in English and one in French to extend their reach to the Quebecois region in Canada. 

The content message differed in three categories including:

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12% of Altitude Sports’ social ads focused on doubling membership rewards for anything purchased during the Boxing Day sale. 

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26% of ads focused on non-branded Boxing Day sale verbiage, meaning no brands are mentioned in the verbiage. These ads focused purely on the discount amount.

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62% of ads focus on branded sale verbiage, focusing on one or more brands carried online with their maximum mark up amount. 

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To optimize the user experience for Boxing Day, Altitude Sports also launched an FAQ page dedicated to answering questions and guiding visitors through their journey.

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