Online Jewelers Celebrate Cyber Monday
Online jewelry retailers are placing more emphasis on Cyber Monday, today’s symbolic beginning of the holiday online shopping season. Shop.org’s Cyber Monday promotion site has a large list of jewelry promotions from Ice.com, Blue Nile, HSN, QVC, Shop NBC, Jewelry Television, eLuxury, Overstock, JC Penney and Nordstrom’s. Seventy-two percent of online retailers will offer special holiday deals on Cyber Monday, up from 43% two years ago, according a Shop.org survey. But the general retailing community is doing less promotion: a BDO Seidman survey of chief marketing officers reported that only 39% of all retailers are conducting special holiday promotions to boost online sales.
Shop.org’s Cyber Monday site does benefit a cause, but the cause is creating more online retailers, which seems a bit self-interested: participating retailers agree to donate a percentage of proceeds to the Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships for students interested in an eCommerce career. Is that really the best cause they could find to motivate consumers? (I suspect another organization that promised to donate 5 percent to benefit sick children or breast cancer research could get a lot of support.)
But on to the deals. Many retailers are offering free shipping this holiday, the most popular promotion with consumers. (According to Forrester, 61 percent of consumers are more likely to shop at a site that offers free shipping.) In addition Ice.com is offering 20 percent off and Jewelry Television is offering 10 percent off. (Compare those discounts with the 70 percent off offered by major brick-and-mortar retailers on jewelry on Black Friday and you’ll see why most consumers assume that jewelry in stores is marked up much more.)
Online jewelry leader Blue Nile, which is offering free overnight shipping this holiday season, is also taking advantage of some promotional partnerships this season, which have been getting them a lot of press coverage. Starting today Blue Nile is offering 20 percent cash back on purchases made with PayPal, up to $50 per account. They also are offering $100 off on a diamond purchase as part of a Google print ad promotion. (If your customer is determined to buy online, give them the coupon code: it’s SMARTER100.)