The Deep (Code) Freeze

As we catch the last of the summer rays, many digital marketers working in retail will be stepping off the plane from warmer climes and heading back to dust off their winter coats. Why? Because the deep-freeze is coming.

The code freeze is an IT-mandated lockdown of the web site, prohibiting any major changes to the web site or the underlying code, in order to minimize the risk of technical errors and downtime that might affect the smooth flow of online purchases. It is designed to protect retailers just as traffic to the company’s website is about to peak.

Retailers are fast approaching the make-or-break reality that surrounds the festive period. This seasonal-peak is the pinnacle of the year with up to 30% of revenue occurring during this time.

Like an iceberg beneath the water, campaigns, testing and deployments need to be completed before the code freeze deadline, which is typically three to six months before the holiday shopping season. From a marketing standpoint, this creates an enormous amount of planning and preparation in order to predict the response and engagement to the campaigns that support this lift of holiday traffic.

Year over year consumers are delaying their holiday preparations and holding out for the inevitable end-of-the-year discounts. With more online customers than ever before, flash sales such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are important to online retailers — whose goal it is to secure as many transactions as possible while still serving personalised experiences for their customers.

MasterCard noted that more recent trends suggest consumers are undertaking fewer transactions of higher value and demonstrating a greater loyalty to their favoured retailers. So, the pressure is truly on for retailers to deliver an engaging omnichannel experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

More recently, some marketers have discovered how to keep their marketing within a microclimate and avoid the challenges of the deep (code) freeze.  The Tealium iQ tag management system offers retail marketers the opportunity to deploy, test and review tags across your website without a single change to the code.

This means you can maintain your marketing agility and carry out important updates through testing, reviewing and refining campaigns. You can keep your campaigns relevant without reliance on the IT department, now or in the future.  This ability to thaw the freeze empowers marketing teams to respond to competitive pressures, seize opportunities and test new martech vendors to expand reach in a timely fashion. In summary, with the Tealium platform you can optimise your campaigns at anytime — in real-time!

Download our free guide now to find out more.