Retailers and brands can engage holiday shoppers by timely restocking of products that need to be restocked, giving away gifts that allow for post-holiday repositioning, and leveraging insights into customer shopping patterns. Use these strategies to turn one-time shoppers into regular customers.
One New Year's resolution that all online retailers should consider keeping is a plan to increase post-holiday sales. Deloitte predicts that holiday retail sales will increase 4.5-5% this year, and e-commerce sales will increase 14-18% year-over-year, so merchants will want to ride out the holiday sales surge as long as possible.
Rather than reacting to a post-holiday sales slump, let’s proactively adopt strategies and actions that can keep sales growing after the holidays are over.
Plan ahead to attract customers as quickly as possible
You might be a retailer who relies on the holidays to hit expected sales numbers and it makes sense to time your traffic during peak times. An often-overlooked holiday priority is maximizing opportunities to increase repeat revenue early in the new year, especially with replenishable products.
One strategy to get customers to come back is through bounce-back offers. You know those never-ending CVS receipts? They work because they're tied to your purchases.
When you reward people for buying something, don’t be afraid to make the reward very personal.
The first step is to work with your digital marketing team to look at your customer return rates. You want to ensure that any bounce-back window is appropriate and increases the likelihood that the customer will come back for a second purchase.
Second, make sure the offer is designed to maximize redemptions. Provide an offer immediately after the purchase, and then be sure to remind the customer before and during the rebound. Try alerting all customers with a single offer or dynamic offers based on spend or product category. During this phase, plan the cadence of automation.
Third, consider sending direct mail to customers so that there is another channel to strengthen the bounce-back opportunity, which can create incremental value.
One thing that bears repeating: make sure your bounce is strong enough to attract customers. If you only offer a 5% discount, then the attrition will probably be low. When you reward people for buying something, don’t be afraid to make the reward very personal. It’s an exclusive offer that makes it feel exclusive and personal to them.
As for the redemption process, make all bounces easily redeemable through any sales channel and add an “expiration date” date to these limited-time offers, such as “offer expires January 31st.”
Best-selling products in the market
Depending on whether you’re a brand or a retailer, your strategy for promoting your hero product will differ. Retailers may choose hero products from among many brands that drive sales. Brands can only have one or two hero products at most. As a result, brands and manufacturers face greater risks when launching new products.
If you’re a brand planning to launch a new product during the holiday season, set expectations around the immediate impact on revenue rather than long-term goals. In some categories, the first quarter is expected to be released. It’s great to launch a new product, if it’s not something that’s considered to fly off the shelves right away, then be realistic in terms of investment and return Q1.
To boost sales immediately, it’s often best to put your energy into promoting an existing popular product. In another area, you can increase sales expectations with an updated version or upgrade of a best-selling product.
Once you’ve chosen your hero product, review your media mix. Determine which ad types perform best and understand how your audience consumes content. If your target likes videos and your budget allows, shoot product videos because they are engaging and videos often provide more information than still images. Additionally, create ads based on video assets to support static or carousel ads that typically display more text. Finally, if you haven’t already, find out if the client prefers lo-fi or high-quality video clips and adjust accordingly.
Holiday giveaways for January shoppers
You may have a mission to collect as many names, emails, and phone numbers as possible from as many shoppers as possible. Consider running a giveaway during the peak holiday season so you can remarket to shoppers during the year.
These activities benefit retailers in two ways. The first is the growth in upfront sales. The second is when customers redeem their prizes, in the hope that they will purchase additional items. Of course, not every shopper buys something, but you want to engage as many potential customers as possible with relevant communications.
A word of advice: Every purchaser wins instantly through the scratcher. In order to claim their prize, they must return to your website or store by the specified date. Just like that, you’ve gained returning visitors. Consider an ideal grand prize that gives away coupons for 40% off or less on all products (golden tickets).
Whatever giveaway packages you create, make sure they are only redeemable in January of the year. Please contact your legal team to comply with federal and state laws regarding prizes and scratch-off games.
Maximize your CRM
All year long, your digital marketing team has been collecting customer behavior and data to better target buyers, inform cross-sell and up-sell actions, and build clearer customer segments. Your goal with CRM data during the holiday season is to capitalize on shopper behavior around popular product types. Since you already know which product combinations work, you can develop automated processes here and recommend relevant products to specific customer groups. If you haven’t already, decide what you want to do so you can proactively track the customer behaviors that are likely to lead to the most profit.
Start by identifying the key products and categories that will reach the greatest number of customers through email marketing. Do this by tracking which product pages are being viewed and which product pages are converting.
Second, look at existing customers versus new customers to see how you can change your communications with them. By Q4, your digital team should know what buyers respond positively to. Third, use recent customer behavior to recommend products that “sell well with others.” For example, if you are selling footwear, find complementary socks so that you can have assortment and assortment matching.
This holiday season, take a more proactive approach and boost your sales with these strategies and steps. With the right touchpoints, proper timing, encouragement, and smart strategy, you can turn a one-time seasonal buyer into a new January customer.
