The holidays are over and for retailers it’s time to take a deep breath and relax. Wait, no! It’s actually time to start thinking of ways to capitalize on your holiday sales for the long term.
Following up and looking for ways to build relationships with customers after the holiday season is over will serve your business much longer than flash holiday sales.
Increase Post Holiday Sales by. . .
Putting Together a Drip Marketing Campaign
There’s no better way to keep building relationships with customers than through email “drip campaigns” also known as “nurture campaigns.” While social media is a great way to nurture relationships, email provides a direct one-to-one opportunity by customizing your messages based on demographics and purchase history. It also still delivers the best rate of return of any marketing channel ($40 for every $1 spent).
The easiest way to run a drip campaign is to set up autoresponders in your email marketing software. These are emails sent to subscribers automatically and are triggered by events such as a purchase, event sign-up, a new email subscription, etc. They can also be used to notify customers of an expiring gift card or loyalty point status, or to send birthday greetings.
The trick to autoresponder campaigns is to avoid a hard sell. For example, if a customer bought a big ticket item, such as a camera, you could follow up with an email offering tips and tricks for getting the most out of their purchase. Your next email could offer tips on taking great photos. Then throw in an email that recommends accessories. If you offer support and repairs, that could be your next email. Get the picture?
Targeting New Customers with Unique Sales
You could also set up an autoresponder that offers new customers an exclusive discount or access to a secret sale. Even better, go one step further and use sales or CRM data to target your offers based on your customer’s purchase history. For example, if a customer bought six plates from a kitchenware store’s range of dinner ware, the store could offer that same customer 10 percent off other items in the same product family. “We hope you enjoyed your purchase of XYZ, now take 10 percent off other items in the range.”
Capitalizing on Post-Holiday Buying Trends
Think of ways to attract the post-holiday shopper. This could involve promoting specific product lines or services geared towards New Year resolutions and self-improvement or finding ways to keep gift card customers coming back.
Continuing to Offer Top Customer Service
The holiday season is a busy and stressful one when customers deserve the best service you can deliver. But be wary of resting on your laurels once the buzz has died down. Returns, exchanges and customer queries can continue to test your business — and processing higher volumes means everything takes a little longer.
Clearly communicate your customer service policies, try to respond to email queries as soon as possible and keep one eye on social media for questions and posts from happy or disgruntled customers.
Register Photo via Shutterstock
If you had an AdWords remarketing pixel on your site during the holidays you could reach out to those people that visited, but didn’t buy during the holidays with new offers on your products/services. If you didn’t, get it in place today!
Aira Bongco
I agree with looking at trends. It can help to look at what will sell post-holiday as it is quite different from holiday goods. People will not be as much into discounts.
How about to reach out to a certain amount of customers and give a special offer? A hand-written thank-you note with an offer code?