It’s that time of the year again! The Christmas holiday season is just around the corner. Christmas is a great opportunity for your eCommerce businesses to take the advantage of the holiday season to drive sales. However, any eCommerce entrepreneur knows that Christmas and New Year is not only busy for shoppers alone. They are extremely busy for storeowners as well.
If you are into highly competitive business, the question is how you can get your eCommerce store ready in the busiest season, especially if you haven’t made preparations. To make sure valuable sales aren’t missed, advanced planning is essential for eCommerce storeowners. Here, I have mentioned few tips that will help you prepare your online store for the last minute rush at holiday shopping.
1. Review previous data:
This is the most important step for a successful marketing campaign. Reviewing previous sales data is the first and most crucial step for next holiday strategies. Start looking at your previous data because it helps you to create your successful marketing campaign. If your previous year social media marketing was very successful for Christmas, then this is a good chance to refocus your last minute Christmas marketing efforts. If you optimize your previous data, this year’s result can be potentially boosted. In addition, you need to look at what did not perform well and find out the reason why that part of your marketing campaign failed. If you identify the source of the problem, this medium can become effective for you.
2. Start email marketing:
First of all, you need to start with email marketing. Therefore, email your targeted customer. Create a compelling email and add an add coupon code that your customer would not like to miss. You can also send separate email marketing campaigns to your existing customers as well as your new. This will help you not only increase your sales but also create a positive customer relationship.
3. Update holiday specific content:
This can include creating relevant holiday ads, copy and social images. You can also create holiday landing pages. If you create landing pages, it allows you to measure the highest converting and begin to share it more often at peak times to see a higher increase in traffic, engagement and conversation.
4. Schedule your social media post for Christmas:
As an eCommerce storeowner, you already know that social media represents a vast opportunity. Social media plays a vital role in Christmas holiday shopping as well. With using social media tool, you can schedule your post promotion or campaign well in advance. Creating Christmas content calendar with your blog post ideas and along with any other holiday specific content would be ideal.
Take it one step further and schedule your posts and campaigns for Christmas in advance. By using a social media management tool you can easily schedule all your holiday posts across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.
5. Create creative banners and images to promote Christmas sales:
There is no better way to promote your holiday sales than with attractive graphics and images. Whether you are planning to use a banner to promote your Christmas offers or you want to use a picture in your blog post, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to get this done. Using tools like Canva or Picmonkey you can easily create these great images by yourself.
6. Create suspense around your upcoming sale:
It’s easy to simply announce a holiday season sale, but creating suspense can really help make it a bigger success. Inform your customer with an email of what’s to come and post your upcoming sales on social media well in advance. The sooner you start doing this, the more conversation you will have during Christmas when you finally announce the sale to your customers.
7. Reward your loyal customer:
Every customer likes receiving personalized messages and your loyal customers will definitely appreciate it if you send them a Christmas card specially addressed to them. This is the best way to express your gratitude to your customers. Not all shoppers expect this gesture from the brands or stores they shop at but it would be a great touch if you send them some kind of gesture. This can be anything from an electronic card to a direct message on Facebook or Twitter. It may only a simple holiday greeting, however it can help you to make strong customer support connections that lead you to make increased sales.
8. Create holiday blog content:
An excellent way to develop your holiday campaign is to start blogging about it even if you have not planned yet. Decorating your store is not enough. You also need to tell your customers that you are actually ready for the holiday season by writing so in a good blog. Create content that is useful and engaging to your targeted customers.
During the festival season, more and more customers are looking for inspiration and guidance. Therefore, writing a blog on shopping tips and strategies ahead of the time for Christmas is a good idea. In addition, share your blog around all the social media platforms. As a result, it will encourage your followers and you’ll get traffic, build confidence and perhaps inspire some meaningful conversation as well.
9. Update your customer service and shipping services:
You need to make sure all the sections of your website are updated with relevant holiday information. Check your shipping information to ensure that it contains all shipping deadlines to receive items before Christmas or other holidays. Also, update your customer service pages to include holiday return policies, gifting instructions and any other specific holiday information. If you have more information and clear policies, it allows the customer to buy with confidence.
10. Re-target your old customers:
By re-targeting previous shoppers, you’ll reach people who might have forgotten about your store and wouldn’t have checked out your sale otherwise. Also, you can re-target shoppers that have made a purchase from your store previously. It is found that selling your products to your existing customers is easier than brand new customers. It means those people you have already sold in the past will be friendlier to your Christmas sales.
11. Offer live chat services:
During festival season, it is important that you are providing better services to your customers. If you are not providing a quick answer to your customers, they will leave your website. Customers expect to receive quick help to their questions about what you are offering. Offering live chat services gives an online store an opportunity to connect with interested visitors as they are making buying decisions.
12. Think about a mobile friendly website:
Nowadays more and more customers prefer to buy from their mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets give convenient shopping experiences. Therefore, you need to ensure that your website works efficiently across all these devices. However, ensure that your website has an optimal viewing experience across all devices as well.
13. Create a sense of urgency:
Last minute offers and deals are a great way to encourage customers and email is the best way to deliver those kinds of promotions. Remind them your latest offers and sales by email. Instead, you might want to try running a similar promotion for a much shorter period of time. This way you can provide free shipping over selected dates for a specified period.
14. Get in the Christmas spirit:
Let’s say you have started Christmas offers, emails, and discounts as well as content. However, if your website is not giving that special Christmas holiday feeling, customers might not feel it’s not worth going to. Your website needs to have an attractive banner, logo and content for Christmas holidays. Also, ensure that it highlights your latest offers and discounts on your homepage to attract visitors. Decorating your site can actually encourage visitors to spend as they feel that you are offering something specifically for Christmas.
15. Create holiday offers:
Christmas is one the busiest times of the year; customers are guaranteed to spend. If you want to stand out this holiday season, then you’ll need to create the compelling offer. Observe your competitors and offer your customer better services, deals and discounts. However, ensure that your offer is more appealing and worthwhile than any other marketing team is able to achieve at Christmas.
16. Offer gift-wrapping for free:
When Christmas arrives, customers are ready to buy their gifts for their loved ones. Therefore, we suggest you provide gift-wrapping for free on orders for over a specific amount. This will help you encourage the customer to increase product sales. This just might convince a customer to add one more gift to their cart to meet that threshold. Your gift-wrapping services will prevent the customers from having to wrap and post the product themselves. To compete this service you can also offer a gift receipt. A gift receipt helps enables customers to feel confident in their purchase. Even if their gift is not what the receiver wants, it can be swapped for something they would like.
17. Sell across multiple channels:
There are lots of marketplaces that can help you expose your brand in front of the targeted market. You can sell your products on multiple channels like Amazon, eBay, Etsy etc. as well as on comparison shopping engines includes Google products, Amazon product Ads etc. that online shoppers often use to find great product deals.
Christmas is the great festival for both customer and storeowners so let’s make sure it’s a memorable one. If you follow the above checklist, you can create an interesting and compelling campaign that increases sales. So with that in mind, plan your best Christmas strategy. If you are currently doing anything extra to prepare your eCommerce store for the Christmas then we love to hear from you. Share your insights and experiences in the comment box below.
