For eCommerce sales and marketing strategies Christmas, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are the busiest days of the year. Advertisers and marketers have identified Black Friday and Thanksgiving as the top sales days for online retailers.
However, truly just about every day from Halloween to New Year’s eve can be considered as a sales-driving day. This is true for most shopping sites.
Therefore, if you haven’t yet prepared any strategy to meet your competition during this holiday . . . there is no need to panic. Here I have brought to you some tips that will help an eCommerce store-owner to be successful in holiday shopping season.
Using the steps mentioned in this blog, you’ll definitely get the best results when preparing for the season. And don’t forget about managing your ads to get the most from your timing!
Decor your eCommerce store:
To be successful over the holiday season you need to create a holiday theme design for your website and for your marketing campaign. You can do many things to liven up your eCommerce store and spread the festival spirit.
- Change your site background theme with Christmas related graphics.
- Apply festival color like red, white, golden etc. to match up to the color scheme of the season.
- You can also change your logo, site banner and design your store according to the festival offers and festival motifs.
Many eCommerce stores like Etsy, Amazon, Flipkart etc. have taken up different ways to give their stores a fresh festive look. They are using different banners, logos and styles to decorate their store and announce their festive offers.
Start your promotional email campaigns now:
Email marketing is the great way to get targeted traffic as well as increase your holiday sales. Provide attractive holiday discount coupons to your consumer as a gesture of appreciation for shopping with you in the past. Undoubtedly, email-marketing campaigns are an effective way to spread the word during the holiday season. This is a time when customers consider marketing purchases that they would not during the rest of the year.
For email marketing follow the below tips:
- Write catchy subject line in email.
- Use personalized holiday messages in your email that looks less promotional and more postcard style.
- Send follow-up emails with a variable subject line and mention offers by repeating the deadline of the offer that you are providing. This is the easiest way to grab a customer’s attention efficiently if they forget to check out on the first mail.
- In addition, you can send offers via email. For example, “Gift cards are available for purchase of a certain value at your online store”.
- Gather data of what works and what does not work in your email campaign. This way you can better prepare in advance for the next year.
Give cash back offer:
You can simply give a cash back offer to your customers. Although this is a new trick, it still seems to have a good potential to increase the holiday sales. You can give your customers a particular percentage of cash back on each order. Try to credit the amount to the customer’s account as a gift voucher and include the time limit within which it can be redeemed. Additionally, you can give gift voucher to the customer. This type of offer not only attracts more customers, but also can help you in increasing repeated purchases from old customers as well. Use social media:
Customers are always on the lookout for a good deal. The holiday season is the perfect time to use your social channels since people are more frequently shopping. You can use SocialPilot to automatically schedule your posts to fill your stream with your offers and details.
Below are few social media tips for holiday season:
- You can post updates about holiday discount and special offer on your brand pages on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
- Share high-quality product images along with the updated ones to make a deeper impact on your shared content.
- Use proper hashtags on Twitter related to discounts and sales in the holiday season. Tweet consistently.
- Use the same holiday graphics you use on your site on your social media brand pages for continuity and a familiar feel.
- Get into the spirit of the season by offering a part of your sales to charity with the support of your fans and followers.
You can do the above things to get more engagement and build relationships with your audience. Additionally, you can reward them with a promotional giveaway that promotes your brand even after the holiday.
Start blogging about Christmas:
A great way to improve your holiday campaign is to start blogging about it even if you don’t have planning. Decorating your store is not the only important thing however. You also need to tell your customers that you are actually ready for their business by writing a good blog. Writing blog content ahead of the holiday season is a very smart and good idea.
In addition, you want to post your blog posts prior to the start of other activities. There are many ways you can do this. Potentially, you could take seasonal photos of the products and then share them on social media. You can share these to your blog as well. As a result, you’ll get traffic, build confidence and get some significant conversation brewing also.
Provide various payment options:
Include multiple payment options as much as possible for your customers. If you traditionally only accept Visa and MasterCard, would your store benefit from allowing PayPal payments? This will make the checkout process much easier. Additionally, this helps you avoid the hassle of transferring monies for customers who prefer to pay through PayPal or online check. The more simpler and easier process you provide the more likely your customers will be to complete their purchase. As a result, you will easily increase your transactions and sales.
Offer single day delivery:
If you provide single-day delivery for the festival, you will attract many last minute shoppers to your store. Even if you only offer nominal charges for this facility, the customer will still enjoy the shopping experience. Many eCommerce stores started with day-guaranteed delivery to get the complete traction of those last moment shoppers. Many customers start their festival shopping ahead of time as well. However, many of them are left unfinished. Therefore, this type of delivery option makes their shopping better and very convenient as well.
To conclude, every eCommerce marketer should use this tips as their new year’s resolution and keep coming back at them when the holiday season knocks at the door.
So, what tips or strategies do you have for making the holiday season run a little smoother? I would love to hear what you are doing for your year-end holiday sales? Feel free to share your creative ideas in the comment box below.
