Blue Monday? Post Holiday Sales
Congratulations! You survived Cyber Monday and the light at the end of the tunnel is near (or so you think). As the week before Christmas wraps up, hopefully, the fruits of your labor are evident and your holiday sales are strong. So what’s next? Spending time with family, catching up on some much needed rest, indulging in some less-than-healthy food, traveling some place warm? Those are all good answers but none will keep your online store chugging into the New Year.
It may be tempting to celebrate after a successful holiday season and put your online store on autopilot. However, many of the world’s largest retailers will be rolling out huge sales before the end of the year. With the right strategies, you too can take advantage of the secondary surge of the post-holiday shopping season. While holiday shopping may have put a strain on many shoppers’ wallets, others are flush with cash and pre-paid gift cards they received as gifts. Some may even be looking to purchase accessories or complements to products they were just given.
One major way to get the ball rolling is to remarket to your existing customers. Consider searching your order database for recent holiday shoppers and send a targeted email with a coupon as your way of saying ‘Thanks’ (and encourage them to share the coupon with family and friends). You might find customers who spent a certain amount of money, placed a certain number of orders, bought a specific product, or purchased an item in a given category. You may also want to discount certain under-performing products/categories from this season or slash prices on overstock/clearance items that will otherwise be pushed aside. Free shipping is a great motivator as well. Additionally, consumers, as well as gift recipients, are especially active on social media. Take this time of year as an opportunity to engage those who are talking about you and offer incentives.
Whatever route you go, don’t let the opportunity pass you by to capitalize on what would be an otherwise slow consumer season before the late winter and spring holidays arrive. Winter after the holidays stinks…but your online sales don’t have to.
Nexternal clients can segment customers by purchase behavior in their OMS in Customers/Advanced Search and send Bulk Emails using the Mail Wizard.
Chris is a Senior Account Executive at Nexternal and has been with the company since 2005. Before joining Nexternal he worked in the cloud-based educational software industry. Chris enjoys establishing new relationships with online merchants and working closely with those clients as they grow.
