It’s that time of the year again! The Christmas holiday season is just around the corner. Christmas is the great opportunity for your eCommerce businesses to take the advantage of the holiday season to drive sales. However, the eCommerce entrepreneur knows that Christmas and New Year is not busy for the shoppers alone but busy for the store owners as well.
If you are into highly competitive business then the question is how you can get your eCommerce store ready in this busiest season especially if you haven’t made preparations.To make sure valuable sales aren’t missed, advanced planning is essential for eCommerce store owners. Here, I have mentioned few tips that will help you prepare your online store for the last minute rush at holiday shopping.
You can’t just open a website and expect people to flood in. If you really want to succeed you have to create traffic.
1. Review previous data:
This is the most important step for a successful marketing campaign, it is the first and crucial step for next holiday strategies. Start looking at your previous data because it helps you to make your successful marketing campaign. If your previous year social media marketing was very successful for Christmas, then it is good chance to focus your last minute Christmas marketing efforts. If you optimize your previous data then this year’s result can be boosted. In addition, you need to look at what did not perform well and find out the reason why that marketing campaign fails. If you identify the source of the problem then this medium can become effective for you.
2. Start email marketing:
First of all, you need to start with email marketing, email your targeted customer. Create compelling email and add an add coupon code that your customer would like to miss. You can also send separate email marketing campaigns to your existing customers or new customers too. This will help you in 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 as well as 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 store owner, 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 advanced. Using social media management tool you can easily schedule all your holiday post 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 graphic and images. Whether you are planning to use a banner to promote your Christmas offers or you want to use in your blog post, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to get this done. With using the tool like canva or picmonkey you can easily create the great image 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 in advanced. The sooner you will 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 and that can be anything like an electronic card, a direct message on Facebook or Twitter. It may not be a simple holiday greeting but it can help you to make strong customer support and that can lead you to make more 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 but you also need to tell your customer that you are actually ready with writing such a good blog. Create content that is useful and engaging to your targeted customers.
During the festival season more and more customer are looking for inspiration and guide. So writing a blog on shopping tips and strategy ahead of the time of the Christmas is a good idea. In addition, share your blog on social media because it will encourage your followers and you’ll get traffic, build confidence and get some important 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 then it allows the customer to buy with confidence.
10. Retarget your old customers:
By retargeting 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 retarget shoppers that have made a purchase on your store previously. It is found that selling your products to your existing customer is easier than brand new customers. It means those people you have already sold in the past will be more friendly to your Christmas sales.
11. Offer live chat service:
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 customer then they leave your website. Customers also expect to receive quick help to their question about what you are offering. Offering live chat service gives an online store an opportunity to connect with interested visitors as they are making buying decisions.
12. Think about mobile friendly website:
Nowadays more and more customer prefers to buy from their mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets give convenient shopping experience. So 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.
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 this kind of promotion. Remind your latest offers and sales to your customer by email. Instead, you might want to try running a similar promotion for a much shorter period of time you can provide free shipping over selected dates for a specified period.
14. Get in the Christmas spirit:
If you have started Christmas offers, emails, discount as well as content but if your website is not giving a Christmas holiday feeling then it’s not worth. Your website needs to have an attractive banner, logo and content for Christmas holidays. Also, ensure that highlights your latest offers, discounts on your homepage that attracts 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 the busiest as well as effective times of the year, customers are guaranteed to spend. If you want to stand out in this holiday season then you need to create the compelling offer. Observe your competitors and offer your customer better services, deals and discount. However, ensure that your offer is appealing and worthwhile, as no marketing team will able to achieve even at Christmas.
16. Offer gift wrapping for free:
When Christmas arrives, customers are ready to buy the gift for their dear ones. So in that case, if you provide the gift wrapping for free on order for the specific amount. This will help you encourage the customer to increase product sales. Your gift-wrapping service will prevent the customers from having to wrap and post the product themselves. To compete this service you can also offer gift receipt also because this enables customers to feel confident that if their gift is not what the receiver wants then 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 store owners so make sure it’s a memorable one. If you follow this above checklist then you can create an interesting and compelling campaign that increases sales. So according to that, plan your best Christmas strategy. If you are doing anything extra to prepare your eCommerce store for the Christmas then we love to hear from you. Share your insight and experience in the comment box below.
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