6 Effective Tactics to Prepare Your Web Shop For Holidays

Holidays are a good time for online stores. During the holiday season, it is easy to make extra revenue – especially with well-planned and well-timed promotions. If you have already had a good season in the past, you can choose similar promotions that worked for you, but be sure to read on for some tips and tricks you might not have thought about – and if this is your first, I have got you covered!

#1 Plan It

Smart strategy is a well-planned strategy. Too often promotions and other extra marketing ideas get forgotten until later in the season, or worse, sent to the junk mail box with an unsubscribe. Think about what incentives you want to offer your clients, and plan well. Use a calendar to decide down to the day when you want to start and send each promotion.

#2 Use Promotions

Prepare varied promotions, for example:

Limited time offers
A limited time offer that gives customers extra incentive. (Supported by research.)

Early bird offers
Early bird offers encourage people to get items before they run out.

Freebies
Give away freebies when customers make a purchase on specific days, or purchases a certain amount or higher.

Contest
Run a contest in social media, where the prize is money to spend in your web shop or winning your products. Example: customers have to send pictures or videos related to holidays, or a holiday theme.

Theme up
Do not be afraid to get themed! Use tasteful and fun graphics or colours to make the email stand out in the inbox. Catch their eye.

#3 Keep Your Clients Up to Date

Inform clients about promotions long before you actually send them; you do not want to lose out to rival sites. Use e-mails and social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

#4 Do Not Forget About Hashtags

Prepare a strong, visible call to action. Hashtags are perfect for this: try to make one that blends your business with a holiday-related thought, phrase, or item. You can link it to an Instagram contest as well, with followers taking photos and tagging them with your hashtag. Best one wins!

#5 Share the Holiday Spirit

Do not forget about social media. If it is related to your business and your brand, you can post content related to holidays. Things like recipes, links to songs classic or new, gift guides from various places on the web – all of these get your followers in a holiday mood as well as paying more attention to future posts.

#6 Focus on Retaining Customers

Make sure you try to keep the customers! Around 70% of companies says it is cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. There is no perfect way to hang on to customers, but there are a few things you can do to make it easy for them to want to stick around:

Limit your e-mail marketing
Do not send email promotions too often. No one likes an email a day all week from the same site – and offering too many discounts makes it look like you are not doing well as a site. Space the offers, and any communication, out long enough that people are excited for your next email.

Upgrade your customer service
During holidays your customer service should be 100%! Make sure you or a colleague are available to respond, either by phone, chat, or e-mail during all of these busy days.

Be creative
Think about other ways to entice and reward return customers. Newsletters, promotional discounts for returning customers, or reward programs based on money spent are all good ways to keep customers happy, and coming back for more.

If some of these do not exactly fit your site model, modify them! The most important thing is that you are communicating effectively with your customer, as well as taking advantage of the holiday season. Happy holidays, and be sure to let me know in the comments what has worked for you!