Extend the holiday business spirit!
Am sure holiday and good business is no longer a myth to you because you sold a lot and probably increased number of customers. Also, you might be pursuing a new dream from a holiday inspiration. If you are a manager, you must have gone an extra mile to impress your team by celebrating individual and company success. It is always teamwork.
The New Year is here and you need to start with a high momentum. While high performance in the previous month can be attributed to holidays, it is also about your efforts. Holidays cannot draw customers to your store; you must have invested in new and effective marketing strategies to achieve the high returns.
Irrespective of the motivation during the holiday, you can do it again this year. 2019 can be brighter if you consider and implement the following.
Send postcards
There should not be a big difference between holidays and January for your business. Although holidays come with a wave and we can’t hide from it, you can maintain the same level of enthusiasm and hard work in the new year. Go to your records and identify all purchases between Thanksgiving and end of the year. Find out the nature of customers and their needs. They might only have purchased something because of the holidays or they might be loyal customers. Irrespective of their drive to your store, it is time to remind them of available goods and offers.
Design an attractive postcard to appreciate the customers as well as invite them back to your store. Make the invitation as warm as possible. If you spent time wisely during holidays in establishing relationships, you will find it easy to relate with them. Now that you have detailed records of purchases, you can personalize the postcards to suit individual client needs. Consider including a promo code on the postcard to woe them back.
Remarketing
Some people were probably on a shopping adventure and did not buy anything from you. Do not ignore these people. Find out their needs and preferences by going through logs and camera at your store. When reminding a customer or potential customer, you should address specific aspects of the business. It is important to familiarize with their choices as basis of your remarketing technique.
Of course, they noticed your store because of marketing strategies. Even if they did not buy, they were at least attracted. Do not take this for granted. While remarketing is applicable both in online and physical stores, it is more effective if you have an online shop. It is easy to identify the type of customers that were frequent in your store during the holidays hence develop a suitable remarketing strategy.
Google remarketing ads is one of the effective ways of identifying and reaching out to such people. The strategy can also focus on the average amount spent by shoppers in a specific period, in this case, during the holidays.
Re-engage
Anyone who has ever purchased in your store is likely to come back if you reinforce your marketing. While the focus should be on the holidays where you hit the highest sales mark, you should dig deep into purchase history and identify the customers. Even if a customer only bought one item and disappeared, you should remind them of your existence. Reach out.
Bulk emails is the most common and effective technique in reaching out to past customers. Make sure the emails are personalized to be more effective. A customer is likely to take time and read an email just because it has his/her name on the salutation. Even with the automation approach, you still can make a lot from it if you personalize the emails. It is an easy and fast process; all you need to do is design one email and allow automation to go on. Customer re-engagement is effective in maintaining a growth curve.
Segment your audience
Even when selling only one product with a specific audience, there are details that distinguish needs and preferences of target consumers. Find out the shopping frequency, income levels, neighborhood among other factors to help in organizing your audience for more appropriate marketing techniques. By segmenting an audience, you can customize emails or send in bulk with different content.
Tag customers who posted positive reviews of your business. While unique audiences can be difficult to handle for a start, they offer endless opportunities if you define their specific needs and preferences. You can also consult your loyal customers and evaluate the purchase rate to establish an average order value. All this is about organizing your audience to match your business objectives.
Look back and plan
New resolution is not an interesting concept to many people today. Whether you do it or not, growth of a business necessitates history evaluation in development of strategies. After the holidays, you can reflect on strategies you tried in the previous years. Both the successful and failed ones offer you great insights on how to plan your business in 2019. Give credit to employees with unique performances and encourage them to put in more effort in the New Year.
Push the holiday spirit to 2019 and reap big!