Succeed online at Christmas - Part Two

This is part 2 of our “succeed online at Christmas” article. If you havn’t already read part 1 click here

Thanks for taking the time to read part 1. In part 2 we will talk about:

 

1) Encouraging Newsletter Signups

2) Using discount to encourage sales

3) After Christmas Sales

4) Marketing over the Christmas Period

But first, let’s look at some key dates:

• December 25th - Christmas Day. You may not be working, but your customers still want to buy from you! And because your website doesn’t require a Christmas Dinner it is still open for business!
   
• December 26th - Boxing Day. The busiest online retailing day of the year! 129 Million visits to UK retail websites on this day 2013. And that was an increase of 15% on 2012. If the trend continues, Boxing Day 2014 is set to be huge online.
   
• December 27th to the end of January 2015 - Sales season online and offline.

1. Encouraging Newsletter signups

In the part 1 we talked about email marketing to your customers. Every new visitor to your website could potentially join your mailing list and every subscriber is a potential purchaser. You should actively encourage new customers to sign up to your email marketing by offering incentives and special newsletter only discounts, the more customers you have in your email contact list and the greater the incentive to open and read your emails, the higher the number of enquiries & sales you will be.

Furthermore it should be really easy to signup, try signing up to your own newsletter to make sure it is quick, easy and problem free. If your website is asking for lots of information before a customer can sign up consider reducing the signup process.

2. Using discount to encourage sales  

Everyone likes a deal, fact! Ensure your offers, promotional codes and incentives are setup and ready with the correct start & end dates applied.
 

With ph9’s powerful Discounts & Promotions Module our customers with the module are able to set up a wide range of incentives and offers across their website quickly & easily. Buy one get one free, 3 for 2’s, Free Delivery when you spend over £X, Spend Over £X on Y products gets you Z discount are all popular incentives. You are also able to set the start dates of the incentive so that you have time to build up anticipation before the sale is active and also the end date so that your sale doesn’t overrun if you forget to switch back to normal pricing.
 

Promote your offers in email marketing, social media & also within the banner space on your home page to ensure maximum exposure, this should form part of your main marketing plan to drive as many people to your website as possible and encourage them to buy there and then.

3. After Christmas Sales

After Christmas Sales actually start on Christmas Day.  Christmas Day typically means people have unwrapped new laptops, smartphones & tablets which they’re going to take straight out of the box and start using to surf online. Mix in some vouchers and money from Gran and you’ve got customers ready and willing to buy! More people will visit your website on Boxing Day, but the large retailers now start their sales on Christmas day, so why not ensure that you won’t miss out.

Boxing day is the busiest online retailing day of the year and the following days and weeks can be strong in terms of sales also. To maximise your sales potential without actually having to work during this time setup your email marketing, social media activity and your website’s promotions in advance. By doing this your marketing machine is working away whilst you put your feet up for a well earned rest. I’m an ex High Street retailer so know what it’s like “at the coal face” in the run up to Christmas! You deserve a rest!

4. Marketing over Christmas

As previously mentioned using tools such as email marketing facilities and HootSuite for pre scheduling social media activity can allow you to keep up your internet presence whilst you are taking a break or just re-grouping from the busy run up to Christmas Day.

Internet activity does is still significantly higher than usual until some days after Boxing Day so ensure that your activity is at it most frequent from Christmas Morning right through New Years and into early January. The prolific internet browser at this time is the bargain hunter so any clearance items and products that you can afford to discount a little more should perform well.

Social media is very important during this time too, remember all of those new Smartphones & Tablets? There is no way the new owners will be putting those down so by running a consistent social media campaign you’ll be delivering your products and company names literally into the pockets of your customers!

We hope that you have found our blog articles of use, please feel free to share them with your colleagues & friends.

If you are interested in talking to ph9 about any of the services we have discussed in these posts please feel free to get in touch by clicking here.