Everyone is excited about the mega sales expected this holiday season! According to a study by Pipe Candy, there are fewer than 100,000 pure ecommerce companies out of almost 3 million other businesses in the world (excluding China).
It means that at this point, when you mention ecommerce, by default it should mean omnichannel. Among the other hundreds of competitors who are going for the same pool of customers as you are, there is a certain omnichannel strategy for this holiday season you can definitely make use of.
Luke Tran, Marketing Specialist at Magestore, gives you some great tips to help you attract more customers to your online store!
Leverage the mail system
According to a study conducted by Small Business Trends, 59% of U.S. respondents said:
I enjoy getting postal mail from brands about new products.
Meanwhile 70% deemed direct mails to be more personal than emails. And between direct mail and email themselves, about 80 to 90% of direct mails get opened, but only 20 to 30% of emails are treated the same way.
Needless to say, direct mailing has its own perks, especially during the holiday season, when you want your voice to be heard. However, you must make sure that you stand out from dozens of your competitors.
Here’s what you can do:
- Send your promotional holiday mail in the form of a gift card. You can decide its size; just make sure that it fits the majority of mail boxes. No one wants to open a creased card.
- Handwrite your customers’ names and addresses to add a personal touch. It may take some time, but it should be worth the effort.
- Use transparent envelopes.
- Embrace oddity. Does your card/mail/envelope really have to always be rectangular?
- Make a popup mail. Check out this design made by Leonardo Borges.
Source: behance.net
Normally, companies will send an email anyway: it contains more information than its traditional counterpart. If you’re not sure how to make people more inclined to open your email, put some effort into creating an attractive direct mail that gets people to open it. Tell your customers that there are more to be found in their email box.
Create a holiday gift idea ebook around your products
When a customer is targeted by tens of brands at once, it’s hard to stand out unless you give them something of real value. In your promotional email, instead of simply trying to sell an item, consider this instead:
- Focus solely on offering the value of 1 single item
- Tell a story: explain to customers why they need this exact item in preparation for the holidays ahead
- Suggest which products would create a perfect combo with it, or rather, would enhance the value of this item
- Offer a price on the combo
Take a look at this possible ebook example:
You are trying to sell a roll of craft paper. A mere discount on just craft paper is apparently not enough. On your sales ebook page, you can have this information:
- The discounted price of craft paper
- Why customers need this certain brown craft paper (vintage, simple, homey, eco-friendly, etc.)
- Different ways to use craft paper (DIY gift boxes, DIY gift bags, pinwheels, decorative flowers, photography background, etc.)
- The discounted price on items that you plan to sell with it (gift strings, satin ribbons, etc.)
- The combo price.
Or you can print out a page or two pages of your ebook and send them together with direct mail. Give your customers a taste first. Don’t forget to put product links on these pages.
Create a store guide
Save your store staff from being too overwhelmed with the mass of people flooding in during peak holiday season. Create a guide on which items you are putting on sale and the locations of these items in your online store, so that customers know exactly where to get them without too much hassle. Send this guide electronically, and have it available at your store front door as well.
If your purpose is to make customers go around and across all store shelves and departments (think IKEA), still create a guide, but note in your guide that there are other offers ready to go home with your customers this holiday season!
Remember, people are actively looking for sales. Create your hook!
Get a Sales Order app
Do you remember that Amazon purchased Whole Foods this August? According to an article published on Forbes, physical store is the future of retail. Preparing your online store is a no-brainer, but vamp up your physical store as well. No matter how much extra personnel you hire during the busy holiday season, there are always going to be queues after queues at checkout.
There are a growing number of shoppers who enter stores without a wallet and have no desire to carry heavy bags of sales items going from store to store. Equip your sales staff with this Sales Order App to avoid long queues and sell products 10 times faster. Thanks to barcode scanners, items can be scanned to create quick orders that can be shipped home to maximize convenience for customers.
Source: magestore.com
Don’t forget to make the mobile version of your website as easy to use and navigate as possible. It’s an important detail for tech-savvy customers who come to your store and decide to buy things on the spot with their own phones.
It’s essential to prepare soon. If you think you’re ready for this season … your competitors might already be a step ahead. It’s not about doing whatever you can to get customers. It’s about offering values that are appealing and convenient so that customers choose your store among a sea of options.
With this list of tips, we wish you a truly prosperous and successful holiday!
