Ecommerce companies operating in both B2B and B2C environments are well aware of how flash holiday sales can stimulate their clients’ buying activity during the festive season. Typically, the holiday shopping fever is followed by a natural lull period where clients take a break and are reluctant to make new purchases anytime soon. However, a growing eCommerce business must stay ahead of the seasons forcing business owners to plan revenue-generating campaigns after the holidays.
Let’s take a look at some useful post-holiday marketing tips on how businesses can prevent post-holiday slumps.
Post-Holiday Marketing Tips
Mind global customers
If you are targeting international markets and sell to customers globally, check their specific local holiday dates to properly schedule post-holiday activities and don’t miss out on sales opportunities. For example, by January, 5, your customers in Western Europe have already had wintertime celebrations while some Eastern European customers are only getting ready to celebrate Orthodox Christmas. Keep in mind that the holiday and post-holiday dates may vary depending on a country and plan your campaigns respecting the local calendars.
Thank holiday buyers and loyal customers with post-holiday sales specials
Take a lead and make a step towards your customers at an off-peak period. Remind them of your presence and readiness to interact. You can cater to those customers who’ve placed pre-holiday orders in your webshop and entice them to revisit. This can be a follow-up email containing exclusive and targeted deals or short-term hype discounts for the items your clients are interested in.
Launch new products or services
Although the purchase tempo may decrease, the first month or two following the holiday sales should not necessarily mean oblivion for your business. Launching a new product or offering a new service after holiday sales is a great way to send your customers a wake up call and encourage them to place new orders. This will help you both promote the new product and prevent sales volume from sinking.
Pitch self-improvement products
The holiday sales are closely followed by the New Year, a period where individuals search for new beginnings and self-improvement activities from new resolutions. This is a great time where buyers are attracted to self-perfection, self-education, and self-empowerment products. New Year resolutions typically include exercising or healthier dieting, learning new skills, or reading more. Turn this trend into a marketing strategy and offer products and services that help them achieve their new goals. Check how skillfully Amazon pitched their Kindle in one of their post-winter-holiday campaigns –
Make use of wish lists
Besides the commitment to be a better person in the New Year, another generally known fact is the disappointment in presents received from their loved ones during the holiday season. You can try and gently tap into this by suggesting your customers treat themselves to a personal gift. If you are not using wish lists on your websites, don’t you worry – often times customers use their shopping carts as wish lists as they pile items put off for a later purchase. Use your CRM to track abandoned shopping carts and target the customers who’ve gone away empty-handed with additional post-holiday sales discounts motivating them to complete their orders.
The Holiday sales season is mad rush for vendors which is why many companies fall into stagnation following the holidays. And that is exactly the reason why your business needs to seize the opportunity when your competitors are dormant. Try to approach your clients with personalized offers to win their attention back. However, your focus during the post-holiday season should not be only on selling more. Use this calmer period to carefully analyze purchase habits of your clients during the high season and make conclusions on how well your offers and marketing campaigns did this past year. By tracing all the ups and downs during a certain holiday and post-holiday season, you can obtain valuable data that can be used during next year’s marketing activities.
Do you have any innovative post-holiday marketing tips that can help conjure sales? Feel free to share them in the comments.