5 Ways to Boost Your Profits This Holiday Season

December 14, 2018 - 11 minutes read

The holidays are coming and ‘tis time for selling.

We have entered the holiday season, which means the time for gift-giving is upon us. As a retailer, the holiday season presents a golden opportunity to sell more products, boost your profits, and grow your customer base.

In fact, recent studies suggest that this year, consumers expect to spend an average of $1,007.24 each during the holiday season, up 4.1% from $967.13 in 2017. And if you take the right measures to promote your brand, entice festive shoppers into your store, and encourage conversions, you’ll be able to enjoy a respectable slice of this year’s festive retail pie.

To help you do just that, here are five ways you can sell more products in your store this holiday season.

 

Email marketing, seasonal style

 

Contrary to popular belief, email is still an incredibly effective channel when it comes to engaging holiday shoppers and driving them to the checkout, both virtually and physically.

80% of retail professionals state that email marketing is their biggest driver of customer retention. Moreover, 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.

That said, by reaching out to your existing subscribers with email content that is not only brimming with warm seasonal imagery but is presented in a concise, catchy, and digestible way, you stand an excellent chance of driving traffic to your website, and your store.

To encourage subscribers relatively near your store (geographically speaking) to head in-store and make a purchase, create a targeted email that offers a deal or discount that can only be redeemed in person.

To hook your subscribers in, outline the offer in the subject of your email. And to increase the likelihood of your prospects taking a trip to your physical store, make redeeming the offer as simple as possible by including a barcode or QR code in your email. Today’s users like transparency, convenience, and simplicity – make your customers’ lives easy, and you’ll sell more products this holiday season.

For inspiration in developing the content of your seasonal email marketing efforts, explore these excellent examples of brand storytelling.

 

Traditional greetings

 

70% of business leaders say that it’s more cost-effective to retain a current customer than to attract a new one.

With that in mind, share your appreciation this holiday season, reinvigorate brand awareness, and engage with your existing customers on a personal level by mailing them (rather than emailing them) a personalized greeting card. It’s an excellent way to inspire seasonal shoppers to visit your store.

Sending out a heart-warming holiday message in e-format may be convenient, but an alluring, branded greeting card with a tasteful message, along with the code for an exclusive discount (only available in-store), will add an extra personal touch to your festive marketing efforts.

By giving particular customers email exclusive deals and other segments of your subscriber base exclusive offers by “snail mail,” you will cover all of your bases. And by analyzing the demographic data available to your business, you’ll be able make an informed choice as to which customers are most likely to respond to each medium, boosting your holiday profits as a result.

 

Partner up

 

While demonstrating a solid level of loyalty to your existing customers over the holidays is essential, this time of year is an excellent opportunity for building brand awareness and encouraging new customers.

During the holidays, there is a greater level of foot traffic in towns, cities, markets, malls, and shopping areas as people scramble to source gifts for their loved ones – and encouraging more people to come into your store is, of course, the way to boost in-store profits.

Partnering up with another brand, organization, or store in your locale is an effective means of making shoppers aware of your store and what it has to offer. Not only will you spread more seasonal joy, but you’ll also increase your chances of gaining the attention of passing shoppers.

For example, the forward-thinking retailers of Mill Street in Almonte, Ontario, teamed up to entice more shoppers to their district by pooling their efforts, squeezing as much value as possible from a single traditional advertising campaign.

To share costs and create local buzz, 10 of the area’s merchants contribute toward a collective monthly page of content in a regional food magazine. Moreover, these businesses regularly cross-promote one another with relevant offers, branding, and incentives that shoppers can use throughout the district.

Speaking on the subject, Emily Arbour, owner of Mill Street’s Cheerfully Made Goods, said:

“We often promote each other. If I’m having a workshop but I also know that that Tin Barn is having a sale, it will always be the bottom of my email. We do that type of thing for one another.”

As a result of the retailers’ efforts, each business has benefited. By partnering with another local store(s) to offer a cross-promotional holiday deal, you too can boost brand awareness while encouraging more people to visit your shop and potentially invest in your products.

 

Social media competitions

 

With the vast majority of today’s consumers using social media to share content, voice opinions, connect with their peers, and make buying decisions, leveraging your most engaged social media channels to your advantage can be a key ingredient in your seasonal retailing success.

There are several ways you can utilize social media to attract consumers to your store and create a buzz around your brand during the holidays. Here is a selection of strategic approaches you can try:

• Try a Facebook live broadcast or Instagram Stories to broadcast or showcase in-store events, promotions, and deals, or give your audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse of your shop during the holiday season.
• Run a social media competition with prizes that need to be collected from your store. Alternatively, you could run a “first come, first served” competition where the first five people to visit your store and check in win a seasonal gift. And you could document the events as they unfold.
• Leverage relevant holiday hashtags to post engaging, valuable content that will resonate with those who are likely to visit your store and benefit from your products.

If you want to get particularly creative, you could create a seasonal character or mascot and build content around it – giving people an added incentive to come into the store and engage with your brand in person.

To boost awareness over Thanksgiving, stuffing brand Stove Top played on the millennial fascination with selfies to conjure up the hilarious Thanksgiving anti-hero “The Artisanal Hipster Pilgrim,” satirizing the selfie trend while promoting its product across social media with the slogan “Stuff Thy Selfie,” among a host of others.

As a result of this quirky, seasonal social media campaign, Stove Top earned a total of organic 49,839,865 engagements on Facebook alone – an impressive achievement, indeed.

 

Event days

 

The holidays are the season for spending time with others and making memories – and as a retailer, inviting people to your store for a seasonal event taps into that spirit.

65% of brands and businesses believe that live events are directly related to sales, which means that hosting a seasonal in-store experience is likely to help you sell more products over the holidays.

By using digital technology to enhance your in-store event, you’ll be able to create an experience that will get people talking, attracting a wealth of people to your brand and boosting your profits in the process.

For instance, the Westfield Shopping Centres based in London harness the power of the holidays each year to create a Santa’s grotto event for both adults and children that uses digital technology to provide a more personal, magical, and user-friendly consumer experience. With elements of personalization, whimsical Christmas scenery, 4D viewing opportunities, and digital touchpoints that document invaluable customer data, not only has Westfield been able to drive more people to their shopping malls, but the brand has also been able to collect the kind of data that will help them improve their future marketing efforts.

“This holiday season, retail brands have the opportunity to own the experience of every customer that engages with their brand — engaging and delighting shoppers in new ways that will earn their trust and loyalty.” – Mark Floisand, Sitecore

 

We hope that these five tried and tested promotional approaches will help you sell more products in your store this holiday season. For more ideas on offering your customers an experience that stands out from the competition, explore these four incredible omnichannel marketing campaigns.