5 Christmas Marketing Tips: How Santa Would Do His Marketing

Tik-tok, tik-tok, that is the sound of the clock as Christmas 2015 inches closer and closer. With just a few days left to cash in on the holiday, there should be a renewed sense of urgency for you and your business. We are here to make sure that the urgency to sell translates into hard cold cash in your business’ bank account.

Whether or not you have a plan for the coming days, take a look at these 5 Christmas marketing tips that you can implement immediately, and reap the benefits just as soon. No coding needed. No need to spend thousands of dollars. As Nike says, “Just Do It”.

Be the Santa of Sales

#1: Shipping On Time

You’ve got to be able to give customers what they want. That is probably the first rule of retail. At this point, that means ensuring that the purchases make their way to the desired destination by Christmas day – at the latest.

More than likely you’ll be upgrading the shipping in order to please customers. Remember only 32% of customers place a second order in their first year as a customer!

Shipping fees and dates are undoubtedly on your customers’ minds. To maximize the number of products purchased, as well as your profits (that’s what matters in the end, no?), you’ve got a couple options for the shipping costs.

Here are three potential options: (1) customer pays for shipping, (2) free shipping, (3) X% off on shipping.

• Keep shipping costs on the customer (not highly recommended). Added shipping costs is one of the leading causes of shopping cart abandonment.
• Free shipping without raising prices. This is a very good option if your customer lifetime value is high and/or you want to generate tons of new leads (even if it comes at a cost of decreased profit margins).
• Free shipping while you raise your prices in order to keep your profit margins at a healthy rate. If you are planning on raising prices in the future, then now is a better time than ever.
• Offer a percent discount off of shipping when the customer spends a certain amount. No one wants to spend a lot on shipping. When you offer a discount on “express” or “first class” shipping you are creating a sense of urgency that optimizes conversions.

#2: Flash Sale

Flash sales are one the biggest sources of revenue. The case study we ran on Raw Generation is a good place to start if you are not sure about the effectiveness of flash sales.

Flash Sale: “Deal-of-the-day (also called flash sales or one deal a day) is an eCommerce business model in which a website offers a single product for sale for a period of 24 to 36 hours” (source).

As noted in a post on how emotion triggers purchases, the best way to optimize your eCommerce site for outrageous results is through the use of emotional images and text. A 1-2 day sale does just that (especially before Christmas).

The steps to a successful flash sale:

• Decide on the offer. Keep it simple and storewide (P.S. try offering more than 10% off)
• For best results keep it maximum 48 hours
• Promote the offer on every marketing channel that you have: email, social media, and on your site.

Take note from Raw Generation on how to implement two lead generation tools at the same time (they use both the Coupon Pop and the Exit Pop). Here’s their Exit Pop and visit them to see the Coupon Pop that fits in perfectly with the Exit Pop.

#3: Create a Video

Video marketing is what are the cool kids are doing. It’s been shown to increase purchase likelihood by more than 100%. Not bad, right?! Luckily, for the next couple of weeks, creating video just got easy and cheap.

StoreYa and Reelocoaster have partnered to bring businesses the opportunity to create two free holiday-themed videos for customers. Sending a video in your next email, embedding one on your site, or sharing video your social media channels is going to engage your customers.

What does engagement have to do with sales? Now that you have their attention, you must capitalize on it by including a must-have offer with the video or immediately afterwards (next status update, in the same email).

Here’s an example of what one business did to say happy holidays and offer a 20% discount to their customers!

Create your flash sale and add it to either or both the Exit Pop and Coupon Pop. Then create a video to promote the sale and say happy holidays. Add the video to your next email and pin it to the top of your Facebook page.

#4: Promote Your Top Selling Products

People, regardless of whether we’re talking about shopping or anything else, want to feel like they are part of something that is bigger than them. Social media is used by so many for a variety of reasons, one of which is the sense of community.

Do you need to create a forum to create a sense of community on your site? No, but putting emphasis on your top products will do so. Make your top sellers stand out. You want new visitors to focus on what is working so that no doubt regarding quality remains in their mind.

Gap uses the top selling products in the call to action (“Top Gifts”). You could do so in the call to action as well as in the text above it.

#5: Create a Bundle

Bundle packages are one of the best ways to increase the order value of purchases. Not only that, but by selling products in bundles you are able to show off the quality of several products to the customer at the same time. The result?

Although the profit margin for each product in itself might decrease via the bundle, this opens up a path to close the year on a positive note with higher revenues and profits (margin itself might be smaller due to bundle), generate more leads for 2016, and hopefully, increase the number of reviews per product as you head into the new year. Sell more for less now, win in the long run!

Almost every platform has an app/extension/plugin that enables you to create a bundle, so actually creating one should not take very long or be a complicated task. What do you put in the bundle? If it’s going to sell, there has got to be a top product included in the bundle. Step one is adding the popular item that first catches the shopper’s attention. With that, you add a few other complimentary items, usually an accessory or two and maybe another mainstream product  that acts as the secondary product. The secondary product is either something  you are either trying to get rid of (end of season) or a new products that has yet to catch on.

JCrew has already created an entire section for bundle packages. Time to set yours up.

3…2…1…Go!

See, like I told you at the start, all five of these tips can be implemented today to make sure that this Christmas is your most profitable one yet. First things first, get to work on figuring out how and to where you are going to be able to ship everything. Do you need an order cut-off date?

Once you know your shipping plan and policy for the next few days, start bundling products and bring your top products to the most important places on your site.

Then, when those things are done, create a flash sale. Consider running it Friday and Saturday (Saturday is “Super Saturday”: last Saturday before Christmas). Finally make sure all your work is visible by adding either all or some of the following: Coupon Pop, Exit Pop, and Reelocoaster video.

Good luck! If you have any questions, fire them away in the comment section below!

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