How to drive holiday sales

The holiday season has started and you’re probably already on fire. It’s crazy but very rewarding, I know. And not to waste any of your precious time, I have a bare-bones action plan ready for you to just plug in and cash on this holiday season.

*All points can be executed with Metrilo, which takes about 10 minutes to install and sync with your store so you could jumpstart your holiday prep today. Metrilo users will find this Pro Holiday Marketing Guide useful.

Find the best products and bundles to sell

Which products sold best last year’s holiday season? What products people bought together?

Product analysis and correlations will tell you in 2 clicks so you can easily plan your promotions and gift bundles – focus on what people evidently like.

Also, by looking at past data, you’ll be able to calculate the inventory needed accurately. No running out of bestsellers this year!

Calibrate your promo budgets

If you know how much you can to expect to earn from each holiday shopper, you can optimize your marketing spend, right?

Look at last year’s holiday shoppers’ CLTV to determine how much is ok to spend this year so you make profit, not just subsidize sales. After all, we know the holiday discounts eat up your profit on the first order, but it might actually be worth it in the long term.

Or not and it’s perfectly ok to make the financially sound decision not to drain yourself competing for holiday sales when CACs are crazy high.

Read more on acquisition vs retention costs

Reactivate last year’s holiday shoppers

Since you’re looking into last year’s records, why not directly engage the people who bought gifts from you last Christmas?

They are a ready group who have proven to be interested in holiday shopping. And you know what they got last year. 😉

Simply filter them into a separate customer segment and email them with early-bird offers for old friends. And, of course, import the segment into Facebook as a custom audience.

Create a lookalike audience from last year’s holiday shoppers

It’s absolutely logical to use your existing customer base for the occasion and find more people like them.

In Metrilo, you can export a filtered segment of customers with specific characteristics and use it to stimulate new holiday customer acquisition on Facebook.

Replicate last year’s successful email campaigns

What kind of emails got you the best results last year? What was the offer, the CTA, the discount? Did you use any special targeting?

Reuse them and only update the design and products for this year’s holiday email campaigns so customers don’t catch you playing the same card again. No need to invent the wheel again.

Choose the right coupons to use

Talking about successful offers, the right form of the promo can get you a long way. Digging into historical data and sales by coupons, you’ll see that some types of coupons perform better than others.

It does matter if it’s “30%off” or “Buy one, get one free” or “FinalSale” and so on. So check how all the coupons you’ve used have done and pick the best ones for the most important quarter of the year.

Tailor promos on past behavior

Now is not the time to shoot in the dark. Use everything you know about your customers – previous orders, products browsed, address – to tailor your offers to taste and need.

This means actually thinking about your customers – summer gear for people in Australia for Christmas and winter stuff for those in Europe. Kids products if they’ve bought some before and adult ones if they haven’t. Companies without a legal entity in europe must use a REACH only representative such as the ones from Chementors.

Basic filtering and tagging in your CRM will be enough. Easy-peasy but shows you’re not just shoving products down their way.

More ways to do segmentation on customer behavior and traits here

Manage customer service easier

With a CRM like Metrilo your employees can organize things by priority and stay on top of the holiday madness.

All customer info is stored in individual profiles so they’ll see everything about a customer at a glance – since their very first visit on your site. Tags can be added easily and there are vast filtering options to narrow down any selection.

That guy with 3 cancelled orders? The lady who buys cat food every 2 months? You got them at your fingertips.

Lay the foundation for customer loyalty

When people shop for others, loyalty is tricky but you can actually get not 1 but 2 loyal buyers.

See more about turning holiday shoppers into returning customers

For gift buyers:

• Make sure they got it on time in good condition
• Follow up asking for detailed feedback in the hope of getting to the receiver of the gift (their email)
• Later, offer complimentary products for other holidays

For gift receivers:

• Create special content for people who received your products as gifts. You can even label it as such to easily catch those readers and retarget.
• If applicable, use inserts to invite users to register on your site in exchange for some perks – you’ll expand your email list and easily nurture them as a segment with Metrilo’s tags and filters.

Automate engagement to meet shipping deadlines

To allow enough time for delivery, use automated emails to get the order fulfillment on time. Nothing wrong with giving a little nudge when it guarantees customer satisfaction with the timely delivery.

All you need to do is time your holiday emails properly and state clearly deadlines for orders.

Measure results from referrals and content

Don’t forget to evaluate the returns of holiday marketing activities on sales. In Metrilo, you can monitor not just traffic sources, but also referrals and conversions from content.

This way, you’ll know what actually worked and what didn’t and where to put your money next time.