Promotions to Boost Holiday Sales

It is never too early for online retailers to begin thinking about the promotions they will want to offer their customers throughout the upcoming holiday shopping season. You must be ready to launch your promotions by Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving or Cyber Monday, which means that detailing your plan in August and September is ideal.

First Steps: Analysis and Planning

The first phase of incorporating holiday promotions to boost your online sales this holiday season is to carefully analyze your customer base—existing and potential. What has prompted increased sales in the past? How did you fare in the 2008 holiday season? Answering these questions can give you an idea of which promotions will find the most success this year.

Perhaps you determine that you have some tried and true methods that get shoppers to buy from your site. Maybe you want to try something new. Constructing a plan based on the information from the past year’s sales can help you chart a successful course through the host of promotional options to implement on your site this year.

Next Steps: Decision-making

Some of the promotional ideas outlined here are not necessarily innovative, but they have been shown to work well to see an increase in online sales during the holiday season. Consider some of these options and evaluate which ones are most likely to help increase your holiday sales:

Free Shipping

Offering free shipping, either during a certain time period during the holiday season or for a certain purchase amount, is a tried and true promotion that is certain to increase your sales. This promotion is executed so often, in fact, that it is almost a necessity to compete with other online retailers. For example:

“All orders placed by December 15 get free shipping.” This may prompt people to buy with the imposed deadline in mind.
 
“Free shipping on all orders over $250.” If a visitor to your site finds the items they need for less than $250, they may be inclined to get a few additional items to take advantage of the free shipping.

“Shipping on all orders, just $5.” This may prompt people to purchase more on your site than they may have intended to squeeze as much as they can out of their cheap shipping cost.

Closely look at your margins and determine when it is most profitable to offer the free shipping promotion and be sure to include some form of free or reduced shipping at some point during the holidays.

Save By Spending

Offering a discount for spending a certain dollar amount is another strong motivator to get customers to make more and bigger purchases on your site over your competition. For example:

“Get 20% off all orders over $100.00. Discounts taken at checkout”

Simply setting the stage to encourage shoppers to buy more and get a discount can increase your sales dramatically over the six weeks between Cyber Monday and January 1st.

While you’ll want to reserve this offer for launch during the peak holiday season, you’ll want to evaluate how to most cost-effectively design it right now.

Contests and Joint Promotions

In 2008, Kmart® and Disney® worked jointly to offer the “Wish and You Could Win” promotional holiday event. The promotion was available in the retail stores and online and functioned very simply: purchasing certain items at Kmart rendered the buyer eligible for Disney prizes. Both companies realized increased profits during the holiday season by offering this promotion.

While your shop may not be as far reaching as Kmart or Disney, you can still construct a promotion with other retailers, especially local ones if you are both an ecommerce store and a stick and brick shop, to maximize benefits for you both. Or you can offer a promotion similar in construct, but without the second party.

For example, “Customers purchasing more than $100.00 are entered into a contest for a $100 gift card (to our shop, another shop, etc).”

When you sweeten the deal with the prospect of a free gift chance, customers are more likely to purchase from you over your competition. Begin now by evaluating your budget and determining how to most benefit from a promotion like this. And begin exploring opportunities with other organizations or retailers to construct a joint promotion.

Other Promotions to Boost Holiday Sales

There are a host of other simple promotions you may want to highlight during the holiday season, some promotions you offer year round may need to be more heavily advertised and others may expire after the holiday season ends.

Gift Finder tools: This is the tool that shows other items that the buyer may be interested in purchasing

Gift Cards: Gifts cards are now one of the hottest selling items purchased for the holidays. Make sure visitors to your site know that you offer one and how to purchase one.

Free Gift Wrapping: This is a nice feature that many people will use.

Conclusion

Right now, in the late summer and early fall, it is time to start outlining your battle plan and mobilizing your efforts to get the most from the 2009 holiday season. Determining which promotions fit your company and your budget best is a critical first step.

Your next step will be working with your web developer to implement the necessary features into your site to offer the promotions you choose. The developers at Network Solutions® help customers boost their holiday sales every year by “decorating” their sites, inputting promotional details, and much more. When you determine the promotions you want to offer and the other onsite preparations you want to make for the 2009 season, be sure to contact us to get started.