The rush of the holiday season has come and gone, and weary consumers are still swearing off holiday, music, more dessert, and every new blowout sale. But just because your customers are exhausted doesn’t mean your business has to experience a post-holiday dip. We’ve got seven great tactics to help your business avoid the post-holiday slump.
1. Update your return policy
Returns are such a dominant part of the shopping experience that 8 out of 10 shoppers will check your return policy before buyingi. The majority of those shoppers expect free shipping; they also claim a restocking fee would prevent them from buying againii. Consider revising your policy to extend your return window or offer free shipping on returns during the first part of the year.
2. Stay top of mind
Keep momentum going well after the flurry of holiday sales by giving your customers a reason to return to your site. It could be as simple as asking them to provide feedback on an item they’ve already purchased in exchange for a special offer or gift card. Another way to re-engage your customers and bolster awareness around new year deals is increasing spending on pay-per-click advertising while average cost-per-clicks are lower. Sometimes buy-it-later holiday shoppers just need a reminder to purchase those remaining wish-list items.
3. Retarget low-hanging carts
Advertising to current customers can cost a fraction of advertising to a new audience; it also offers a great opportunity to drive sales from shoppers who have already demonstrated some level of interest in your products.
Your goal here is to remind and retain: engage customers who viewed product pages with relevant information through retargeting pixels on your site.
4. Make checkout easier
The dreaded credit card, billing address, and shipping address form fields are one of the biggest deterrents to customer conversion. And let’s not even talk about asking them to remember yet another password.
Consider offering an alternative payment so returning customers don’t have to log in and new customers don’t have to create another account. Amazon Pay can increase conversions by reducing the steps to checkout for the hundreds of millions of buyers who have Amazon accounts. Convenience + trust = higher conversions.
Find the full “7 tactics to avoid the post-holiday slump” here.
i Comscore, 2018 UPS Pulse of the Shopper, 2018
ii Return Magic, Returns Survey, 2018