As the festive season draws to an end, with a shift in purchasing and lagging feet in stores, the week between Christmas and New Years can prove to be the defining factor for your store’s profitability.
Follow a few tips below to drive your sales right through to the end of the festive season.
Operating in a fast-paced retail environment during the festive season demands a POS solution that can process your sales efficiently while maximising efficiency and speed at checkout. With the power of rapid processing and ease-of-use, your POS system should allow your business to focus on customer needs.
The festive season is once again just around the corner, your plans and preparations should be well on their way, with employees geared up and prepped for the increase in store traffic, both instore and online, your systems tested and running with proficiency and your inventory well stocked. With this all done, follow the tips below to ensure that you are geared up to sell more.
Stock preparation
Ensure that both online, instore and actual physical stock correlate. Your retail solution should facilitate measures for stringent stock control, allowing you to reflect reductions whether a shopper purchases online or instore, avoiding the risk of not fulfilling an order.
Employee training
The festive season provides retailers with opportunities to leverage on sales by upselling, cross-selling as well as offering alternatives should a product be out of stock. Ensure that employees have brushed up on their product knowledge, are briefed well in advance on promotions and are prepared and trained for situations where they can offer shoppers an alternative whether it be by upselling or creating a ‘on the spot’ promotion through cross selling, to meet the needs of a shopper. These situations could significantly increase margins on every sale. To further assist employees, ensure you have a POS system that includes an upsell feature that will assist your employee in making informed recommendations instantly, at checkout.
Define your marketing campaign
Shoppers need to know what you have to offer and why they should shop with you.
Your POS solution should allow you to segment your customer base, allowing you to identify customer purchase history and trends. Use this information to create personalised email campaigns, to drive customers to purchase online or instore.
Below are some suggestions for an email campaign:
- Early-bird email: let your early bird shopper know of your upcoming promotions in advance, reward them with coupons for a discount or give them early access to upcoming deals and sales.
- Countdown email: setup a series of special offers that run for a period of up to 30 days
- Gift Guide email: take the hassle out of shopping by giving shoppers the option to select an offer. You could set up gift offers that appeal to price, gender, hobby, trend or age making the gifts selection more relevant or personal.
- Tailored emails: leverage off your customer data and offer personalised product recommendations and promotions.
- E-gift card email: remind shoppers that digital gift cards are quick to purchase and easy to give as gifts, ensuring that you give the gift they really want.
- Cross-selling email: offer shoppers a ‘one-time gift pack’ for maximum customer satisfaction
- Up-selling emails: inform shoppers of added benefits or features on selected products and offer them one-time rewards or loyalty rewards.
- Shipping reminder emails: inform shoppers about the last days to buy in order to receive their orders in time for the festive season.
- Online promotion emails: use special promotion codes for online driven sales promotions. Ensure to set your promotions code for a limited time only.
Remember to further drive your instore and online promotions on your social media pages. Social media can drive hype and demand as shoppers can easily share your promotions with other shoppers instantly.
Speed up your delivery process
Let the shopper decide their delivery terms, even if this means they have to pay more for improved or faster deliveries. Shoppers can opt for standard shipping, same day shipping, overnight shipping or free shipping for early shoppers. Remember to offer a hassle-free return and replacement policy.
Create attractive displays
Take advantage of extra traffic whether it be instore or online during the festive season. Create eye-catching, foot-stopping window displays instore and eye popping offers online. Movement and sound can really draw a crowd instore, while flashing offers draw a shopper’s eye online.
Offer fast and friendly service
Shoppers don’t want to be bogged down with loads of offers and slow service. Listen to what your shopper wants and offer them the best value for their needs, in as little time as possible.
Are you festive season ready? Use the tips below to help you gear up for the festive season.
Prep your sales strategy
- Identify demand for your festive sales promotions, by analysing your sales data and keeping abreast of customer trends. Your retail solution should prove crucial to interpreting your data. Run a sales report to affirm your most popular items, to ensure that you have adequate stock to meet customer demand, thus maximising sales. Make sure to have a contingency plan should some holiday mishaps occur, by having back-up plans for your upcoming sales.
- Keep an eye on competitor offerings, to stay ahead of the game with competitive pricing, value added offerings and unique promotions.
Set Your Plan in Action
- Test your Point of Sale system to ensure that it can handle the increase in demand over the festive season. Organise dry runs with employees that will be working over the festive season.
- Test and update your website. If you are a store that offers online purchases, be sure to test that the ordering and payment process runs smoothly. Update the website with your latest promotions and ensure that stock correlates to quantities available for online purchases. Confirm relationships with your shipping partner.
- Test payment processes at point of sale check-out to ensure that customers experience fast and efficient service.
- Extended trading hours need to be communicated with all employees, with a detailed roster of scheduled working hours for each employee.
- Prepare your team by communicating your expected levels of customer service and expectations for sales.
Let Your Customers Know
In order for any festive season to prove successful and profitable, you need to let customers know what you have to offer.
- Advertise promotions: run marketing campaigns that lead up to your promotions, driving excitement and demand. Get the word out on your social media platforms and make sure your customers know they can rely on you during the festive season to do those last-minute gift shopping trips.
- Ensure that customers are aware of extended trading hours during your festive trading period.
- It is always good to reward loyal customers. These customers may enjoy further discounts, additional points for loyalty, exclusive competitions and more.
- Give your customers peace of mind by letting them know that returns are hassle free.
The festive season proves to drive the highest sales during the course of the year but also provides retailers with seasonal customer buying trends. At the end of the festive season be sure to analyse stock and data information from your retail solution so that you can identify trends throughout the year and better plan for the next festive season.
