How to increase the ‘offline sales’ from your online commerce throughout the year
Current consumers remain expectant as they approach the different highlighted dates and seasonal events where consumption increases to receive or search for all kinds of special offers and promotions.
This is one of the reasons why businesses and vendors rush to create marketing campaigns and promotions aimed at customers and consumers in order to increase their sales and revenues.
Christmas, the January cost (sales) and special celebrations such as Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day are undoubtedly some of these important dates and of great importance especially for the small and medium-sized merchant industry.
Despite the current boom in social networks and e-commerce, traditional stores and shops are also preparing for the different key dates of the commercial calendar. And for this reason, even if your business continues to be supported by the sale in offline stores, you can also benefit from online strategies through different channels and media such as email, in perfect synchrony with your traditional model.
Clients seldom completely abandon their real-world shopping habit , and a high percentage of consumers with email are reluctant to make purchases online for different reasons. Encouraging the visit to the ‘offline stores’ occasionally through email can motivate many of these customers to visit our store again.
Let’s begin to be selective and generate relevance
Each month offers us opportunities for special offers. That does not mean you have to grab everyone. Be selective. Collect data about customers, when they are the most likely to buy from their sector. Next, select the events that in some way relate to your business.
Not only sell
Apart from exceptional discounts, promotions, offers and gifts, consumers also expect our thanks to their trust and loyalty, a non-commercial message aimed at building relationships. It is worth to thank the customers for their loyalty and enthusiasm from time to time.
Segmentation and personalized treatment
Although most of your customers or contacts expect to receive more offers by email as they approach prominent dates or special celebrations throughout the year, it does not mean that users open or click on anything that arrives in their inbox.
Specific and personalized messages are an effective way to stand out among the large volume of communications that saturate the mail of consumer users. However, in order to reach our customers through their emails, a long-term strategy will be necessary, since it will take time and effort to collect personal and behavioral data. So do not wait until the Christmas shopping dates, keep your strategy active throughout the year.
Taking advantage of moods
By general rule, on festive dates such as Christmas, Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, consumers and customers make their purchases submerged in a cheerful and special mood. Take advantage of it to collect your data and build your contact lists. Offer rewards for your subscribers during these dates both through your website, blog, social networks and your own commercial establishment.
Share, key to achieving virality and greater reach
According to some reports and studies, social icons visible in our communications, offers and promotions through our website or email can increase click through rates (CTR) by up to 114%.
The increasingly widespread habit of sharing this type of promotions or offers by current consumers can cause a single message to reach a wider reach and reach, especially during dates designated as especially commercial.
Planning and frequency of communications
It is important to properly and strategically manage each of our promotional actions. It is not about pumping the customer, and therefore, it is vital to control and establish a reasonable frequency of commercial communications via email.
Plan and organize a calendar of important dates for the trade and a margin of time to prepare your strategy, communications, promotions and offers.
Rehearsing We learn from mistakes
Take your time, experiment, contemplate and analyze different options, designs, formats. Check the preview of your messages through different browsers, inboxes and / or devices.
If you are willing to launch your promotion, you can optimize your shipments in a segmented way, in blocks, or depending on the type of device. These simple procedures can help improve your results or minimize damage in case of errors.
Be creative
Creativity can undoubtedly be a handincap in any special promotion. Colors, styles, product images, design for the occasion or time of year. All these elements used intelligently and without saturation, can generate a great power of attraction in consumers and customers. Put a touch of color to your promotions, Red for Christmas, Rose for Valentine’s Day, etc …
QR codes
QR codes can undoubtedly be a useful and economical resource for our business. They can be easily generated and store encrypted information that can be scanned from mobile devices. They can be located and used in a multitude of ways to take advantage of them in our business.
Strategy planning
The different festive dates or dates where consumption increases are excellent opportunities to increase our sales. However, to maximize our success an anticipated and thoughtful planning will be necessary. Plan your strategy with time and in advance to innovate, study new ideas, promotions or offers. We must be clear in advance how, when and what we want to sell, what our star product will be and what our best promotions will be.
Analyze the results
It is important to analyze the results of our strategy carefully once completed, also taking into consideration the aspects that worked best as well as the aspects that failed.
Similarly, it may result from using surveys or collecting opinions from our customers both in different online channels and among the regular customers of our store or business. Your opinion and comments can be very useful for future strategies, offers and promotions.
