TechBytes: Three Ways to Extend Holiday Shopping Joy—and Profits
When retailers execute their IT and CRM strategies properly, the holiday shopping season is a joyous time of profits and customer engagement. But why let all the festivities end on Dec. 25?
By properly leveraging solutions and strategies, retailers can extend the season of consumer goodwill (and spending) right into the New Year. As “Cyber Week” fades into memory, let’s focus on the week (or weeks) after the end of the traditional holiday season. Here are three suggestions to keep that holiday spirit alive a little longer this year.
Second Chances
Not being able to get everything on your holiday shopping list is an all-too-common holiday plight for consumers. However, they no longer have to suffer in anonymity.
Retailers are now armed with volumes of data that in many cases can let them know who wanted to buy what, and whether they got it before the holiday. Product searches and browsings, video viewings, shopping carts, coupon downloads and wish lists, compared against purchase histories, give retailers more insight than ever before into who experienced a holiday letdown.
To boost sales in the immediate aftermath of the holiday period, retailers should target customers with special discounts on the items that dashed their holiday dreams. This is also a good chance for targeted cross- and upselling. If possible, use inventory awareness to make locally hard-to-find or out-of-stock items available as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Happy Returns
Let’s face it – Santa makes a lot of mistakes. Almost everyone receives at least one or two holiday gifts they don’t really want. Nobody really looks forward to visiting a store and making a return, and going through the process of repackaging an online purchase and waiting for a refund or replacement is even less appealing.
With some creative application of omnichannel technology and strategy, retailers can make the returns process tolerable if not happy for the consumer, and downright merry on the retailer side. First of all, retailers need to look at convenient in-store return of all products bought on all channels not just as good customer service, but an important driver of store traffic.
It is imperative for retailers to break down any back-end silos that prevent customers from easily returning products online in any local store. The return experience itself can be eased with omnichannel features like advance return processing, so customers can simply arrive with their product, display a mobile barcode and receive cash or credit.
More Holidays
As demonstrated by Amazon’s Prime Day and Alibaba’s Singles Day, consumers will respond to new holidays created by retailers if the bargains are there. While more prevalent in Canada than in the U.S., Dec. 26 is a traditional gift-giving day known as Boxing Day that can be recognized with sales and promotions.
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day also lend themselves to omnichannel promotions, and who’s to say other holidays can’t be dreamed up? Dec. 28 could be “Snowman Day,” complete with an Instagram contest where consumers submit images of their snowmen (materials other than snow can be allowed to make it national) or scavenger hunts where consumers tweet the locations of hidden snowmen for prizes.