The holiday season is near and this is a great opportunity to increase your sales. While trimming pricing for quick sales may give you some advantage in the marketplace, offering Holiday coupons is even better. Why? Because when products are on sale, they’re on sale for “everyone” and customers don’t have to do anything to take advantage of them. Coupons, by contrast, are something customers must “use”, making them feel special and smarter to has recognized the deal. Let’s go through some tips and help you get your coupon promotions in order for the Holiday season.
It’s Free Money
It’s true. Customers will feel that they are using “free money” with coupons. Reducing prices helps customers save money, too, but the customer has no hand in it. There’s no feeling of getting “free money” when an item is simply on sale – but offer a customer a percent-off coupon that they have to actually use to get a reduced price, and they’ll feel that they’ve been given free money, and found a steal.
Custom Is Better
When you sell online, you should give your customers the ability to sign up to a mailing list and/or newsletter. Doing so cements your relationship with your customer, and to reward them, you can offer “customer specific” coupons in your email makreting. When customers get coupons that are meant only for them personalized with their name for instance, they feel valued in a very rare way. Regular ecommerce coupons available to everyone are certainly great tools, but customer specific coupons go a step further. They symbolize truly “special treatment,” and your customer is not only more likely to “spend” that coupon, but to feel as though they have been singled out by you – guaranteeing customer loyalty.
Spread Socially
Social channels or networks are great places to advertise by offering coupons during the holidays. You can also invite people to “like” your Facebook page or to follow you on Twitter and get a free coupon that they can use on your site. The ideas here are endless from sweepstakes to giveaways there is much you can do. Read more tips on social commerce promotions for hte Holidays.
Daily Promotions
Daily promotions let you entice customers with great buys. Send out a coupon to your mailing list and Facebook subscribers (and put it on your Facebook page and Twitter feed, too) that’s only good for 24 to 48 hours. These can be specific to Cyber Mondays, Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Advertise on your website as well. Watch traffic and sales zoom. You’ll make existing customers feel like they’ve really gotten a deal, and you can be sure that word will get around to new customers, too — they’ll come flocking to your site to take advantage of the temporary savings.
Sweepstakes and Giveaways
For the duration of the holidays (say, from Black Friday to the day after New Year’s day) run a sweepstakes that people can enter. If they like you on Facebook or visit your website and subscribe to your newsletter, for example, they’ll be entered into a sweepstakes to win $100 coupon to spend in your store. This will ensure you keep your sales numbers up after the Holidays and build a longer term campaign that lasts beyond Christmas.
Free Shipping
The king of kings when it comes to coupons is offering free shipping for specific products during the holidays that can be set with our without a minimum purchase order. What’s so important about free shipping is that so many merchants online already offer it, and it’s become expected. Not doing so may affect you negatively, but do tread carefully and study your options, we’ve got great info on shipping here.
While ecommerce coupons are effective any time of the year, they’re especially useful during the holidays. People are generally in a more festive and “buying” mood around the holidays. Take advantage of it by offering special holiday promotional coupons on your website, and include a few extras that are specifically for your subscribing customers, your Twitter followers, and/or those who “like” you on Facebook. Got more ideas to share with us? Let us know in the comments and share the marketing love this Season.
Checkout more Holiday Ecommerce Tips here on our blog.
We got the cool image from Bigstock! Get yours from here Barcode Sales
