The holiday season is an exciting time of year for most online retailers!
It can provide an awesome boost in leads, exposure, and revenue. But as the manic sales activity of November and December dies down it can feel somewhat like a digital ghost town.
Is there a way to avoid this? While you may not recreate the giddy heights of Black Friday and Christmas, it actually doesn’t need to be a quiet period for your business.
By implementing the strategies in this article you may find the first quarter of the new year can be a great period – both for your revenue and your customer relationships.
The trick is recognising what your customers are experiencing and strategically re-engaging with them through a lens of empathy.
Let’s look at 6 simple ways to do this…
1. Cement the relationship
If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to welcome your new customers into your community and make them feel at home.
There’s a concept in Psychology called Dunbar’s Number. This is the suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.
It’s also thought that we can only maintain a relationship with a certain number of brands. Are you going to be the brand they want to keep in their life or will you fade away like the rest?
To set yourself apart you want to:
- Introduce your brand story.
- Encourage them to join you on social media.
- Help them avoid post holiday buyers remorse.
2. Have warm and fuzzy customer service
Tis the season for returns and exchanges!
It’s time to get your customer service team ready for helping all your new customers get the answers and the service they need.
This is the make or break time for building your relationship with new customers. January is the month to go over and above with generous and proactive customer service.
You want to ensure they have a positive experience that will make them more receptive to review requests, new offers, product launches, and promotions.
3. Tap into new year new me attitude
Januarys the season where people are looking to level up their life in all kinds of ways.
They want to exercise more, lose weight, learn a new skill or hobby, get organised, travel more, and generally live life to the fullest.
It’s a great idea to get creative and think about how you can tie your content, products, emails, and promotions to a new year resolution.
Helping your customer stick to their resolutions can help them re-establish a connection with your brand.
4. Gather reviews and user-generated content (UGC)
Now is the time people are using (and hopefully loving) your products. So it’s the perfect time to generate UGC. As we know new customers are far more receptive to UGC versus salesy “look at me” advertising.
Here’s a few stats to demonstrate the power of UGC:
- UGC photos are 5X more likely to convert.
- 87% of millennials upload selfies to social media
- Visual content is 40X more likely to be shared on social media.
So now’s the time to capitalise on the new customers you have and request some awesome content with some kind of incentive.
5. Introduce rewards and referral programs
One great way to build a closer relationship with your new customers and increase their lifetime value (LTV) is to introduce a rewards and referral program.
Using a platform like Smile.io you can reward new customers for things like leaving a review, following you on social media, making a new purchase, and referring a friend to your brand.
Not only will this help you build customer loyalty but it could result in an influx on new referral customers – kicking off your new year on the right foot.
6. Offer discounts or free shipping for the price sensitive
After the Christmas rush many shoppers are feeling extremely price sensitive. So now is a great time to introduce a post-holiday sale or free shipping offer.
If you have extra stock left over from the holiday season – this could be a win-win!
You may want to offer different incentives based on how many purchases a customer has made with you and what their average order value (AOV) has been.
In summary, you need to remember what many of your customers are experiencing in January: an interesting cocktail of frugality, drive for self improvement, and new year excitement.
If you’re ready to kickstart your brand after a sales slump, checkout some of our case studies here or better yet, get in touch to book a chat with our team.