Make the Most of your Holiday Sales
The excitement of sales flooding in from the holiday season has come and gone but that doesn’t mean that your Shopify ecommerce business can’t keep the momentum going in Q1 and beyond. Instead of sitting back and waiting for sales to come in, take a proactive approach towards generating sales early in the year by taking actions to put your business in a position to make your existing customers want to purchase from you again.
As an ecommerce business operator, one of the worst strategies that you can have is to overlook customers who purchased from you during the holiday season. Whether they are first time purchasers, loyal customers or were simply shopping for a friend or family member, the fact of the matter is that they chose to shop with your brand so you should do the best that you can to tap into them to get them to buy from you again.
Consumers have more options than ever to choose from when shopping. More than seven in 10 consumers bought from their competitor of their go-to brand between May 2021 and May 2022 showcasing the importance of engaging with customers often in an effort to make them more loyal to your brand. So as an ecommerce business, it would not be wise to sit back and take a passive approach after you likely had your most busy period of the year. Now is the time to roll our new strategies and tactics to engage your audience to set yourself up for a strong year full of growth. What types of tactics and strategies should you be leveraging to set your ecommerce business up for success? Read on to find out!
Make it frictionless for customers to reorder from you with a “Reorder” button
Have you noticed how easy it is to reorder on Amazon or Uber Eats? In a few clicks, you can place a reorder. Reorders drive profitability. A study by Bain & Company found that just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%.
And up until now this “reorder” button was really only available to larger brands. However Upscribe has made the same Reorder functionality that you enjoy as a consumer on Amazon available for all Shopify ecommerce businesses. You can now collect reorders from your customers in as little as a single click from the customers “my account” page on a Shopify store – removing friction while increasing your LTV and profitability at the same time. Additionally, Reorder integrates with Klaviyo so you can develop automated flows that capture reorders in a matter of a few clicks…on repeat.
Perhaps customers don’t want to be locked into a subscription and simply want to reorder a product when they want on their terms. Reorder allows you to capture these valuable, profit-driving reorders in only a few clicks. By introducing this “Reorder” functionality on your store, you will be making it easier and removing friction for customers who bought with you during Q4 (and prior to that) to come back and purchase again from your brand.
Segment your first time BFCM (Black Friday, Cyber Monday) purchasers and treat them differently than the rest of your customers
As detailed in a BFCM report by Klaviyo, 70% of first-time BFCM purchasers do not make a subsequent purchase with the brand. Knowing that these first-time BFCM purchasers are likely more price continuous than your other buyers, treat them differently. Don’t just send them a generic message and hope that you can get them to make another purchase from you.
The first step that you need to take towards treating them differently is to create a segment of first time “2022” BFCM buyers in your email service provider (ESP) or Shopify store. Once this segment is built, consider crafting a series of messages that aims at not only re-selling your brand’s value proposition but also gives them a bit more of an incentive to purchase from you again. Perhaps it’s a discount or a free gift with purchase. Getting these first time BFCM purchasers to purchase from you again is important because they likely cost more to acquire so you need to increase their LTV to realize a better ROAS.
Getting these first time BFCM purchasers into the habit of purchasing from you will be a big win for your business and help to grow sales, profitability and brand loyalty for your brand during the start of the year. These customers can become foundational building blocks for your brand moving forward if they are treated correctly, so don’t just forget about them, engage with them a bit differently than you do with your other customers and watch the sales come in!
Conduct a flash sale (or two)
A flash sale puts urgency on the buyers to act in a short period of time. In some cases, consumers may only have a few hours to take advantage of a special offering. Experiment with flash sales during this time of year on certain products that you may have a surplus of inventory around and put products on sale that have high repeat order rates.
If you know that a particular product has a higher reorder rate than others, be aggressive with a flash sale around that particular item. If you get a first time purchaser to make that initial purchase of that item, then odds are strong that they will come back and order from you again. And, if you equip your Shopify ecommerce business with Reorder (as we detail above), you will be putting yourself into a strong position to capture multiple reorders from customers and drive the profitability of your business throughout the year.
Whether you have tried a flash sale or not in the past, it’s best to be strategic about conducting one. Think through what day and what time of day you are going to conduct the sale and how you will promote it. Will the sale be marketed through email, social media and your website? Or just one of those channels? Will the sale be on a particular item? Or will the sale be across your site? The more you think through the details of your flash sale, the more success you will have.
Flash sales at the start of the year can be the mechanisms to get customers into the habit of shopping with you and stay shopping with you throughout the year. So you may not be thrilled with taking a hit on your margins, but if you stay engaged with these customers throughout the year, you will have a great chance of driving multiple sales throughout the year from these customers.
Introduce a new offering to your store
Growth for your ecommerce store can be realized in ways other than simply introducing a new type of product (such as a new color or new flavor). You can grow your business by offering a new offering entirely from your store – like offering a subscription to your products or service.
As we detail on this page, subscriptions are a powerful way to accelerate growth, increase your LTV and drive profitability. A recent report from eCommerce Fuel found that brands that offered subscriptions grew 26% faster and were 14% more profitable than those brands that didn’t offer subscriptions. Knowing this, early in the year is a great time to launch a subscription service that can build momentum and become a foundational revenue building block for your business throughout the year.
Upscribe makes it easy for you to not only build and scale your subscription business, but we also make it seamless for you to take your entire retention business to the next level. If you are interested in learning more about how we can do this and make this year your most profitable year yet, schedule a demo with us here.
