There are many special days online that ecommerce businesses can benefit from. Special days in ecommerce are the perfect time for offering competitive deals and targeting wider audiences, but also having an understanding and analysis of your users, because your new shoppers still have fresh memories of shopping from your store during this post-holiday period.
In our blog post today, we’ll go through a few strategies to help you convert more customers on special days in ecommerce into loyal ones.
Special Days in Ecommerce
1. Back-to-School
Everyone loves a deal, and this is especially true during the back-to-school period. Parents of multiple children will also be looking for specific deals to reduce the money they need to spend during this peak season.
But just because parents are looking for deals doesn’t mean you need to lower your prices dramatically. In fact, with the right deals in place and the proper marketing to support it. You can actually increase your prices during this period and still generate lots of profit. One of the best ways to highlight your deals is to segment your products by the audience.
2. Black Friday & Cyber Monday
BFCM period could be your store’s best sales time of the year. This shopping season generates billions of dollars each year, making it an unmissable opportunity for ecommerce stores. That’s why it’s essential to be well-prepared and ready to seize the day.
3. Valentine’s Day
Many people want to buy their significant others a gift. This means great news for businesses! It is one of those seasons when every customer has many ecommerce suitors and will say yes only to the best proposal.
4. Mother’s Day
Gift-giving is a long-standing tradition to express gratefulness, and this tradition prevails on Mother’s Day too. Naturally, businesses do their best to be the destination for shopping on this special day. If you’re ready, we’ll share a few tips on how.
On Mother’s Day, people are willing to spend more. More than naturally, everyone thinks their mothers deserve the best. As business owners, you must offer the best. Establishing an emotional attachment is the key to generating good sales.
5. Halloween
One of the most anticipated periods for all ecommerce retailers, following Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas & New Year, which are the highest peaks of sales. Halloween became a huge opportunity for merchants all around the world since millions of customers purchase billions of dollars worth of gifts for friends, family, and themselves. Retailers who have already prepared their stores tend to attract online shoppers actively seeking the best prices, becoming deal hunters during this special day.
6. Singles Day
Singles’ Day started to be celebrated by single people in China in the 1990s as a response to the Valentine’s Day celebration. In 2009, the retail giant Alibaba embraced Singles’ Day and made it a big shopping moment to promote discounts at retailers on its ecommerce platforms. After that, the influence of this day has grown day by day and it has become a global event.
Tips to Plan Ahead
Fully utilise the power of communication
How can you reach out to your client base in both an effective and cheap way? Through email, right? You are already sending them an email for their online orders. But what about adding other emails for their online activities within your store?
Another implicit communication channel that’s already been built into the ecommerce shopping journey is the box or the package of the goods that you ship to your shoppers. You can actually include post-holiday discounts within the box or can label the box with “free return” stickers to gain their loyalty and maybe get into their minds for the next purchase of theirs.
In short, communicate as much as you can, and wherever you can. In ecommerce, there are so many ignored touchpoints, like the package, as we said above. So, think through your shopping journey, and make sure that you can communicate with your shoppers with good vibes.
Try to build an engagement layer, wherever you can
You, of course, want those “one and done” shoppers to come back, but if you can not build the bridges for them to find you when they are back again, it’s the shopping journey after their first purchase; you only have a slight chance to be remembered.
Therefore, to grab your share of their attention span, play on being remembered after that purchase. This can be done through ‘product rating’ emails that could be sent a week after the purchase. Or a ‘refer-a-friend’ campaign that might even trigger a more social vibe.
Don’t ignore your costs and optimize pricing
Your ecommerce store is doomed to die if you ignore product costs and set the prices below the costs. The formulation is so simple. If you earn less than you spend (costs), you lose money from every single sale. Therefore, generating a great number of sales in that scenario won’t be more than fooling yourself.
Seek opportunities to get a discount from your supplier. Cut down your packaging costs, optimize your shipping strategy, coordinate warehouse operations, and have a very strict inventory management. Only once you figure out a way to lower your own costs, you will be able to offer great discounts or lower prices for customers.
Looking at the price competition in the market and focusing on your costs at the same time. With Prisync’s Dynamic Pricing, you’re able to set smart prices by adding your product costs and other variants such your competitors’ prices. Target profit margins for your products that you track with Prisync. After setting these rules, you’ll figure out your smart prices based on your costs, your competitors’ prices, and your target profit margins.
Increase the profitability and be the most competitive in the market
You can be both profitable and the most competitive at the same time in Singles’ Day. Let’s see how to do that!
Compared to your competitors, your prices may be too competitive. So, even increasing the price by %5 or %10 isn’t likely to impact the performance of your competitive position. This is an opportunity to test a price increase, improving your profit margin and still being the best offer in the market.
The most efficient way to detect competitor price increase changes is using a specialized competitor price tracking software, by which companies access an overview of what their competitors are charging for key product categories. Armed with this intelligence, companies can make precise decisions regarding small price increases that allow them to remain competitive.
Don’t make returns a hassle for your shoppers
Well, the holiday season surely comes with the harsh burden of returns, which costs a lot to ecommerce companies of all sizes. And due to its costs and all other negative aspects, it’s oftentimes regarded as a hassle to be got rid of, as soon as possible.
However, returns are another touchpoint hidden in the ecommerce customer journey. And as it’s the case with other touchpoints, ecommerce companies may regard it as an engagement opportunity as well.
You can customize the return experience of your shoppers. Send them personal letters, trying to figure out the reasons why they did not like the product. Maybe along with some other offers that they might find attractive. Or you can reach them out instantly and recommend other alternatives for the product they returned. And maybe you might even change their minds. Even if that does not happen, at least you again dive into their shopping attention spans. And for their next purchases, they would remember you not with that hassle of a product returned, but instead a cool and chilled-out experience.
In short, it’s important to keep in mind that your customers do not have static positions in their lifecycles. You can alter their states by communicating with them through all potential channels, engaging with them to be remembered nicely, even in negative circumstances like returns.
As for the timing, there could be no better time to try all these than during these post-special days, right?
ecommerce strategyspecial days
