Holiday Tips for Retailers - #6 Reward Your Customers
Posted by Debra Neville
A week from tomorrow the 2011 Holiday Season will come to a close, and we will all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Whatever the outcome, we will have a lot of customers to thank and to nurture for future sales. Let's get busy now so that we can reach them all and start developing those relationships a little deeper. Here are five simple things you can start doing now.
Send Out Thank You Cards
You have your customers' contact information stored in your retail point of sale system. Why not put your data to work? Export your customer list and send them a nice thank you card. It's not as hard or time consuming as it sounds. There are online services like Sendoutcards.com that specialize in sending out beautiful cards to your list, with lots of cards to select from and easy workflows to get the job done.
Send Out Personalized Follow-ups Via Email
You can easily create lead nurturing email campaigns to your customer database with marketing automation systems like HubSpot or Marketo, or simply create monthly email newsletters in Constant Contact or MailChimp. In your emails invite your customers to subscribe to your blog, join you in social networks, participate in special programs or benefit from early discount notifications.
Offer Refer-a-Friend and Customer Loyalty Programs
Rewards programs give people incentive to refer their friends and favorite businesses to you. It's one of the best ways to generate qualified sales leads. Our Rewards for Referrals program, for example, sends referrers a gift basket plus a monthly gift from Stonewall Kitchen just for sending us a lead. Upon purchase by your lead, you can earn as much as $500 cash as well!
Set Up Online Affiliate Programs
Did you know that affiliate marketing is one of the largest sources of online sales? In general, this involves setting up a website that allows people to sign up and sell your products online. In return, you fulfill the orders and pay your affiliates a commission just like you would pay your own salespeople. There are quite a few online resources for helping you set up and manage an online affiliate program, click here to view some of the best known.
Use Groupon Coupons or Location Based Services
People sign up with Groupon to receive daily deals sent to them by email for local merchants. This is a great way to capture local customers you can't reach any other way. By offering discounts through the service, your deals are sent out to an opted-in audience looking for your products each day, and they will often spread the word by forwarding emails to friends or by texting them. Location based services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla or Yelp, allow you to inform people who are near your store of your daily specials via their smartphones. Now you have a great way to reward people who are both interested and nearby to visit your store and buy your merchandise.
We hope our Holiday tips give you some new ideas for rewarding and keeping your customers. Happy Holidays to you and yours from J. D. Associates.
For more great tips download your copy of our "8 Ways Retailers Can Have a Happier Holiday Season" guide.
