While the holiday spending rush may have come to a close, there is still plenty of opportunities for businesses to see success as they ring in the new year. The Australian Retailers Association estimates that people will spend $21 billion in post-Christmas sales through to mid-January.
With Aussies keeping a close eye out for post-holiday sales, all it takes is a little time and creativity to keep customers engaged and excited. But if you’re low on either of those, here are three great ideas to get you started.
Create seasonal email marketing campaigns
Email marketing is a great way to engage your customers – and bring in more sales. To cut through the post-holiday noise, targeted marketing campaigns are great ways to reach loyal customers with special deals or people you haven’t seen in a while with a two-for-one offer.
According to our State of Regional Business Report, almost half (47%) of regional businesses ranked awareness of marketing methods as the number one skill competency they would like to build.
While it may be hard to know where to start, marketing your business is easy when you can lean on technology to do the heavy lifting. The recently launched Square Marketing tool, allows you to automatically segment customer lists into loyal, casual, and lapsed.
The software comes packed with ready-to-go templates for promotions, events, and announcements, so you can quickly send out beautifully-designed emails.
Plan your inventory
Which items flew off the shelves this time last year? Analytics tools are an easy and efficient way to track spending trends over time, as they can tell you what you sold most of last year, and when.
As you’re re-stocking up inventory for the New Year, double down on those popular items so you can maximise sales.
Some trending items flying off the shelves at the moment include homewares such as trays, crockery, rubber plants, hand towels, candle diffusers, and handmade soap bars, as people focus on improving their homes for the new year.
Embrace Gift Cards
The gift card market is expected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 10 per cent leading up to 2024, with gift card purchases already up 4 per cent this year compared to last year.
Data from Square shows that following the recent lockdowns, more Aussies are purchasing gift cards in the leisure and entertainment, food & beverage, and beauty & personal care sectors, as consumers crave more experiences after months of lockdowns.
Outside of meeting customers’ newfound need for experiences, gift cards offer a great way to boost sales. It is quite common for customers to spend more in-store than the value of the card received. Gift cards can also help you track sales data and customer behaviour throughout the season so that you can better plan for next year.
As we kick off the new year, now is the time for small businesses to optimise their operations to not only make the most of this peak purchasing time but to see success in the new year.
Read more: Top 5 Tips To Refresh Your Business This New Year
Read more: Let’s Talk: How do you manage salespeople?
Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
