The post-holiday sales slump is a drag. With the buzz of the Golden Quarter gone, it’s not just the inevitable dip in custom but also a general lack of enthusiasm that can get you down. There are, however, plenty of ways to keep the buzz going and transform this lull into a lucrative start to the year.
This is a time when consumers tighten their purse strings. They’re conscious of their spending and less likely to engage in online shopping actively.
As a merchant, if you want to drive sales, you need to get creative with how you engage customers - those loyal to your brand, those who dipped in for a cheeky browse over the holidays, and those who are yet to discover you. Here’s how.
As the holiday season winds down, eCommerce stores often face a challenging period where sales dip and customer engagement falters. However, by harnessing the power of personalization, you can transform this slow sales period into an opportunity for growth.
We bang on about personalization A LOT, and that’s because it’s one of the best retention strategies there is. When you send personalized communications to your customers, 78% will be more likely to make a repeat purchase.
Personalization relies on data, so use what you’ve gathered over the holiday season for segmentation.
Purchase history and browsing behavior are a good place to start, but if you’ve used post-purchase surveys or collected review attributes, you have a wealth of data you can use to split customers into distinct groups. And that means you can send them targeted content.
How about a ‘Winter Wardrobe Refresh’ email with styling tips for the season and recommended products you know they’ll like? Or a ‘New Year, New Look' campaign with product recommendations to suit their skin tone and complimentary makeup tutorials.
Personalizing the post-holiday journey increases engagement with your existing customers, helping drive repeat business this down season.
If you run a loyalty program, you can offer your program members exclusive benefits that are too good to pass up to ignite the spark of Q1 success.
Loyalty programs are among the most effective low-cost marketing strategies, especially during challenging times. The statistics speak for themselves: loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones, and increasing customer retention by just 5% can lead to a profit boost of 25% to 95%.
Special promotions on your shoppers’ favorite lines, like buy-one-get-one-free deals or limited-time discounts, can serve as irresistible incentives. Exclusive members-only events or early access to new products will make customers feel valued and create a sense of FOMO that prompts them to buy.
The great thing is that you’re offering these deals to customers who already know and love your brand. You don’t have to cut prices across the board like you might have done for BFCM or spend extortionate amounts on advertising.
You just need to leverage existing loyalty to keep those sales figures ticking over.
Cross-selling and upselling are like the ABCs of revenue growth that any merchant knows.
👉 What are they about?
When a customer does make a purchase, you will surely seize the opportunity to increase the order value by suggesting relevant cross-sells, complementary products, or attractive upsells. You can even bundle related items at a discounted price to encourage customers to spend more per transaction.
It’s a tried and tested technique - research has shown cross-selling to result in a 20% increase in yearly sales.
As the new year is the perfect time to upsell your customers, you can do this on-site at the point of purchase or after through cleverly targeted emails.
If you choose the latter, we highly recommend adding dynamic shoppable UGC galleries to those emails - it makes the whole process more engaging and frictionless for the customer.
💡 Veteran merchant’s note: people who go for New Year’s sales are mostly impulsive buyers. So, harness the impulsive nature of customers during your New Year's campaigns by creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity.
For example, you can craft a promotion that instills potential buyers' fear of missing out (FOMO), driving them to make quick purchasing decisions.
Or, you can try upselling based on aspirations. Tap into customers' emotional connection with the new year and their desire for self-improvement. Create product deals that align with their aspirations, such as collections for a "better me" or a "better home."
When sales are down, it might seem logical to ramp up your advertising efforts. But given that customers are less inclined to spend in the post-holiday slump (and pretty fatigued by holiday ad campaigns), it’s not an effective use of your marketing budget.
Instead, leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing by encouraging all those satisfied customers you acquired over the holidays to refer their friends and family.
When money’s tight, consumers are far more likely to make a purchase based on a trusted recommendation than they are a faceless ad (particularly when there’s a first purchase discount involved).
It’s a great way to boost Q1 sales AND long-term revenue - the average LTV of a referred customer is 16% higher, and their retention rate is 37% higher than that of a non-referred customer.
So what about those holiday shoppers who made it to the checkout but never completed their purchase? Here, you have an excellent opportunity to recover lost sales through effective re-engagement.
Send follow-up emails with special discounts or time-limited offers to spark their interest again and create a sense of urgency.
Crucially, include reviews and star ratings for the products in question. This provides social proof and helps quash any doubts they might have had about completing their purchase in the first place.
Sure, it’s highly unlikely you’ll turn every abandoned cart into a purchase - but each completed sale is one more than you otherwise would have had and another customer relationship to nurture.
⚡ Pro tip: Ensure that when customers click on your email's call-to-action (CTA), they are immediately redirected to the payment option. Why? By providing a direct checkout option, you can mitigate the risk of customers abandoning their carts after clicking on your email, ensuring a smoother and more successful conversion process.
When you build a community around your brand, you create added value. Customers move past a transactional relationship to feel a sense of belonging and shared identity and become brand advocates, sharing their experiences online.
This is the key to decreased traction because it drives organic interest and sales.
Encourage this community vibe by creating exclusive online spaces for your customers to connect. Use branded hashtags, reward the creation and sharing of brand-related UGC, and consider running contests, quizzes, or polls to keep members engaged.
The more you cultivate this authentic marketing, the more you’ll amplify your reach, strengthen customer loyalty, and spark purchase interest among an otherwise reluctant market.
Affiliate marketing uses the same principle as referrals, leveraging trusted recommendations to boost sales. The difference is that the affiliate is highly motivated to promote your products because they receive a commission for every sale they generate.
If your products suit, it can be a clever way to turn New Year’s resolutions into more sales.
For example, if you sell fitness products, you can capitalize on the sudden increase in fitness enthusiasts by teaming up with personal trainers. In the wellness sector, you could collaborate with nutritionists or lifestyle coaches as affiliates.
It’s an effective way to drum up new business, with 54% of marketers ranking it in their top three most successful customer acquisition methods.
Regardless of how you drive traffic to your store, delivering a positive onsite experience to visitors is crucial. A poor experience will inevitably result in high bounce rates and abandoned shopping carts.
To prevent such outcomes, it is essential to prioritize responsive design, intuitive navigation, and strategic placement of relevant content on product pages, such as reviews and user-generated content (UGC).
Of course, the best way to optimize the onsite experience is to understand it from the user's perspective.
Our Session Replay and Analytics tool is ideal for this. It allows you to record user sessions and play them back to see how customers navigate your site - where they linger, experience friction, and the on-site elements contributing to a purchase.
Armed with this first-party data, you can make the necessary tweaks to enhance the user experience, streamline the customer journey, and ultimately boost conversion rates on your site.
Remember that you’re not the only brand trying to navigate the post-holiday sales slump. All of your competitors are doing the same, and if you want to outdo them, you need to stay relevant.
That means looking at the trends shaping consumer behavior and how they can be used to drive more sales. Some of the trends we encourage you to explore in the New Year include:
Find out more about each of these areas, along with our full list of predictions, in our post on the 8 top eCommerce trends for 2024.
Like most things in eCommerce, successfully beating the post-holiday sales slump means having the right products in your tech stack.
At Influence.io, we have a range of tools and techniques to help you drive more sales in this quiet time and a friendly support team on hand to help you implement them.
Explore our key features with a 14-day free trial or by booking a live demo of our solution.
