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Holidays are fun! Yes, fun for normal people, not for the retail sellers. For retailers, holidays are the hardest working days ever! With attractive offers and sales, more customers get attracted. But as soon as holidays are over, people get back to their little cave like forever. So, clearly, there are two kinds of people– one, the regular loyal customers and two, the customers who spend only when it is the time to celebrate any occasion like Christmas.
It seems pretty impossible to convert your holiday customers to your loyal customers, but let me know you, there are ways. There are many ways of conversion from holiday one-day consumers to loyal year-long customers. Shake the grey matter of your brain retailers and have a look at the following ways to convert the holiday customers to you, loyal customers. In this article, I will dictate five tricks for this conversion.
1) Collect Past Holiday Season Data, And Use Insights
Do not start from the beginning. Keep tracking some specified data from the past holiday seasons like the previous year’s selling, which categories products have been sold at a higher rate, etc. And holiday shopping time is a great opportunity to ask for more information about every new customer like their birth date, personal contact information, etc.
Not only that, list out their product preferences and approximate wish list to follow up the trend throughout the year. For many small businesses, this collection process can prove to be tough because customers can reach to you by visiting your website or by exchanging business cards. In this problem, you can use software like Hosted CRM system, CRM software, etc. to keep the track. As per a study, it has been stated that, if you can increase 5% customer’s loyalty, your profit can increase up to 20-25%. So, take the initial step by collecting data of new customers.
2) Expand Your Outreach
Mostly; holiday shoppers are whimsical, so they do not get easily attracted to email or push notification. Rather expand your outreach and use the social media platform as one of your weapons to attract customers. Get out of the realm of boring email and use the colourful world of social media. Also, you can use this platform as one of your data collectors which can convert some whimsical holiday shoppers to loyal customers easily.
3) Let Your Offers Open
Most of the retail shops send push notification, SMS for their offers as one of their tricks to attract customers during holidays, and as soon as holidays are over, they return to their normal system. In anyways, this reverse system will never convert holiday shoppers to loyal customers. So what to do? Add brochure, gift coupons and other offers in your shopping cart to generate more sales after the holiday season is over. Let your customers believe that the offers were not merely for holidays; rather those are for the long term. This will help in converting holiday shoppers to loyal customers.
4) Good Customer Care
Every retail shop has a customer care section, but hardly anybody pays attention to make it better. But if you really want to make your holiday shoppers, your loyal customers, do not ignore the customer care part. Think of many ways to reduce customer’s inconveniences and try to solve their problems more productively. Secondly, communicate effectively; especially encourage customer feedbacks. Thirdly, provide a personalised service for customers and keep track of customer service level like how many complaints you are getting and how effectively you are trying to help them. Apart from that, heal up your own customer care section’s weaknesses.
5) Exceed Customer Expectation
Every customer has a particular expectation level from a particular retail shop. So, why don’t you exceed the expectation level and surprise customers? It is not easy to convert holiday shoppers into loyal customers, but if you can put it effectively, it works surely. Always, an overall good shopping experience boosts up the loyalty level of customers, and they tend to return to the particular shop. In various ways, you can beat customer’s expectation if you have a guaranteed delivery date, try to beat it; if your offer free returns, make them seamless, etc. And always be attentive.
6) Organise Loyalty & Entertainment Programs
Try to nurture your holiday shoppers with a free loyalty program. Encourage them to engage in the program by providing points or free vouchers and present your loyalty scheme effectively. You can also organise fun programs like a contest to win the hearts of holiday shoppers. In this ways, you can convert holiday shoppers into loyal customers.
7) Keep In Touch throughout the Year
Don’t make your holiday scheme exist for only 1 or 2 weeks. Execute them throughout the whole year and keep a good touch with every holiday shoppers and loyal shoppers too. Send them birthday wishes or make some gesture of care to earn the loyalty.
It is true that you cannot turn every holiday shoppers into loyal customers, but if you try properly, you can convert at least 10% of them into loyal customers a year-long. So, apply above tricks to get more loyal customers. But above all, always retain a good behaviour with a smile on your face while you are interacting with your shoppers, treat your old and new customers alike and make them feel comfortable. And the loyalty is entirely yours!
