Customers aren’t just for Christmas
How do you convert this year’s valuable customers into regular, year-round ones?
Christmas is full-on, whatever your business, but for some of our clients it’s make or break with a high percentage of their annual targets riding on a good festive season. There are many influences out of our hands; the weather normally causing the most havoc – too warm, too wet, wrong size snow!
Inclement weather aside, it’s no surprise that a great deal of resource, budget and energy is spent building and executing marketing campaigns to urge customers to spend as much as possible over Christmas.
Get it right and two brilliant things happen; firstly customers who haven’t shopped with you for a while, some maybe not since Christmas last year, fill their stockings with gifts from your store, so to speak. And secondly, you acquire a whole host of new customers.
(If this doesn’t happen, get in touch, we can advise on who to talk to, and about what ahead of next year’s campaign planning)
Now track forward a few weeks and picture the scene in January. Christmas is done and dusted, everyone is focusing on the ubiquitous January sale. But what about those customers newly acquired or reactivated – don’t forget about them. Especially as they’ve probably cost you to acquire.
Our evidence shows that this is a crucial time in your relationship. We can’t stress enough the need to create a regular buying habit rather than a one-off purchase as early as possible.
QUESTION: How do you convert this year’s valuable customers into regular, year-round ones?
ANSWER: Make it your New Year’s Resolution to focus on your customers, not just the sales.
- Engage with them. Get to know them and then get to know them better.
- Talk to them, not at them. Don’t fire off a multiple product-based offers and promotions. Find out what they are actually interested in.
- Make the relationship dynamic, continuously updating when you talk to them and what you say.
- Focus on the right people. There’s no point in being all things to all customers when they aren’t all the same. Some are clearly high on the growth potential curve, others will remain at a steady pace, while others are unlikely to return a good ROI. Build your plans and allocate your budget accordingly.
- Create reasons to form a regular habitual relationship. Don’t just go through welcome process and think the job is done. Walk them through the opportunities for growth. You may sell luxury chocolates that your customers buy as gifts as Christmas, but those same people are buying gifts all year round, so why not chocolates from you for their next birthday gift?
- Set clear metrics and keep on top of measuring them. Time is of the essence.