This year’s festive season is just around the corner. Have you started preparing for your Shopify marketing campaigns?
If you’re wondering why prepare so early, and that there’s still a lot of time, you’re mistaken.
Your competitors are prepping and raring to go. And if you don’t, you might get left behind.
In this blog, we share Shopify marketing strategies to help you get ready for the festive season. Most of these strategies are designed around your Shopify customer account page. So you’ll also learn new ways of maximizing ROI from this page.
Holiday and festive season sales: an overview
Most retailers assume that holiday shopping occurs only in peak December. But that’s not true. Customers tend to start shopping much in advance.
Another false assumption — retailers think that giving heavy discounts is all it takes to attract customers during the peak shopping seasons. But again, that’s a myth. There are many factors that affect the holiday and festive season sale. Consider these numbers to know the real trends:
- In 2022, consumers spent more than $211.7 during the holiday season
- Every year, there’s an approximate 3.5% increase in spending
- 30% of consumers start holiday season shopping from October
- Some of the top factors that influence consumer buying are discounts, free shipping, fast shopping, easy returns, and BOPIS
Festive And Holiday Marketing Ideas And How The Customer Account Page Can Help
1. Set up the Shopify customer account page
If you already don’t have a Shopify customer account page on your site, your first step should be to set it up. Use an intuitive and comprehensive customer account app.
But why is customer account so important? That’s because it can help you retain customers, collect data, and run marketing campaigns to increase sales.
Here’s how having a customer account page can help during the festive season:
- Retain customers: Customers who register on eCommerce sites tend to have longer relationships with the brands. That’s because brands can engage them, connect and regularly communicate with them.
- Collect customer data: The Shopify customer account page is the best place to collect customer data. For example, their personal details, purchase behavior, interests, wishlists, etc. This data can help you run future Shopify marketing strategy campaigns.
- Build relationships with first-time customers: You’ll see a lot of new, first-time customers during the holiday season. And if you fail to collect their contact details, you may lose them forever. That’s where the customer account is helpful to gather customer information.
- Enable customers to track orders: The most important use of the Shopify customer account page is to enable customers to track their orders.
- Enable customers to create wishlists: The customer account page holds a lot of useful information for customers. For example, the wishlist – a section where customers can save products they like and can buy in the future.
Explore Flits Customer Account Page App for your Shopify store.
2. Prepare for heavy traffic to your Shopify site
Your online store will get more traffic around the holiday season, especially on busy days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Nothing could be more detrimental than a site outage at a crucial moment. Hence, here are a few things you could ensure:
- Check your Shopify tools: It’s essential to ensure your Shopify tools have the capacity to manage the influx of traffic during the peak seasons. Moreover, you must check they are upgraded versions and will function smoothly. For example, you might have apps for payments, wishlist, discounts, etc., installed in your store. Run a check on them.
- Check the customer account page functions: Your regular customers will log into the customer account to shop. And your new customers will want to sign up. And so, ensure the Shopify customer account page functions are running smoothly.
- Check your Shopify integrations: You Shopify store might have many third-party app integrations. Additionally, check if you need to add any new apps to enhance customers’ experience this year.
3. Personalize communication, campaigns, and deals
Another evergreen Shopify marketing strategy is personalization. Use the customer account page to extract information about customers and use the information for personalization.
73% of customers expect brands to understand their expectations and specific needs. And brands that put forward personalized campaigns, deals, and communication to customers, can reach their eCommerce goals faster.
Here’s how to combine personalization strategies with the customer account page:
- Wishlist: Send personalized messages to customers offering incentives on products in the wishlists.
- Recently viewed products: Shoppers may explore products they like. These get saved in the recently viewed products section. You can run real-time promotions and deals on these products during the festive season sales.
- Reorder: Based on customers’ past purchases in the order history, you could encourage them to reorder items during the festive season to avail discounted prices.
4. Improve your Shopify customer account page navigation
Holiday and festive season shopping is filled with frenzy. There are thousands of good deals and products to choose from. Plus, deals are for a limited time or products get sold out fast. In such a situation, customers want their shopping experience to be easy and clear so they do not miss out on buying their favorite products.
This is why it’s essential to design a clear navigation on your customer account. You can do so by customization. Here are some basic cues:
- Choose a customer account page template that goes well with your brand
- Change the navigation bar color
- Change the text color
- Change the CTA button color
- Choose features to highlight in your customer account page
Read our earlier blog on how to customize your Shopify customer account page.
5. Enable customers to donate via store credit
The end of the year is also a time when people want to meet their charity goals. It’s a time to give and do good to others. And herein lies an opportunity for Shopify retail stores.
Create opportunities for your customers to give for charity via your store credits, rewards and points programs. For example, if you have a Shopify reward program, store credits, or loyalty programs running, you could encourage customers to use their accumulated points towards charity.
Here are some ideas:
- Collaborate with non-profit organizations and create charity campaigns for the holiday season
- Give customers ideas, suggestions and recommendations for gift-giving from your inventory
- Encourage shoppers to log in to the Shopify customer account page to earn more points
- Offer special discounts on certain products that could be given for charity
6. Promote social login for the customer account page
The social login feature allows shoppers to sign up and login via their social media login credentials. For example, customers can use their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social usernames and passwords to register and log in every time they revisit your Shopify site.
86% of people feel bothered when they’re asked to create new accounts on eCommerce stores and have to remember usernames and passwords. Social login not only boosts the number of new sign ups, but also makes it quick and easy for shoppers to shop.
Here are some ideas on how to use social login:
- Social login gives you access to customers’ social account details. You can run social marketing campaigns to retarget these customers
- Combine social media strategies with your holiday and festive season offers. For example, ‘get a free gift if you register via social account’
- Run social media holiday marketing ads to spread awareness about your special offers
7. Automate communication
While you’re handling the bigger aspects of your Shopify holiday and festive season campaigns, you must ensure you don’t miss out on sending timely updates and communication to customers. And there’s only one way to take it off your manual to-do list – automation.
You can make automation a part of your holiday and festive strategy and plan. Here’s how:
- Send automated messages for bundles and deals: Plan your holiday and festive season deals and discounts in advance and create automated alerts. For example, for email, SMS, WhatsApp, and other platforms.
- Use automation for real-time promotions: One way to increase customers’ average order value is to send real-time promotions to increase impulse buying. For example, if customers bought a coffee machine, send them an automated message of a promotional offer on mugs.
- Combine automation and personalization: Capture data from different sections of your website such as wishlist, recently viewed products, etc. before the seasonal shopping time begins. Then, share personalized offers via automated messaging.
- In addition to the above points for this year’s holiday and festive season, you must also plan for your post purchase communication strategy, which can help you bring back customers after this season is over.
8. Run an inventory check
The last thing you want to encounter is stock-outs of star products during the festive sale season. To avoid any such problems, include an inventory checklist as part of your eCommerce marketing strategy much before the festive and holiday season begins. That way, you can identify gaps and restock items in time.
Here’s a checklist for your inventory:
- Assess data from reorders: It’s quite likely that customers might buy reordered products again if they are discounted. Hence, get a sense of which products were reordered and how much stock you should have to meet customer needs.
- Last year’s holiday season data: Another information to rely on from your Shopify customer account page is data from the last holiday season sale. Fish out trends so you can get prepared for this year.
- Check items in wishlists: Customers tend to save products in the wishlist and purchase later when they’re on discount. Plan your inventory based on wishlist products so your customers can avail better prices and make more purchases.
9. Make checkout easy
Shoppers are usually in a hurry when shopping during festive sales, because there are so many deals to grab. In all this, if you make your Shopify checkout process long and difficult, they may lose interest. Fast and easy checkout does the opposite — boosts conversions.
Apply these checkout strategies:
- Enable social login: With the social login feature, customers do not need to remember new user ids and passwords, which makes shopping quicker and easier during special sales.
- Set up multiple payment options: One of the most common reasons for customers to avoid shopping from online stores, especially international stores is the lack of payment options of their choice. Ensure you provide options ranging from bank transfer, wallets, credit and debit cards, cash, store credits, etc.
- Enable guest checkout: 43 % of people prefer guest checkout. Moreover, 72% of these people are registered customers but still prefer guest checkout. This option can help boost your festive sales as customers who are in a hurry to shop may want to avoid logins.
Also read: Should you even have a guest checkout option in 2023?
10. Have a clear return policy
Most eCommerce stores do not offer returns and exchanges on items bought from sales during the festive and holiday seasons. That’s something that discourages customers from making purchases.
And this is where there’s an opportunity for your Shopify store — allow customers to return products bought from the sale. Here are the aspects you must ensure around your Shopify return policy:
- Clearly mention your return policy: Most customers refer to the returns policy before making purchases. Hence, keep it clear, mentioning all details, and avoiding assumptions.
- Include the return policy in your Shopify customer account page: Don’t make your customers search for the return policy. Have it in a place where it’s easy for them to find it, such as the customer account page.
- Use store credits for returns: Allow customers to return products and give them store credits in return. That way, you won’t lose a sale.
Sum it up
If you don’t start planning and preparing for your holiday and festive season marketing campaigns and offers early, you’ll have to put in a lot more effort, money, and resources later in order to catch up with your competitors.
Hence, start now. The other important factor is to choose your marketing strategies smartly. We’ve shared 10 actionable ideas, but you must choose the campaigns that are relevant to your products, customers, and industry.
But first and foremost, you will need a Shopify customer account page app that has comprehensive features to help you set up, run, and automate these campaigns.
Majority of Shopify merchants use the Flits Customer Account Page App. The app comes with in-built features that help with marketing campaigns, enhancing customer experience, and more.
Install Flits Customer Account Page App on your Shopify store today.