5 Best Practices To Engage Your Customers This Holiday Season

Our today’s topic is Best Practices To Engage Your Customers This Holiday Season. As we all know, the holiday season is just around the corner. Many people are desperately waiting for this holiday season so they can enjoy black Friday sales and Cyber Monday discounts. It is the favorite time of the year for lots of people, and as a retailer, it could be yours too.

Engaging customers this holiday season will be very different compared to what it was two years ago. Before this pandemic hit the world, more people shopped physically for holiday gifts and Christmas presents.

However, post-pandemic, everything has changed so do the way people shop. Therefore, retailers need to take care of their customers by engaging them online during this holiday season.

There are a lot of ways that you can follow to engage your customers. We’ll be talking about 5 of those ways in this blog. So yeah, let’s jump in.

5 Best Practices To Engage Your Customers This Holiday Season

Offer Black Friday Sales

Consumers expect huge discounts on Black Friday, but shops have seen a drop in sales in recent years due to internet competitors. As a result, companies are organizing pre-Black Friday sales events to pique customer interest.

Consumers who have subscribed via a shortcode to shop in-store during specified times on Black Friday, avoiding long lines and pulling them into your store and away from competitors, might add another layer to this engagement by giving exclusive mobile promos and sales events.

Publicizing the shortcode may raise awareness among extra customers looking for special deals, resulting in a growing database of customers with whom you may interact even after the holidays are past.

Connect Online With Your Customers

According to a study conducted by consumer engagement platform Iterable, 67 percent of buyers want to do more or all of their shopping online this year, while only 3% plan to do all of their shopping in stores.

Last year, the National Retail Federation’s holiday survey indicated that more than half of customers planned to spend a considerable amount of their holiday shopping time in department shops and bargain retailers.

This year, more than ever, merchants must consider how they interact with online buyers, according to Jeff Samuels, chief operating officer of Iterable. More than 80% of individuals polled for the Iterable study stated they are more likely to buy from brands that connect with them emotionally.

Therefore, in this tough time, it would be a much better idea to connect with your customers online. However, connecting online through online stores comes with many challenges, e.g. product information management, syndication, connecting with vendors, and much more.

To take care of these challenges, you should look for a Product Information Management (PIM software) or a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool.

Play With Your Customers

Are you looking for a sure-fire strategy to engage your customers? Make texting into a game. According to Brian Burke, a Gartner analyst, “gamification,” or the process of bringing game concepts to non-game contexts, will one day be as meaningful as Facebook for customer retention.

According to a study, 70% of the world’s largest corporations will have at least one game-based application by next year. In another study, three to four percent of those who receive a sweepstakes registration confirmation email buy something.

Customers can scan QR codes or text a phrase to earn a discount or enter to win a gift card, bringing closer in-store and digital purchasing experiences. They can also interact with the brand via its mobile app or website.

According to Econsultancy, IKEA recently lured 200,000 customers who browsed its physical catalog to answer questions they received via SMS to win a free shopping spree. Last year, Best Buy invited consumers to recommend friends on Facebook for a chance to win a holiday gift card (and allowed them to win one themselves).

Focus On Targeted Campaigns

Customers can scan QR codes or text a phrase to earn a discount or enter to win a gift card, bringing closer in-store and digital purchasing experiences. Customers can also interact with the brand via its mobile app or website.

According to Econsultancy, IKEA recently lured 200,000 customers who browsed its physical catalog to answer questions they received via SMS to win a free shopping spree. Last year, Best Buy invited consumers to recommend friends on Facebook for a chance to win a holiday gift card (and allowed them to win one themselves).

Offer Gift Ideas To Your Customers

Finding the right gift is one of the most challenging aspects of holiday shopping for many people.

Not everyone enjoys shopping or has the time to select the ideal item. Consumers could be enticed to subscribe to a service via a standard shortcode that delivers gift suggestions based on generic descriptors of people on their gift lists, such as age, sex, or interests.

This would not only help individuals looking for present ideas, but it would also allow companies and merchants to keep customers engaged throughout the Christmas season by introducing new products and incentives.

A “12 Days of Deals” promotion is one example of how this could function. In the past, the Microsoft Store, for example, has provided this service. However, by putting in a standard shortcode, clients might receive a different coupon or promotion each day of the event.

Conclusion

That’s it! These are the five practices you can follow to engage your customers this holiday. A lot has changed after the covid, and so does the way customers behave. Therefore, it’s vital for you, as a retailer, to observe their behaviors and offer them something that they could look for this holiday season.

With these practices, I guarantee you can improve your customer’s overall experience and increase your sales ultimately.