16/12/2022
Prepare your E-Commerce Business for January Sales
Whilst after Christmas consumers are often feeling their
wallets burning, they can’t resist getting a bargain on something they’ve been
eyeing up but thought too expensive before, or an impulse purchase of something
they didn’t think they wanted.
January sale season is also the time a lot of consumers
start thinking about the year ahead, even going so far as to take advantage of
buying discounted birthday gifts for friends and family way in advance.
With this in mind, there’s a lot to think about when
planning your after Christmas sale and we’re here to help you get prepared…
1) Decide
when to Start your Sale
Traditionally, post-Christmas sales always started either
Boxing Day, the day after Boxing Day or New Year’s Day when consumers only had
the option of going to physical stores but times have changed.
As eCommerce started to become popular, many retailers realised
they could take advantage of Christmas Day itself and start their sales early.
The average adult will spend nearly 7 and half hours online
on December 25th which is a
huge opportunity for eCommerce so we would recommend starting your sale a
couple of days before Christmas at least.
With a dedicated sale app on a good e-commerce
platform like Shopify
or BigCommerce
you’ll even be able to schedule it in advance to start when you’d like if you
plan on taking a couple of days off.
2) Decide when your Sale will End
An end date is also an essential part of planning your
January sale and something you can promote so consumers know how long they have
left.
Many larger brands will select and promote an end date and
then give their sales a false extension into February 1st to capture
consumers after the first pay day of the year because remember, January is a
long month with many people getting paid before Christmas.
3) Decide Which Products to Discount
When selecting products to discount in your January sale it
would be easy to take a broad look at your stock and decide to just discount
stock that you want to shift, or stock that is going out of season.
Of course, discounting out of season or overstocked items is
a no brainer but you also need to take a broader look at items you’re stocking
and what’s selling well.
Looking at your supplier lists to see which items they’ve
discontinued or which items have new editions or variations being released, as
well as items that have been selling and would be profitable even at a
discount.
Also look at seasonality and upcoming events. There’s no
reason you can’t get people thinking about Valentines Day early by listing
Valentine’s Day items in your sale.
Having the highly desirable items in your sale will of
course help people buy the overstocked or out of season items that you want to
shift to make room for the new.
Once you’ve decided on the products you want to discount,
put them in a spreadsheet so they’re easily organised as you build your sale.
4) Set your Discounts
Now you’ve decided on which products you’re going to
discount you can get to work on setting your discounts for each product or
product category.
We would never recommend offering a blanket sale discount
and instead work on a sliding scale, thinking about the maximum discount you
want to offer and then work backwards.
Look at what you can afford to discount from certain
products, discounting those that aren’t big sellers the most and discounting
popular products the least.
Once you’ve got your discounts and products in a handy
spreadsheet, you can start thinking about how you’re going to promote your
sale.
5) Plan your Promotion
One of the most important aspects of having a sale is
promoting it and to do that you need to prepare visually appealing graphics and
a plan of how you’re going to promote it.
Social media and email marketing are great for getting the
word out there but the way you need to communicate it needs to be visually appealing.
Our favourite tool to use to create graphics is Canva,
and there’s a free version available so you don’t need to spend any money.
In Canva, you can create social media posts, email headers
and website banners that will help attract attention to your sale and there are
plenty of templates so no design skills are needed!
Website:
On your website, you’ll want to add your January Sale items
to you regular sale collection or category if you have one but change any
banners or graphics that advertise it to say “January Sale”, “Boxing Day Sale”
or however you’d like to word it.
Social Media:
Just posting product images with some ad copy above them
won’t grab people’s attention. Create some bold and bright graphics to promote
your sale to your followers and customers. It doesn’t need to be complex, it
just needs to stand out!
Email Marketing:
If you’re using email marketing, it can be one of the best
and easiest ways to get customers to click through to your website and buy! All
you need is a simple header graphic to advertise your sale, feature a couple of
products and send it out!
6) Scheduling
Depending on your e-commerce platform, you may not be able
to schedule your banner images which is part of why we recommend starting your
sale early. Nobody wants to be up at midnight on Christmas eve working!
Scheduling social media and email marketing is easy though –
you can send things at the time you want it to go out but set it up in advance.
Email Marketing
Whether you’re using Klaviyo, MailChimp, Constant Contact or
any other email marketing platform, you’ll easily be able to set posts to send
at a certain time.
We’d recommend sending on Christmas Day morning at around
11am because customers will have eaten breakfast, opened presents and it’s not
too close to lunch.
Social Media
Scheduling posts on social media is easy in 2022 because
there are tools such as Hootsuite you can use to schedule, and it’s absolutely
free.
All you need to do is write some text for your ad, upload
your images, post a link and choose the time and date you want to send.
There used to be “rules” around the best times and days to
schedule social media posts but it’s not strictly true anymore with social
media changing the way they serve organic content.
We’d still recommend scheduling social media posts either
mid morning or late afternoon on Christmas day as it is when most users are
likely to be online scrolling.
With a good e-commerce platforms and the apps and
integrations that are available, setting up and advertising a sale is simple
and doesn’t have to be too time consuming but if you’re short on time and need
some help, get in touch.