Mass discounts – an easy way to raise your sales but not all small businesses can’t afford this. Plus, running sales off frequently can cause harm to your brand image: it makes customers perceive your products are not worth their originally listed prices.
The good news is that there are other effective ways to give business a boost that you can apply easily in your store instead of being addicted to heavy sales.
Overview
Loyalty programs
Acquiring new customers are, of course, very important if you want to grow your sales and business but it can be very costly while retaining and convincing current customers to buy more from you is easier and cheaper. In fact, your regular, repeat customers are the backbone of your business. Studies show that repeat customers spend 67% more than first-time customers when they return, and their lifetime values are 10 times as much as their first purchase.
A simple way to get repeat customers is to offer a loyalty program. This is a great way to show customer appreciation, but it also gives them a reason to come back for more. If you have both online and brick-and-mortar stores, make sure that you create a seamless process of earning and redeeming points across the stores for your customers. If you use Magento for your e-commerce website, Reward Points by Aheadworks and ConnectPOS in your brick-and-mortar store, you can run an integrated loyalty program that enables customers to spend their online points at store and vice versa. Read more about The Sewing Studio streamlines their loyalty program from Magento 2 to their flagship store.
Gift cards
Gift cards are a great way to get a new customer. If a customer is a great fan of your brand, he/ she can buy your gift cards and thereby introduce your brand to their friends and relatives. Or he/ she ask for your gift cards from someone who has never heard of your brand before. Either way, you stand a good chance of having a new customer.
Gift cards are also an enticing way to upsell. If you have a $15 gift card, it’s likely that you don’t hesitate to buy an item worth $30 or grab a few more items. A First Data study found that 75% of gift card recipients spent about $27 more than the amount on the card.
ConnectPOS is integrated with Gift Cards by Aheadworks so your customers can easily buy gift cards online and then redeem at store or vice versa.
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Birthday emails
Instead of mass discounts, you can send targeted birthday messages with special deals to people on their birthdays. Some businesses give 10% off on the exact birthday of a customer only, some offer a whole week – it depends on you. Birthday emails get opened 2.5 times more than the mass emails, including ones with sale offers, so you stand a good chance of having those customers converted.
Super-fast shipping
A research shows that 80% of shoppers want a same-day shipping option, and 61% want items within one to three hours of placing an order. If you can afford it, ship items to your customers as quickly as possible. In an age where people increasingly want (and expect) instant gratification, it can be your huge competitive advantage. Read more on how to create competitive advantages in shipping.