3 Ways Turning Your Christmas Customers into Loyal Customers
Christmas shoppers are a very special category of buyers – they seek the best deal at the best price, and for this are willing to change their habits and try new brands. How to convert the try and convert them into loyal customers?
1. Send them personalized offers after they purchased
According to the Deloitte survey,
“The average holiday shopper will buy 14 gifts this season, and more consumers plan to shop online for gifts than ever before. And perhaps more importantly, shoppers anticipate spending just as much online as they do in stores this year— representing a significant milestone in holiday purchase behaviour.”
Deloitte also predicts a 17–19 percent increase in e-commerce sales, reaching $96–98 billion between November 2016 and January 2017. The online shopping trend perhaps because the customers are not fond of long queues and carols loop in stores. But definitely also for reasons of economy – Internet is the best way to find the bike, the razor or the doll of her dreams at the best price.
But after the holidays, they return to their normal habits and do not return to your site, and that’s a shame, because you spend large budgets in TV ads and poster campaigns to acquire new customers, while converting these buyers “one-shot” into loyal customers you cost much less.
To retain these customers, sending automated and personalized emails after a purchase online or in stores are a great way. Sending tailored offers based on their needs and the great deal they may love will increase their loyalty.
2. Listen to your customers, whether true or not
The holiday season certainly causes an annual spike in traffic on your e-commerce site, which goes with lower conversion rates. At this time of the year, increasingly, you will the proportion of customers who come to your site, fill their cart, and finally … they will buy elsewhere.
Why not take the opportunity to learn more about these buyers? You could set up an online survey, in the form of a pop-up that appears only for visitors preparing to abandon the current basket. This will help streamline the user experience by identifying potential barriers to purchase and improve your conversion rate.
But listening to the customers should not be limited to these abandon buyers. If you have implemented a systematic post-purchase satisfaction survey, with the customer feedback collected during warm periods such as Christmas, you can detect improvement opportunities, or conversely good practice to repeat.
3. Use the power of online customer reviews
Consumers are much more sensitive to content created by their peers as the content created by brands. So your loyal customers can influence other potential buyers. Approach and request your loyal customers to post product review on your site – this will increase their own faith, reassure other buyers, and eventually increase sales.
According to an Infographic created by invespcro:
- 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business.
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Customers are likely to spend 31% more on a business with “excellent review”.
- 72% say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
- 92% of users will use a local business if it has at least a 4-star rating.
- 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review.
- 86% of people will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews.
Conclusions
In short, to make the most of the holiday season, customers should be informed about deals you offer them. You can contact them via personalized post-purchase emails, which will cause them to return to your site. You should also enhance the voice of the customer, either from the abandon buyers or regular buyer. Finally, you need to use the customer reviews as a booster to increase sales and customer loyalty, and do not try at all costs to attract hunters specials, focus instead on your best customers.
