Unlock growth. Make customers for life not just for Christmas

Grow your business. Make customers for life, not just for Xmas

Christmas is a time for excitement and giving.   That means a bumper time for businesses especially in the retail and leisure sectors.  But do you have a plan to make sure that your Christmas Customers are still customers this time next year.

Hello, I’m filled with Festive Cheer

The e-commerce campaigns I’ve seen this year have gone from Black Friday, to Cyber Monday to Cyber-whatever-day and then the 12 days of Christmas.  It’s been my birthday as part of the same time period, so I’ve seen a few birthday campaigns thrown into the mix as well.

Of course you have to take your pick – this offer is not transferable or valid with any other offer – and you can usually only squeeze on unique promo code into a shopping basket at any one time.

But how are you measuring performance on these campaigns?

Is it as simple as sales?

Or sales by promotional code?

Or are you looking at things in a more strategic way, perhaps new customers sales vs existing customer sales?

The number of prospects that have converted into paying customers because of the sales promotion based festive cheer you’ve been spreading this Xmas?

Whatever you’ve been doing it and however you’ve been measuring performance, I hope you’ve had a very successful campaign this festive season.

“Excuse me while I disappear…”

Christmas is a short period of time.  The decorations go up and everyone is excited, but what happens after the Christmas season?

What are your plans to make sure that those new customers that have joined your customer family return the next time they are looking to buy the goods or services that your business offers?

How are you going to make sure that your Christmas customers don’t just disappear after a single purchase.

If all has gone to plan, the Christmas period will have left you with first time customers, customers who have bought new products or services, returning customers and hopefully some customers who have spent a lot of money.

Creating customer groups to recognise the value and ‘status’ of each customer within your business makes it much easier to create relevant marketing content.  Understanding metrics such as customer lifetime value really help to make business decisions and improve other areas of your marketing such as targeted acquisition.

Make customers for life not just for Christmas

This Christmas, make customers for life not just for Christmas. Digital marketing is not just about finding new customers and getting your PPC right.

Time after time we see business that are entirely focused on third party tools such as Google Adwords, Social and SEO.  In this scenario, Email marketing is considered as the ‘newsletter vehicle’.  In reality, email can become a hugely effective vehicle for targeted data driven marketing, and better still it remains under your control – a google algorithm change won’t matter to your email marketing.  But it could destroy your page ranking.

Making sure you have a balanced marketing plan that nurtures new customers, whilst respecting and values existing customers will give you a great chance of succeeding and getting a better return on your marketing investment.

Be warned that you won’t get things right straight away.  You will make mistakes but you will learn from these mistakes and be a more effective marketer as a result.