This is a guest blog post provided by Vajro.
2024 hits differently for boutiques.
It’s an election year in the US.
The economy is down.
Trends change fast, but the inventory moves slow.
Fast fashion is celebrated and giants like Temu and Shein are taking away all your customers.
But were they really just customers?
Your customers see value in your products.
They’re the ones who come to your store and vibe to your playlists.
When shopping from your online store, they take their time to check out your products without sorting them from low to high based on the price.
They’re your loyal fans 🙂
And now it’s your turn to reward them for their loyalty.
The 2024 holiday season will be sales madness for both you and your customers. So as a boutique owner, how can you cope with this tremendous pressure and promote your products during the holiday season?
Don’t worry, I’ve made it easier for you. Here are 13 strategies that will help you nail the 2024 holiday season. Some of these strategies might be more effective than others. Well, you can always experiment. (Like how I experimented with the number 13 on the next headline.)
13 boutique strategies to sell like a pro this holiday season
During the last holiday season, online sales peaked throughout the BFCM week, with smartphones accounting for nearly 52% of sales. This data shows that more customers are finding comfort in shopping through their mobile phones, and brands must now build more user-friendly mobile experiences for their customers.
In the next few sections, I’ll cover all the powerful strategies you can adopt to enhance customer shopping experiences.
But I don’t stop there. You’ll also see real-life examples of these strategies adopted by other boutique owners during the holiday season.
- Push your sales with targeted notifications
Push notifications grab the attention of your customers instantly without them opening your app or website. They’re the most efficient channel to promote a sale, discount, a new product, and even an upcoming live sale. And during holidays, push notifications drive 3X more conversion rates. To make the most of the attention you get, ensure you use an image or video to make them click-worthy.
Working with thousands of boutique owners like you at Vajro, I know that rising cart abandonment is a persistent problem for sellers at any time of the year. During BFCM, it spikes up even further.
But we can’t blame our customers.
Many offers are floating around and there are always better deals. To reduce cart abandonment, you can use automated push notification campaigns to urge your customers to complete the purchase instead of moving toward your competitors. These targeted notifications are a major driver of sales.
Keep these points in mind while creating cart abandonment push notifications:
- Add your BFCM discount in the message
- Highlight the product name
- Create a sense of urgency and remind customers when the sale ends
- Keep a few hours of intervals between each reminder
When you build a mobile app with Vajro, creating push notifications becomes a piece of cake. You can effortlessly send push notifications to iOS and Android users without writing a single line of code.
Start sending high-converting push notifications today with Vajro
- Get 3X more engagement with live selling
Move away from traditional selling strategies if you want to stand out from the competition during the busy holiday season. And live selling can prove to be quite the ace up your sleeve.
Let me explain.
We all agree that static product descriptions or photographs don’t always tell the whole story. The key differential for live sales is the human factor that gives authenticity to it. Doing a live sale is easy, and you can benefit from the feeling of trust it generates among your customers.
Even in the short attention span of the busy sales period, customers love genuine connections and interactions, which will prompt them to come back and engage more with you during the live sale. Host a live selling session this holiday season and witness your sales go off the charts.
Vajro’s live selling feature offers a next-gen live selling experience to both you and your customers. It enables you to go live directly on the app and stream it in parallel on Facebook pages. You can also benefit from auto-invoicing during the live sale, barcode scanning, instant checkout, Cart Hold, chatbots, audience analytics, and more.
Boost conversions and engagement with Vajro’s live selling capabilities
- Draw ‘em with deals
Holiday shopping in 2024 is all about finding the right discount offer. And customers are willing to hop onto as many stores to find the best offer for their favorite products. During the last holiday season, customers’ purchase decisions were driven mostly by discounts and offers.
For sellers, it is a difficult predicament. There is a common notion that discounts will hinder your growth. But during a high-traffic season, conventional wisdom can take a back seat; discounts are the best strategy to attract customers. Add a time limit to the mix and the potential for driving conversions and purchases is immense.
Here are a few ways in which you can use discounts and coupons to drive more sales:
- Flash sales
- Percentage/$$ off on certain collections/products
- Seasonal/Holiday offers
- Limited time offers
- $$ off for subscribing to your email list or downloading the app
- First purchase discounts
- Reward programs/Loyalty points
- Free shipping over $X
Want more tips on crafting those irresistible discounts?
- Fuel the frenzy for your sales. Hype it up.
Introducing new product ranges and beautifying your website might not be enough to attract customers to your store. You need to create some strong buzz around your festive sale. Build some limited-time offers and create a sense of FOMO among your customers.
For example, Vajro helped Vintage Boho Bags make a massive $500K in under 90 minutes with their first app-only Flash Sale. This success was mainly attributed to the hype created before the big day — on the website, app, social media, emails, ads, and banners.
You can use a countdown timer on the prominent real estate of your website and app a week or two before the holiday sale begins. It will trigger anticipation and make your customers excited for the sale.
Oh, there’s more.
Enable your customers to add products to their wishlist. This way, they can save their favorite products and come back for purchase when you offer great discounts.
An email campaign with personalized content is also an effective way to communicate your deals and discounts. Send this email (or a series of emails) a few weeks before the BFCM begins. This is when people will be watching their inboxes with eagle eyes to find the best deals and offers.
- Create unbeatable offers with product bundles
Product bundling is another effective way to attract customers and boost sales. You just need to create a unique combination of complementary products and offer it at a discounted price. It is a fool-proof strategy as customers are getting more by paying less. But if you have managed to work out your margins, you can easily bundle products together without affecting your profit. It also offers cross-selling opportunities, making it one of the most crucial strategies to increase your average order value this holiday season.
For example, Skin Kulture, a skincare brand, promotes combo offers and tiered discounts like Buy X Get Y and bundle deals.
- Offer flexible payment options to boost conversions
Buy Now Pay Later is one of the biggest drivers behind consumer spending during the holiday season. Last BFCM weekend, the adoption of BNPL feature increased by 14% compared to 2022. Aside from early holiday sales, this flexible payment option also drove the shopping trend forward with a contribution of $16.6 billion in the online sales category.
Vajro integrates with popular BNPL tools and also supports diverse payment gateways to reduce cart abandonment and streamline checkout. After all, when you’ve managed to bring your customers to the final stage of checkout, you don’t want them dropping out for any reason.
Palette of Threads boutique offers multiple payment options to simplify the checkout process and minimize abandoned carts. Their customers love how easy it is to use Sezzle on the app to pay for their purchases in multiple installments.
- Enhance customer loyalty with exclusive benefits
Offering app-exclusive deals is a powerful strategy to drive app installs and customer engagement. By creating exclusive discounts and promotions that are only available through your app, you incentivize customers to not only download but also frequently use your app, increasing your customer retention rates.
When customers know they can access special offers and deals that aren’t available elsewhere, they feel valued and are more likely to purchase. Use this tactic to drive traffic, increase sales, and make the most out of your holiday promotions.
For example, Shop CCB boutique has an exclusive product category (Graphic Shop) available only on their mobile app. They also have an exclusive offer for the first purchase someone makes from the app.
- Encourage repeat purchases with loyalty program integration
Here’s the thing. It’s easier to sell to your well-established loyal customer base than to acquire new customers and sell to them. According to a report by Marketing Metrics, the chance that you’d sell to an existing customer is 14 times higher than that of a newly acquired customer.
Use loyalty rewards programs to build loyalty, encourage repeat purchases, and drive more sales. A survey from Incentive Solutions claims that adding a loyalty program to an e-commerce platform can increase average order quantity by 319%.
A report from Yotpo suggests that 46% of customers want early access to sales as part of a loyalty program. You can tie this up by providing early access to your existing customers.
Palette of Threads boutique, for example, uses Smile for their loyalty program, both on the app and website. Now, customers can earn and redeem their reward points on both the Shopify website and the mobile app. This consistent experience on both channels has turned regular visitors into loyal customers and brought in new referrals.
- Transform feedback into sales with product reviews
Reviews and ratings are an integral part of your shopping experience, influencing the final purchase decisions of most customers.
If your boutique and products don’t have many reviews yet, the post-holiday season is the best time to start acquiring them. With online sales at an all-time high, you will witness a huge inflow of customers. And this is the perfect opportunity to convert these one-time holiday shoppers into your patrons through reviews and ratings.
To create UGC, you might have to get a little creative, as not all users might be willing to share content about your products. So try organizing competitions or giving freebies and discounts to incentivize users to give their feedback.
Check out these FREE marketing templates to request customer reviews.
Once you have gotten the ball rolling with review requests, offer attractive incentives for customers willing to share their experiences. This is important because most of these customers are one-time shoppers who are not motivated to give you a review unless you give back something in return.
You can use discounts, coupon codes, or other sales strategies to encourage customers to post a positive review. It is an effective marketing ploy to boost your brand image and review collection. As a bonus, the customer might use the discount or vouchers on another purchase after the holiday season which is another sale for you.
- Get holiday-ready with optimized landing pages
Once the holiday season starts, the customers will start pouring into your boutique thick and fast. Optimize your holiday landing pages with titles, headings, descriptions, and body copy to get a higher page authority score and rank higher on Google. Ensure that you use relevant keywords throughout. Insert internal links to these pages to increase your search rankings and grow your website traffic.
Use deep linking to connect these landing pages to the exact page on your mobile app to create an omnichannel and seamless shopping experience for your customer. Deep linking in mobile apps aids mobile marketing immensely, especially when running targeted ad campaigns. It provides powerful, customized, and profitable marketing that makes shopping easier.
Learn more about deep linking here.
- Boost engagement with creative social media strategies
Most shoppers these days are tech-savvy and spend their free time on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This is an opportunity for you to get your messages across to customers as these platforms have immense marketing potential and drive positive engagement.
You can use Meta’s paid ads to target segments of your customer base with customized offers and promotional deals through posts, which are cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising channels.
Get creative with your social media game. Check out what SImply Me Boutique did on their mobile app. When they started getting huge traffic to their mobile app, they added their Instagram feed to their app’s homepage. When users click on it, they’ll be taken to the shoppable Instagram reels, allowing them to make instant purchases.
- Optimize holiday sales with effective product recommendations
When you offer tailored experiences in the form of great product recommendations, your customers will want to come back for more. Your brand will automatically become their preferred choice when they realize they can always find the right products with minimal hassle.
A Salesforce report found that shoppers who clicked a recommendation were twice as likely to return for purchases. The best approach to offer product recommendations during a BFCM season is by embracing personalization. All you have to do is tailor every user’s experience by recommending products they might like or find useful.
Like how Carol’s Boutique implements product recommendations on their app’s product display page in the form of Related Products and Recently Viewed.
As a boutique owner, your holiday season goal is to sell as many products as possible, clear the inventory, and prepare for the new year. That’s not going to happen if all your customers are going to purchase just 1item during the sale.
When you adopt product recommendations, your chances of upselling and cross-selling will skyrocket during BFCM. Upselling and cross-selling strategies are topics that require a more detailed discussion. Learn more about these strategies here.
But remember the golden rule for these tactics to work – don’t be too pushy.
- Keep the momentum going with extended sale periods
If you have the necessary inventory and logistics support, extend your sale period both pre and post-BFCM. If your customers are waiting for a good deal for their wishlist items, you can help them by expanding your sale period and offering additional discounts.
Also, if you give gift cards or vouchers to your customers during the BFCM weekend, this will be their chance to use them to get a discount deal. It will help you promote your products better and give you a competitive edge in terms of sales.
Run post-BFCM sales and let your customers know that you care for them. The holiday season is all about the fun and joy of celebrations, and in the midst of it, your customers might miss out on the sale weekend. They might not be aware of the sale, or they just forgot about it. But, for sellers, every customer is precious. Use push notifications to communicate the offers and let them know how long they have before the sale ends.
Make sure to segment your customers beforehand and exclude those customers who could purchase during the BFCM sale. Retargeting them again might create a negative impact on the customer’s mind.
The key to success for the holiday season: A mobile app
You already have a loyal fan base, now give them a branded mobile app during the upcoming holiday season and make the shopping experience personalized, enjoyable, and easy.
You already know that it isn’t the newest channel in the market, but it certainly is the hottest one, and it has only been gaining traction while other channels have lost a whit of steam.
The 4-step BBB Strategy
The BBB Strategy focuses on setting up the #1 sales channel for boutiques without breaking the bank – with a mobile app.
And it gets better.
You don’t need coding expertise or ad mastery. All it takes is adding this powerful new sales channel and following 4 simple steps within your app.
Read the step-by-step guide on implementing the Boutique Business Boost Strategy.
How else can The Boutique Hub help you grow?
Get more information on growing your business by joining The Boutique Hub, where we have tons of training, information, and most importantly, connection! www.theboutiquehub.com/join Try out our service for a month, cancel anytime.
Follow along on Instagram @theboutiquehub!
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