The holiday season brings increased traffic and new customers to your eCommerce site. But the secret to long-term revenue growth is sustaining these customers beyond the holiday season.
Below, we dive into tactics retailers can use to better engage customers after the holidays to boost loyalty and retention.
Personalize Post-Purchase Follow-Ups
After a customer makes a purchase, be intentional with your follow-up messages. Optimize all email and SMS sequences to be highly personalized based on customer profiles (purchase behavior, preferences, and browsing habits). Request feedback in the form of ratings and reviews and make it easy for customers to share their thoughts by embedding or directly linking to a review form.
Automate New Customer Onboarding
Treat holiday purchases as onboarding for the new year. When a customer makes a purchase and opts into emails, set up an automation to enroll them into an onboarding workflow. Encourage them to engage with your brand by signing up for your loyalty program and downloading your app if you have one. And ask them to sign up for SMS text alerts to be the first to receive exclusive deals.
If a customer signs up for your loyalty program, encourage them to actually redeem their rewards so they see the value out of the program.
Maintain Brand Visibility
Keep your brand visible where customers are shopping. Beyond maintaining a regular social media presence, it is also critical to regularly optimize your site for both search engines and generative/AI engines. 37% of consumers now start their searches with AI instead of Google, and that number is only rising.
Many of the principles for SEO and GEO overlap – creating authoritative content, demonstrating trustworthiness, optimizing the customer journey, and more. Learn more about optimizing your site for SEO and GEO with our guide.
Clean Up Your CRM
Ensure your data and lists are up to date after the holiday season so you can head into the new year with a useful database. Clean out old contacts and refresh profiles with any new data from the year.
Transform your database into a key tool in your marketing strategy by segmenting your holiday customers based on behavior. Analyze how they arrived on your site, how they engaged with their brand, and what they bought. Look at their purchase history and onsite activity to identify patterns. Then group them into segments based on these characteristics. This will enable more personalized, valuable communications with your customers in the future.
Keep the Festivities Going
Each year returns tend to skyrocket in January, as customers return or exchange gifts and other holiday purchases. To combat this, aim to build on holiday momentum by offering post-holiday promotions and capturing in-store traffic from returns. And, be sure to offer a seamless returns experience, which can build loyalty and encourage future purchases.
Catch Customers Before They Disengage
To capture potential customers before they forget your brand, send automated abandoned cart emails to browsers to encourage them to return. Consider also including incentives like a coupon code in the email, as searching for discounts is a top reason for abandoned carts.
If a customer abandons their cart or stops opening your brand communications, focus on creating win-back campaigns to re-engage them. This can include fresh content, incentives, or news like loyalty program updates to entice them to return.
Strengthen Brand Relationships
To strengthen your customers’ relationship with your brand beyond the holidays, focus on creating value-driven content like product tutorials, styling videos, etc. Build a community by encouraging customers to share content on their social media channels and tag your brand or use dedicated brand hashtags. Increase customer touchpoints by encouraging them to download your app in post-purchase emails and to sign up for SMS alerts and news. Share your brand story in all your marketing communications to build a more personal connection with your customers.
Key Takeaways
While holiday eCommerce traffic is a major contributor to your bottom line, retaining customers beyond the holiday season will be critical to long-term growth. Focus on creating an excellent customer experience, strengthening brand trust and loyalty, and capturing customer feedback during the holidays. Leverage what you learn during holiday shopping and translate it to the new year to keep customers coming back.
