Christmas Sales Ideas: 8 Tips To Increase Your Retail Sales This Christmas

Christmas is around the corner, and the rush to buy gifts gets hectic. Retailers have started preparing their retail shops for the upcoming Christmas sales, and here are some Christmas sales ideas just for you.

Well, November sounds early. The earlier you get ready for Christmas, and Christmas sales ideas, the more stocks you’re able to sell when customers have the purchasing power. The more prepared you will be to handle your inventory supplies and mitigate delivery issues.

Let’s explore more about the 5 tips on Christmas sales ideas:

Tip No#1 On Christmas Sales Ideas: Plan The Promotions You Want To Run

Every retail shop has its unique way of running a business. It is not possible for all retailers to give a 40% discount at the same time, especially when you have to take care of the branding as well – selling your items at a low price may hurt your brand perception.

Other than discounts, other sales methods can include: Buy 2 Get 1 Free, Buy 2nd Item At 20% Discount, or even more complex bundle deals like Buy X Get Y Free, Buy X to get 10% Off For Y, or a combination of other promotions.

Bundled deals will be a good option for brands who would like to offer something sweet for their customers, yet do not want to give a low discount that affects the branding of the company. Hence bundle deals like a mini set of assorted tea bags, a duo pack of lipsticks, a small Christmassy free gift with a certain amount of purchase, a bundle of different products put together at a good value, etc., are attractive enough to entice people to spend in your shop.

So, before Christmas arrives, plan the type of promotions that you would want to run for your retail shop. If you feel that discounts are the most suitable, then apply discounts throughout your store or on selected items only.

You can also choose to run multiple promotions simultaneously for different products, to get the most out of their respective product categories – e.g. 15% off on shoes but buy pants and get 30% off for a belt.

Tip No#2 Automate your Christmas Sale:

While considering Christmas sales ideas, If you want to automate your Christmas sales this year, try using Retail POS Software to run Christmas promotions smoothly. You can set the timeline to apply and run those promotions and stop automatically after Christmas is over. Moreover, Ari has ready-made templates to help you immediately set and deploy your Christmas deals – you can even run multiple promotions at the same time!

Tip No#3 On Christmas Sales Ideas: Selling Christmas-related Goods Will Increase Your Christmas Sales

Duh! You may think – Christmas sales have got to do with Christmas, right? But what I meant is that offering festive discounts and decorating your store with Santa may not be enough to make it feel like a Christmas festival – you need to bring in supplies that are related to Christmas.

Many retail brands are selling Christmas-themed products. Big brands like Precious Moments have already introduced their Christmas figurines; while individual e-commerce stores are also producing Christmas-related items such as Two Pineapples Co and Creations By M, who have their Christmas Disney pins coming in stock.

So, for your retail shop, you can consider asking your suppliers or manufacturers to provide you with Christmas goods to sell, e.g., making snowman earrings for shops that sell accessories or having Christmas-scented candles.

People who celebrate festivals are in the mood to enjoy them, so they will also spend more on festive-related items. Sales for Christmas festivals are all-time high (see Economics of Christmas).

If you are worried that specific-themed inventories might cause you to have leftover stocks which are hard to sell after the festival, then alternatively, you can invest in the packaging of the products, such as the casings, the carrier bags, the wrapping paper, the cardboard boxes, etc.

It is worth considering changing your packaging as research shows that product packaging can influence buyer’s decision and in turn, retail sales. So, get involved in the Christmas mood and attract customers with your Christmassy packaging. In short, keeping products related to Christmas is one of the best Christmas sales ideas.

Tip No#4 On Christmas Sales Ideas: Market Your Christmas Deals

To get ready for more sales this Christmas with Christmas sales ideas, you’ll definitely need to promote your shop through various marketing channels. The first is to prepare marketing creatives that you will use across different marketing platforms – the thing to note is that due to differences on various platforms, you will need different forms of marketing materials.

For example, an Instagram post needs to be different from an email newsletter. Hence differentiate your marketing materials so that they fit their respective platforms perfectly.

Tip No#5 E-mail Campaigns:

One idea is to encourage people to look out for your email. Email marketing is quite a useful targeting tool where your messages appear in front of your target audience, as compared to social media where you are targeting the masses.

Hence brands like Grape Soda Club encourages people to sign up for their email subscription to receive exclusive deals, such as secret discount code like FREE SHIPPING or 10% OFF where such codes can only be received through emails.

Tip No#6 Newsletters:

This way, consumers are more willing to sign up for your newsletter to receive updates. They will actively look out for your email for a secret discount code. Also, secret deals will help you to increase Christmas sales. Although there’s no membership program in place, the feeling of being in an exclusive club is there. Plus, this is a good tactic to collect emails from consumers for future marketing purposes.

Another useful marketing tactic is to provide a preview or teaser about what’s coming up next. Humans are naturally curious, especially when they have to wait for something attractive to be announced. An example will be Dispinland, who let out some news before announcing the real thing. Such previews and teasers create hype which will, in turn, attract more eyeballs when you show the final product.

Tip No#7 On Christmas Sales Ideas: Come Up With Mystery Bundles

Mystery bundles are getting popular. In case you are not aware, mystery bundles refer to a box of mysterious goods where customers do not know what they are getting. It’s usually something that’s randomly put together and randomly sold to customers.

Though mystery bundles are not exclusive to Christmas only. You can have them all year round. But since Christmas is about a season to gift (pun intended), it is a good idea to entice customers to get a mysterious “gift” for themselves.

However, the items in your mystery bundles should be something good and attractive, instead of throwing in leftover stocks that make your customers feel like you just want to clear your bad-selling inventories. Even if you want to make use of mystery bundles to clear slow-moving items, you need to manage the expectations of your customers, especially at the price point.

Lower price indicates that the items in the mystery bundle will not be high-value items. You can employ differentiated pricing such as Premium Mystery Box ($20) vs. Standard Mystery Box ($10), so that higher value items at a higher cost can be sold at a higher price and vice versa.

The only downside of this strategy is to manage your stocks and costs. Because each bundle contains different items. You need to make sure that the cost of the items will not exceed the retail price of the mystery bundle. For this issue, you can make use of Ari. We help you manage your costing, profit, revenue, inventories and improve Christmas sales.

Tip No#8 On Christmas Sales Ideas: Plan For Last-Minute Shoppers

Let’s admit it – not all of us are good shoppers. We rush to the store last minute to see if there are any more goodies left for sale. Some shoppers may also deliberately hold on to their purchase so that the nearer the date to Christmas. The more discounts retail stores might give in order to clear stocks for fear of having too many unsellable leftovers.

Hence we expect last-minute sales may rise up and get prepared for it. What’s crucial here will be fast check-out and swift delivery service. It will

be more efficient for customers to purchase the items online. Hence they can collect from the shop or arrange same-day delivery. You can also offer free shipping for a limited time period. You can entice customers to buy more from your online store.

Tip No#9 Speed and Efficiency:

Efficiency and speed to purchase are key. To get the most out of last-minute shoppers, we need to clear out all the barriers for them. It might limit their speed to buy what they want. This even includes setting up a special landing page just to sell Christmas special items. You can also create an advertising banner on top of your web page to quickly redirect customers to what they want.

For in-store purchases, you need to look at how inventories can be organized. Thus you can place stocks in a prominent position to catch shoppers’ eyes. Or to put out signages to inform last-minute shoppers to come in to see if there is anything else that they want.

Throughout this process, you may realize that some stocks are selling fast. While some stocks are not moving as fast as you want. You can try to bundle them together and provide a greater value for last-minute shoppers. Thus they can get as many things they want in a single purchase.

Even though it’s not yet Christmas, getting ready early is always a good thing. In summary, the 5 tips to increase your retail sales for this Christmas are:

• Plan the promotions you want to run with consideration of your brand strategy
• Sell Christmas-themed products or invest in Christmas-themed packaging
• Market your shop or products
• Christmas mystery bundles
• Reduce barriers to purchase for last-minute shoppers

Happy holidays!