In the early months of a new year, businesses often experience a decline in sales. Why? The obvious reason is everyone blew out their budgets during the holiday season. And that’s not all.
For eCommerce businesses, customers just saw everyone’s best deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So it’s harder for consumers — who are now seeing smaller discounts or no discounts — to find the motivation to make a purchase.
In the months after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s crucial for eCommerce businesses to think of ways to creatively use email to re-engage holiday shoppers and keep sales going through these slower months.
As for B2B companies, there doesn’t have to be a post-holiday slump if you properly get in front of your target customers. The beginning of the year is when businesses make new plans and have big goals. You need to show up with your solution right when they’re on the hunt and ambitions (and new budgets) are highest.
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So how can businesses increase sales after a post-holiday slump? Here are four great strategies.
1. Remarketing and follow up with holiday buyers
Cross-sell related products to what customers bought. Offer them an exclusive deal. Roll out your new and exciting product. Take advantage, while you’re still somewhat top of mind, to turn one-time customers into far more lucrative repeat customers.
Personalized emails are the best way to re-engage with holiday season customers and nurture them into year-round buyers.
Although email is the preferred way to drive sales in the post-holiday slump, you may also look into paid ads to target people who visited your site or your shopping cart page but didn’t make a purchase.
2. Market around January and February holidays
There are obvious holidays, like Valentine’s Day, that businesses should take advantage of. Valentine’s Day spending reached its second-highest year on record bringing in $23.9 billion in 2022, up from $21.8 billion in 2021.
But… you can also market around those random holidays that seem made up, like National Kettlebell Day on January 12th or National Beer Can Appreciation Day on January 24th. There are hundreds of these — find one related to your business and hype it up through a series of emails leading up to the day.
3. Run post-holiday sales
After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers don’t expect businesses to run sales — and especially not major sales that are as good as the ones from those shopping days.
Surprise your customers and stand out from other businesses by offering sales that are too good to resist. Clear out your excess inventory and offer customers a chance to grab a new item. (Or land a sale from those people who have spent the past few months regretting they missed out on your Black Friday deal.)
Make sure to include a subject line presenting your sale as something special — possibly even tying it back to the big shopping boom months. For example, try an email subject line like, “20% off the gift you really wanted to buy for yourself.”
4. If you sell B2B, use cold email
If you’re a B2B business, this is the time to step up your cold email game.
Cold email keeps on growing in popularity because, well, it actually works. Companies come back from the winter holidays with all that “start-of-the-year” momentum. Seize on that feeling and hit your targeted prospects with an offer that will help them with their huge goals for the year.
Expect to see even more salespeople and other industries recognizing the potential of cold email and jumping in on it too. This can be especially true in tougher economic conditions like, unfortunately, it looks like we’ll see in 2023, as those times require more work and more outreach to get customers and clients.
Despite all the doom-and-gloom hype around the economy, businesses should continue efforts to increase sales after the post-holiday slump using these strategies. And recent history shows you just might find success. In January 2022, data from the Commerce Department reported that retail sales rose 3.8%, despite inflation and economic predictions for that month.
This data tells us people will continue to make purchases even after the holidays; however, it’s in the hands of businesses to continue promoting their products and getting them in front of their customers’ and potential customers’ eyes.
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Consumers won’t purchase from a store or a sale if they don’t know it exists, so utilize email marketing as much as possible to beat the post-holiday blues and increase sales and momentum into the new year.
