But before you consider how you can approach the ideas from previous years, check out the following tips picked to help you prepare for the impending Cyber Week madness.

A Holiday Marketing Plan to Showcase Your Brand

A 2015 study by the National Retail Federation suggested that effective marketing of your brand before and during Cyber Week can increase sales by up to a shocking 30%, this even increases to 40% in some industries (such as jewelry). Use this knowledge to your advantage! Even if you’re behind on your email marketing, you could try to find a moment to create a series of email flows that offer exclusive discounts and deals for your store during the Cyber Week chaos.

This is a great time to mention that Marsello's email templates library is a great place to find ready-made templates that will allow you to easily design and send emails even in a time-crunch. 

Just to be thorough, here’s an example of a manually created email flow which could be the the push you need to see holiday success and marketing ROI.

Let’s break these down:

Email 1:

• • Campaign Launch! Announce your enticing Cyber-focused deal/sale and give a clear call to action to your customers to shop with you – an idea for a first email is a gift-guide or staff-picks announcement.

  • Include some branded, appropriate and fun graphics to make your email instantly recognizable as a Cyber Week related email which is also linked to your brand.

  • Add another call to action at the bottom which suggests the customer checks out more products or visits you in-store at a list of your brick-and-mortar locations.

Extra note: you could segment this email flow so that those who are making a first-time purchase are offered a similar email immediately after their purchase, but their email includes a coupon code valid only for cyber-week, incentivizing them to shop again with you in the near future.

Email 2:

• • Your call to action needs to remind your customers that your sale or deal is ending soon and convince them to shop before it ends. A simple ‘Our sale is ending soon/ on [date/day of the week]. ORDER NOW!’ is a tried and true CTA.

  • Your cyber-week visuals for this should be fresh and attention-grabbing, reminding your customers that you’re creative and current.

  • Include your shipping costs or terms so that your customers are reassured about their shopping experience with you.

  Email 3:

  • Your sale ends today, tomorrow, or in [X] hours. With an imminent end, remind your customers that this is the last day to shop and they shouldn’t miss out.

  • Graphics and images could be changed to include themed gift-guide ideas or suggestions from popular purchases throughout the week.

  • Marsello offers an email flow option which shows the customer similar items to those that they’ve previously purchased. Including smart AI that personalizes the email will help your customers to feel as though your items meet their needs.

• Email 4:

  • Thank those of your customers that made a purchase during Cyber week for shopping with you. Or you could send everyone a reminder of the next holiday in your calendar or that it’s simply coming up to the festive season and now is the perfect time for them to get on top of their shopping.

  • You can always add themed graphics which say thank you but why not show off some of the top-sellers from the week if you haven’t used this already.

  • If there are any delays in shipping or updates, make sure to let your customers know why this is the case.

Get Creative & Be Consistent

We’ve compiled a shortlist of these 5 ways that you can make the most out of your marketing and see results from just a few quick changes:

1: Add themes and graphics to your website and social media marketing.

Whether this is just updating your website’s banner with a cute graphic that includes some of your products, or a fully adapted homepage/landing page, the end-game is to narrow your customers’ focus onto the products you’re hoping they will buy. Some stores even use a product countdown or time-until-sale-ends timer so that customers feel the pressure to shop and avoid missing your store’s deals.

Australian pet-product store, Peticular, is a seasoned pro at seasonal and festive marketing. Check out the way they’ve used social media to advertise their Halloween-specific items by including this adorable photo of a bandana-wearing pooch. They are also quick to update their store and email marketing with similar graphics which show off their brand but also their products.

We love that they’ve cleverly included the item’s price, clearly displayed with the additions of a ‘products shown’ button below the image. Peticular have also gone the extra mile and included a link in the description to even more bandana designs. They do a great job of using their marketing to show off their in-season and cutest items. We recommend keeping an eye on them for inspiration.

One key part of your holiday marketing to remember is making sure that your images are optimized and meet the needs of your customers. Think of all those stores with beautifully branded festive images and how much more inclined you are to buy from them. 

2: What deals can you offer in terms of shipping?

Maybe free shipping isn’t an option, but what if customers are spending over $100? In a survey conducted by BigCommerce, 80% of Americans cited shipping costs and speed of shipping as a major factor in determining where they shop, with 66% deciding not to buy entirely because of shipping costs. Even a small token to show that you understand this could be the difference between a sale or not.

While you may not be able to offer free shipping, no matter the amount of a customer's purchase, perhaps you could offer it to local buyers and specific locations, or perhaps you simply offer fast-tracked shipping with a tracking code. What about free returns? Giving your customers a sense of security over their online purchases will make them feel even more justified in their choice to shop with you.

Consider creating a seamless shipment and tracking system so that your customers feel your support, even at the busiest times of the year. One example of this as a store ad-on is Aftership. Basically, you’re giving the power back to your customer to follow where their item is at, and when to expect it. Cut yourself out at a middleman and forget the days of chasing couriers.

3: Be clear about what your deal or sale terms are.

Your customers are less likely to buy from your competitors if they feel the sense of urgency that the impending end of a sale brings, particularly if they’ve shopped with you before and trust you to look after them at such a busy time of year.

While we’re talking sale ends, don’t be afraid of extending that sale as well. Sometimes giving people an extra dale to check your deals out is the extra push they need to make a purchase. There’s a lot of demand in the days that follow on from holidays – give your customers a little push and remind them why your products are worth the extra purchase.

Giving a clear explanation of your timeline shows that you’re only doing this deal for a limited time, even if it’s a little beyond that of other store’s sales, says to your customers perhaps this is the best time for your customers to hunt down that item they’ve wanted for so long or to tick another item off their gift-list.

It’s worth a quick mention that a flash sale or one-day deal isn’t outdated. With the rise of websites that offer a deal for just one day, there’s room to compete, just remember to keep it on theme. Cyber week means that it’s cyber exclusive so this is a great time to out some select items on sale and advertise them through your emails and social media with that theme present. BigCommerce agrees – it’s the prime time “to capture the target market’s attention and up-sell your other products.”

4: Speaking of gift lists, why not spice up your blog as a form of gift guide?

Gift guides were the go-to marketing form of 2017 and for good reason – they work! They’re a simple way to show off your most appealing, beautiful or theme-appropriate products and to funnel your customers to your site. They also boost customer confidence, which leads the way for customer loyalty.

A shopping guide says to your customers, “I understand what you need, why you’re here and how I can make your life easiest for you.” It’s a low-key ‘look no-more’ that your customers will find easy to navigate, so the more inviting you make your gift guide, the more successful it’s likely to be. Besides, this is one of those cases where everyone is doing it, and you should too but because of that, you need to stand out.

Check out this example from Anthropologie who have a whole landing page dedicated to ‘gifts’ that sits in their navigation. Their products are all beautifully displayed in a similar style with clean lighting, pastel backgrounds, and essential details.

Gift guides don’t need to be restricted to just your website, they make an effective email flow with a clear call to action that says ‘Shop now and score great deals on these products, and more!’. Great Lakes Northern Outfitters, a Minneapolis-based men's apparel store, did a great job of this last year. The following email shows a careful selection of their favorite items. They followed these up with links directly to the items which corresponded to the numbered item from the photo.

5: Create and promote a loyalty points system.

Offering your frequent shoppers and brand-lovers an incentive to shop in the form of holiday season loyalty points is a simple way of winning customers back and developing customer loyalty. If you’re running a loyalty program (if not, check out Marsello’s easy-to-use loyalty program), you’ve already got access to a golden egg in the form of loyalty. If you haven’t tapped into this yet, make it a priority. As BigCommerce point out, customer loyalty is a multi-faceted focus point with long-game benefits.

Customers love to feel special, so let them feel appreciated and looked after in the form of exclusive deals but look beyond the short few months of the holiday season. Use this busy time to direct your customers to your loyalty program, incentivize them to join with exclusive deals or a limited time points bonus for first-time buyers who sign up.

It can be tricky to know what deals or offers will best benefit your store in particular. Marsello has you covered here too! Marsello includes smart suggestions to recommend the optimal reward settings for your particular store, offering your customers the ideal rewards.

Our top tip? Make sure that you can keep up with that marketing from now until the end of your promotional period.

Automation is the best way to do this – take some of the pressure off yourself by scheduling as much of your marketing as you can. Clearly branded email campaigns with simple, enticing call-to-actions, scheduled SMS campaigns, boosted campaigns, loyalty points promotions are all ways that you can ramp up your marketing... and, let's be real here, a little planning before the madness begins can go a long way to easing the stress of a busy holiday period.

Just remember the key is to show off your brand in a stand-out, flattering and appealing way. Offer deals where possible, and give your customers incentive to remain loyal throughout the rest of the holiday season.

And if you haven’t gotten a head-start on your holiday marketing yet, get started with a deep-dive into campaigns and the templates library.

Whether you’re running a brick-and-mortar store or eCommerce site (or both!), we’re willing to bet that you devote a lot of time and energy to marketing. Getting people to your shop or website is a priority, so it makes perfect sense to invest in resources that help to put your brand out there.

But what happens after they reach your store or website? Are you able to close the sale or do shoppers leave without buying anything?

If the vast majority of your customers don’t complete a purchase, then it’s high time to focus on conversion rate optimization.

To help you do that, we’ve put together a list of the top reasons people leave a retail store or website without buying anything. If any of these conversion-killers are present in your store or on your site, take action ASAP.

Why people don’t convert in physical retail stores

1. Poor (or no) staff interaction

If people walk into your store and they’re barely acknowledged, chances are, they’re going to walk right out. That’s why it’s so important to maximize staff interactions with customers.

Instruct your team to welcome every shopper who walks through your doors. Make sure they feel acknowledged and valued.

For best results, mix up your greetings and get creative. Rather than a generic “Welcome to the store” or “Can I help you?” consider saying things like “Who are you shopping for today?” or “What brings you to the shop?”

Another approach is to tell shoppers briefly about any promotions that you’re running. Something along the lines of, “Just so you know, all our jeans are half off” will do the trick.

2. Difficulty in finding what they’re looking for

Having a confusing or poorly organized store is a huge conversion-killer for brick-and-mortar businesses.

You need to make it easy for your customers to find what they need by keeping your shop tidy. See to it that your employees are on top of replenishing shelves and putting merchandise in their proper places.

The right signage can also help consumers navigate your store. If you have a large space, install easy-to-read signs to direct people where they need to go. You can also use signage to educate customers and provide more product information.

Check out this example from an Old Navy outlet store in California. To help shoppers find the right kind of jeans, they’ve added signage containing details about the fit and style of the various jeans, as well as the best body types for each one.

3. Your offers aren’t exciting enough

If your in-store promotions are failing to convert customers, find ways to spice things up. Rethink how you structure your promotions so you can make them more compelling.

One thing you could do is instill a sense of urgency. If you’re running a limited-time sale, make sure people know about it. Display signage or countdowns to tell shoppers how much time they have left to redeem your offers.

Check out this example from Parker Panache, a women’s fashion store. When Parker Panache ran a storewide BFCM sale, they created an SMS campaign to let their customers know to head in-store or online to receive 20% off:

Another idea is to have a sale ‘event.’ In addition to bringing people together, in-store events pave the way for interactions between customers and your staff. In turn, those interactions can open up opportunities for engagement and sales.

The lifestyle brand Soft Surroundings executed this well when they ran a sale in-line with their ‘Customer Appreciation Event’.

4. Long wait times

Long lines at checkout are another common reason why people don’t convert. A study by Omnico Group found that US consumers will leave a store without completing a purchase after just 8 minutes of waiting in a checkout line. British consumers will leave after only 6 minutes.

You can avoid losing customers with long lines by implementing smart employee scheduling. Identify your shop’s busiest hours and make sure you have adequate people on the sales floor and checkout counters to serve shoppers.

You can also alleviate long wait times by using mobile Point-of-Sale systems that let you process sales from anywhere in the store.

Conversion-killers on eCommerce websites

Now let’s talk about the biggest conversion-killers in the realm of eCommerce. If you’re running an online store, here are some of the top reasons why people don’t convert (and what you can do about them).

5. Your website is too slow

Page load speeds are everything when it comes to conversion. Research shows that a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

There are several best practices for speeding up your site, and the right ones will depend on how your online store is set up. To give you a better idea of what you can do about site speed, here are Google’s recommendations for improving page speed and performance:

• Avoid landing page redirects

• Enable compression of website resources (images, text, code, etc.)

• Improve server response time

• Leverage browser caching

• Implement “minification,” which is the process of removing unnecessary or redundant data from your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources

• Optimize images by finding the right format, so they load quickly without comprising their quality

• Optimize CSS Delivery

• Structure your HTML to load the critical, above-the-fold content first

• Remove render-blocking JavaScript

6. Your site lacks credibility

While it’s true that consumers today are a lot more comfortable with online shopping, many still have trust issues when buying from websites, particularly if those stores aren’t well-known.

If you’re a small or medium retailer and don’t have widespread brand recognition yet, you can alleviate trust issues by setting up a pro-looking website. Nothing screams ‘shady’ like amateur designs and grammar errors, so see to it that your website looks sleek and professional.

You should also display lots of trust signals to tell shoppers it’s safe to buy from you. These could include security logos and certifications. Statements like ‘money back guarantee’ can also help shoppers feel more secure about their purchases.

And, if you want an extra boost of credibility, display logos of the top websites or publications that have mentioned your brand. Doing so offers third-party validation to put shoppers further at ease.

Beloved Shirts, a website that sells quirky apparel and accessories, does this well. In addition to having an up-to-date SSL certificate, they’ve added a ‘Verified Reviews’ badge, along with the logos of media companies and TV shows that they’ve been featured on.

7. Your site is difficult to navigate

In the same way that a poorly organized brick-and-mortar store can drive shoppers away, a website that’s difficult to navigate can kill your conversion rate.

Gather feedback from your visitors to see if they’re having trouble finding what they need. You can do this easily using tools like heat maps, recordings, feedback polls, and more. Check out Hotjar, a platform that offers analytics and feedback tools (heat maps, recordings, conversion funnels, form analysis, polls, etc.), so you can better understand your website visitors.

Once you have a clear idea of how people browse your site, you can use that knowledge to improve your site experience. For example, you can use visitor insights to streamline your navigation or improve the positioning of different elements on the page so people can find what they need quickly.

8. You don’t offer multi-channel support

Consumers often use multiple channels to browse and buy. It’s not uncommon for a shopper to start researching products on their phone, but wait until they’re at a desktop computer to complete the checkout process.

For this reason, it’s important that your site can support the multi-channel shopping journeys of your customers. See to it that people who browse your website on one channel can easily pick up where they left off when they use another device.

Speaking of which, you also need to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile. Google penalizes websites that don’t work well on the small screen, so your site could experience issues around organic discoverability.

Not to mention, websites that aren’t mobile-friendly are typically more difficult to browse, and that, in turn, negatively affects your conversion rate.

The Free Persistent Cart App can help you accomplish this. For starters, you can let your customers save their shopping carts so they don’t have to start the checkout process all over again if they switch devices.

9. There are no incentives or rewards to convert

Some shoppers need an extra nudge to complete the purchase. If you’re dealing with low online conversion rates, you may want to test different incentives and see which ones drive the most conversions.

Here are a few ideas:

Promotions – See if it makes sense to offer discounts or free shipping. Play around with conditional promotions such as, ‘Free shipping on all orders over $100’ to determine which offers are the most effective and profitable.

Rewards – If you have a loyalty program, you may be able to increase engagement and interactions from your members through various reward levels or tiers. For example, toothpaste brand, Grin Natural, offers the following rewards:

• 20 Points  – Free Travel Toothpaste

• 40 Points  – Free Toothbrush

• 40 Points  – Free Brushing Chart

• 50 Points  – $5.00 Off  

• 80 Points  – Free Cool Mint Toothpaste

• 85 Points  – Free Whitening Toothpaste

• 100 Points – 25% Off

The various reward levels not only add variety to Grin Natural’s program, but they also encourage members to continue earning points so they can redeem high-value perks.

Freebies – Got extra swag lying around? Use them as incentives to get people to buy. Giving ‘free gifts’ with every purchase can help sweeten the deal and convince shoppers to complete their purchase.

Giveaways – Have an irresistible prize up for grabs. Think of a product or experience that would appeal to your target customers, then use it as a hook to get them to buy.

OSMOSE put this tactic to good use when they ran a competition that encouraged customers to earn contest entries by shopping in their recent September 2020 sale.

10. Life gets in the way

In a lot of cases, people don’t convert because ‘life happens’ Maybe your customers were multi-tasking while browsing your site, perhaps something urgent came up, and they had to abandon their shopping cart, or they simply got distracted by a cat video.

This is where an abandoned cart recovery email comes in. As its name suggests, an abandoned cart email is a message that you automatically send after someone starts your checkout process, but leaves before completing it. These have proven to be effective. According to Get Elastic, nearly half of all cart recovery emails are opened; 13.3% are clicked, and more than one-third of clicked cart recovery emails result in a sale.

Abandoned cart emails play a significant role in getting shoppers to complete their purchases. That’s why if you haven’t set up an abandoned cart recovery email flow yet, it’s high time to do so.

Check out this example from speciality store, Ozzie Collectables. To re-engage customers who left items in their shopping cart (as well as those who haven’t stopped by in 30 days), Ozzie Collectables sends an Abandoned Cart automated email flow that reminds customers about the products they left in their cart. The email flow itself has an impressive 28% conversion rate and Ozzie Collectables have seen a 517% increase in revenue from all automations. With these results and more, it's obvious that their automations are a powerful marketing tool.

Note: If you’re still unsure about why your customers aren’t converting, consider actively gathering their feedback to gain insights. What encouraged shoppers to complete the purchase? What did they think of your store and staff? Knowing these things will uncover the reasons why people convert (and why they don’t). You can then use that information to refine your efforts.

The Nigerian shoe distributor, bCode does an outstanding job of collecting feedback. BCode sends customers a survey email and makes it easy for users to share their input. First they select if they were happy or dissatisfied with the service, then, depending on their answer, they answer a short survey detailing what aspects of the business they liked most. To incentivize participation (and future purchases), the company also rewards shoppers with loyalty points whenever they complete the survey.

Wrapping up

You’ve worked hard to get people to your website or store, the last thing you want is for them to leave without buying anything! Follow the tips we’ve outlined in this post to maximize your conversions.

How can you be sure that retail holiday marketing is worth your time? How do you get noticed when the competition is so stiff? How do you stand out and boost customer loyalty? What about attracting new customers at the same time …

In short, there’s no sure-fire combination of strategies to get exact results, however, by looking into holiday shopping patterns and statistics from recent years, we can plan for this coming holiday season and use this information to stand out from other retailers who use the same strategies each year.

So what’s the big deal with holiday marketing and is it worth your time? Let’s take a quick look at the stats.

Holiday marketing is an undeniably important aspect of retailer’s business management, so how do retailers stand out and get their brand noticed? Check out this list of 150 Years of the Best Holiday Campaigns, by the team at BigCommerce for a fun look at the history of holiday marketing and big-scale success. We’ve gone ahead and put together some suggestions to get you started and make your long-term marketing game a lot easier for you to manage, while still competing against the big guys!

Create a holiday calendar

Planning for holiday season madness is the best way to get a jump start on managing the madness. Create a calendar which includes important details relevant to your store, such as, holidays and dates, start and end dates of sales, key dates for marketing pushes (when you plan to send email flows or post on social media) and when you expect to be at your busiest. However, don’t just make a calendar; stick to it and keep on top of it! You need to be checking it regularly if you want your holiday marketing to reach its full potential.

If you’re tight on time or you just don’t know where to start, no worries! I’ll let you in on a little secret, Marsello has just released an exciting new feature for Shopify that will take care of your holiday marketing calendar and take care of your holiday email promotions for you. With smart suggestions on the best time to initiate holiday sales, based on your customers' shopping patterns, it’s a simple as a few clicks to get your holiday email marketing sorted. Just think of the holidays you could be marketing for in the future!

Plan for all marketing mediums

It’s not enough to rely on social media and canned EDMs to reach your customers. Trust that big players are putting weeks of work into targeting their customers so why not take some inspiration from them. Create marketing that is customized to each holiday event or sale, and carry those themes or colors all of your marketing, you can even go the extra mile and create marketing that is customized to specific customer groups. Just make sure it’s eye-catching and recognizable to your brand.

Scheduling tools are another great way to automate some of the social media marketing heavy lifting by allowing you to curate your social media months in advance. What about emails, though?

Automated email flows that help with customization, design, scheduling, and recipient organization can take a large portion of the pressure off from retailers at the busiest time of the year. Why not take time on a quiet day to tee-up some emails flows which are scheduled to send exactly the right amount of time? Emails triggered to send just before a sale starts, urging customers to shop before that sale ends, or even to make them feel special by offering them a discount code which gives them early-bird discounts are proven ways of directing customers to your website or store. Marsello uses smart suggestions to recommend the perfect time for you to be sending these emails, starting your sales, and even how much of a discount to offer your customers.

Email flows are a cash-cow when it comes to customer loyalty and win-backs causing revenue increases, so tap into that with themed emails. Using automated email flows allows for all of the creativity without any of the after-thought or memorizing optimal send-times. Keep an eye out for our Cyber Week blog which gives a detailed example of a holiday email flow plan.

Marsello has you covered with holiday email flow marketing. Check out our easy to use, easy to customize Halloween email flow example below to get an idea of how simple it is to set up and just how eye-catching your emails can be.

Customizing your email flows to suit events, customers or updates is proven to be highly effective. A 2015 study by the National Retail Federation found that email marketing alone can increase revenue by up to 40% in some industries.

Prepare and optimize your website

Website optimization is the bread and butter of your online customers’ experience.

If your website takes a long time to load (hopefully from increased holiday traffic, although possibly from large image sizes), there’s a risk that shoppers will get bored of waiting and move on to other online retailers. If this isn’t reason enough to update your website, Google published an article in February 2018 stating that bounce rates increase by 32% from just a 1 second to 3 second loading time; at 6 seconds the bounce rate increases to 106%.

What does optimizing your website have to do with your holiday marketing?

This is the perfect time use your website as a promo platform by customizing it to advertise your short-term festive deals. Think about it this way: if you’re going to promote deals, sales or even gift ideas to your customers through direct marketing, they should immediately see the links between your marketing and the page they’re directed to on your site. Your landing page is theoretically your customers’ first interaction with your website so you want it to grab their attention, show off your brand and direct them to your most unmissable deals. It should remind customers why they were attracted to your site – for the enticing deals and sales. Even if they’re not shopping online, a huge proportion of customers are inclined to research who has sales and when so it’s best to make it easy and enticing.

One thing to take note of is to make sure that your online store is mobile friendly! In early 2017, Adobe predicted that mobile spending alone would total over $1.2 billion in revenue on just Black Friday. You want to be sure that all of your customers who browse on cell phones and tablets are seeing your website and enticing festive deals in all of their must-have glory.

Australia-based pet products store, Peticular, created this adorable, original and distinctive landing page to show off their cute Halloween themed products and to get their customers shopping both in-store and online. We love the way they showcase their products on those adorable pets, while also keep it fun, themed and on-brand – special mention to the witty use of ‘howl-o-ween’.

Curate a gift guide

Support your newly customized landing page and branded email flows by directing customers to your best-selling products and most festive items with a gift guide. Suggesting ideas for gifts takes some of the pressure off your customers while also driving them to the products that best suit the occasion. Some retailers couple their gift guides with their landing pages, similar to Peticular’s landing page, others create extra website pages that suggest gift ideas, while some chose to send personalized email-flows that suggest top sellers or items. Whatever your preferred method, it’s easy to see why including your top picks, best sellers or a festive-themed selection would draw customers to your website or brick-and-mortar store.

One key step of this is curating your items in a branded and attention-grabbing way; show off your products so that they sell themselves! Choosing a festive color palette to stick to, or even just adding holiday-themed fonts could be the difference between making a sale or losing a customer to another festively decorated site.

Think like a customer! How often have you come into the holiday season knowing that you had gift shopping to do and you felt unsure where to start? The power of suggestion is a great tool for giving customers the extra push to make a purchase. Business Insider Intelligence recently released a report that stated that 55% of shoppers were doing their holiday shopping in-store to browse for gift ideas. Now imagine how many of those shoppers would make a purchase if they saw your beautiful gift guide with items. Maybe they were already planning to look at your store and your gift guide gave them the perfect answer to their gift conundrum.

Refinery 29’s gift curator landing page is a creative take on the gift guide. They created this cute curator filled with blog-style suggestions for cute gift ideas, including product reviews and even ideas for who the gift may suit.

Gift guides don’t have to be restricted to just your website, they also make an clever email-flow with a clear call to action that says ‘shop now and score great deals on these products, and more’. Great Lakes Northern Outfitters, a Minneapolis-based men's apparel store, released a great example of an email gift guide last year. The guide includes a careful selection of their favorite items, followed up with links that correlate directly to each item through a simple numbering system.

Starting your search for a loyalty solution without first identifying your needs is like walking into a grocery store without a shopping list. Sure, you can do it, but your experience will be much more efficient and cost-effective if you go into the store with a clear idea of what you want and need. The same thing goes when shopping for the right software. Before you embark on your search, take some time to figure out your business requirements; consider the following factors:

The types of rewards you want to offer: Iron out the structure of your loyalty program and the perks that you want to offer. Are you planning to give points for every purchase? Do you want your program to have tiers or levels? What about birthday perks?

Outline the program flow that you want to implement. Document the steps, policies, and rewards you want to offer, then refer to your notes later on when you’re evaluating different solutions.

Communication: Running a loyalty program requires you to keep in touch with members. That’s why it’s important to determine how you want to communicate with customers. Do you prefer to send emails or text messages? Do you need to do both? Whatever the case, take note and make sure the system you choose can accommodate your needs.

Channel and device capabilities: If you’re selling on multiple channels (i.e., you have a brick and mortar store and eCommerce site) then you’ll need a solution that offers multi-channel capabilities.

Data and analytics: List out any metrics or KPIs that you want to track. Do you need insights around your rewards redemption rate? What about your top spenders? Would you need to export your data into an Excel or CSV file? Figure out your needs from a reporting and analytics perspective, and keep those requirements in mind during your search.

Already have your needs documented? Great! You’re ready for the next step.

Step 2: Kick off your search!

When it comes to evaluating software, there’s no shortage of resources that can aid your search. There are plenty of people, websites, and companies that can provide information about loyalty vendors in the market.

To avoid getting overwhelmed, we recommend starting with the following:

Your existing Point-of-Sale or eCommerce solution

Loyalty programs almost always require transactional data to run effectively. That’s why it’s critical that you integrate your solution with the sales platform. Your loyalty system must be able to ‘talk’ to your Point-of-Sale and eCommerce system.

For this reason, we suggest that you check if your current Point-of-Sale or eCommerce provider’s App store for any loyalty software. Most companies will have preferred loyalty add-ons, so it may benefit you to go with the recommendations of your existing provider’s.

Doing so will make the setup process easier, and the likelihood of running into integration issues will be much lower.

Other merchants

Consult with other retailers and ask them about the loyalty solutions they’re using. How much does their solution cost? What are their favorite features? Would they recommend it to others? These are just some of the questions you should ask when gathering intel.

And if you know of any local retailers with a good program, consider heading over to their shops so you can see their loyalty software in action.

Google and YouTube

Good ‘ol Google can still be a reliable source of software information, and it could help you find relevant providers and reviews. Just run a search using keywords like ‘loyalty app for [insert eCommerce/POS provider]’ and see what comes up.

Step 3: Run the numbers

Once you’ve done your initial research, you should have a fairly good idea of what loyalty solutions are out there and how much they cost. The next step (if you haven’t done so yet), is to set a budget and determine how much to allocate for the software.

You can do this by enumerating the costs of your loyalty program. Such costs may include:

• Software subscription (use the info you’ve gathered from the previous step to estimate this)

• Cost of rewards

• Loyalty marketing costs

• Time and labor costs to run and maintain the program

Doing this exercise will give you a more solid idea or how much you can spend on your program. You could even take things a step further by calculating your Return-On-Investment (ROI) using the formula

[investment gains] - [loyalty program cots] x 100

This above calculation does require a bit of speculation, so do your best to forecast the added revenue that you’ll gain from having a loyalty program. These gains may include:

• increase in repeat purchases

• increase in new customers

• higher order values

• more referrals

Once you know what your investment will look like, you’ll be able to figure out that right amount to allocate for your loyalty software.

Step 4: Evaluate each solution’s customer support

No matter how great a system is, you need to anticipate the need for some level of customer support. It’s not uncommon for questions or tech issues to arise when you’re dealing with software, so you want to make sure you have access to the right support and resources if and when such issues come up.

When you’re evaluating options, try to get a feel for their customer support. Do they provide phone assistance or is everything done via email and chat? If they have a customer service line, what are their hours?

Most software providers have an online help centre. Before signing up, you may want to peruse their support documents and resources (i.e., tutorials, white papers, etc.) to gauge how effective and informative they are.

Marsello, for example, has a searchable online help center that contains several articles on how to use and get the most out of the software.

Step 5: Evaluate the program from your customers’ eyes

Your customers will also spend a fair amount of time interacting with your program, so you’ll want to evaluate loyalty program providers from your customers’ perspective. There are a number of ways to do this. If you’re taking a free trial of the software, join your own loyalty program as a customer and see how it goes. Going through a demo? Ask the provider to walk you through the program from a customer’s side of things.

Alternatively, you can find stores that are using the loyalty software that you’re considering and then test their program as a customer. A good place to find these stores is on the loyalty provider’s website under examples, success stories, or case studies.

Wrapping up

Searching for the right loyalty program for your retail store may take some time. You’ll need to speak with different providers, run the numbers, and put yourself in your customers’ shoes to really figure out the best system for your business.

It can be big a project, but if you adopt a systematic approach and put your customers at the centre of your search, we guarantee that you’ll end up with the right solution.

Need more help with your loyalty marketing initiatives? Check out our in-depth
loyalty guide for gaining customers for life.

Clearly, time off and flexibility are important to today’s workforce. If you’re able to offer more flexible hours and schedules to your staff, by all means, do so. Your team will love you for it. 

4. Free or discounted merch

Be generous with your staff discounts and freebies. Aside from being a great token of appreciation, giving your team access to your merchandise also helps their product knowledge.

Case in point: I recently had a positive customer service experience when I went into a store to buy a new pair jeans. After being greeted by a staff member, I was given personalized help and information about the different jeans I was trying on. 

The associate gave me specific advice and input about each pair. She knew which products didn’t stretch too much and she had some great product care tips to share. 

When I complimented her on her deep product knowledge, she explained that her boss gives her different items of clothing to try out when they get new stock. 

Consider doing similar in your store. Give your employees free (or heavily discounted) merch. In addition to keeping them happy, you’re also helping them get to know your products better. That, in turn, leads to better shopper interactions and happier customers. Win-win. 

5. Personalized rewards

Do you want to provide a token that really stands out? Then tailor your reward to each specific employee. 

For example, if you know that your store manager enjoys musicals, why not get them free tickets to the hottest Broadway show? Do you have an associate who’s expecting her first child? Give her a baby care basket. 

Get to know your employees, figure out what they like, and come up with the appropriate rewards.

One useful tool that could help you get the hang of creating captivating and appropriate rewards is Canva’s Certificate Maker.

Consider ideas like gift certificates – a piece of paper given by the retailers to their employees and customers which can be used in exchanging goods and services. Some eCommerce sites offer digital gift certificates to cater to a bigger audience with varied preferences. Retailers also use certificates as a reward for employees for their hard work and are sometimes given to their top customers as a gift of appreciation.

For a wide array of designs, Canva Certificate Template is an online tool that can be used by retailers or eCommerce sites in creating more appealing gift cards for their employees and customers.

6. Recognition

For obvious reasons, recognizing and calling out someone for a job well done motivates them to do even more stellar work. So be sure to recognize your team members whenever they do something great.

We should also note, though, that recognition shouldn’t just come from the top. While it’s good to know that the boss recognizes great work, it’s equally important for an employee to feel recognized by his or her peers. 

The people that someone works with day-to-day have a big impact on their morale and output. So it makes perfect sense that being recognized by their peers can do wonders for productivity and performance.

So, encourage peer-to-peer recognition. You can do this in your staff meeting or sales huddles. Ask your staff to name team members they think are doing really well and help spread some good vibes all around.

What’s the best way to reward your staff?

We just gave you a bunch of ideas on how to reward your employees. The question is, which method is right for you? The short answer is it depends. There’s no one-size-fits-all rewards system, since each business and work environment is different.

You need to factor in the personality types of your staff or even their gender. Frac.tl found that men and women prefer different types of rewards, so you need to take that into consideration as well. 

The bottom line? To find out which types of employee rewards work best, have a think about what makes sense of your staff and business. You may need to test a few tactics to really figure out what works, and keep at it. 

Final words

Building a great working culture is about appreciating and encouraging your staff, and enabling them to be advocates for your business. 

Your staff are the face of your business, so by creating a supportive environment that actively notices and rewards great work, you’re not only doing your staff a favor, you’re also paving the way for a better customer experience and business overall.

What you can do

Once you figure out the major reasons customers are abandoning your checkout, focus on plugging these leaks first.

1. Cut unexpected costs where you can

Sometimes adding costs to orders is out of necessity, like taxes, shipping, and fees. Ask yourself, are your added costs fair? Are they expected? And, are they explained? If you can’t cut added costs, make sure it’s clear what these added fees are paying for. Consider offering free shipping on orders over a certain amount. As Invesp reported, “93% of online buyers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping options are available whereas 58% of consumers add more items to cart to qualify for free shipping.”

2. Allow guests to purchase

Some shoppers just want to make a quick purchase. They don’t have the time to create an account. Allow shoppers to check out as guests.

3. Optimize your checkout process

One in four shoppers abandons their shopping carts due to a “too long/complicated checkout process”. Optimize your checkout process by cutting down the number of steps or required fields. Consider testing to see if single-page or multi-page checkouts work for you. Some studies have shown single pages to be more effective and some retailers see better results from multi-page. It’s a good idea to see what works for you. If you’re going to use multi-page checkout, including a progress bar to show the customer how they are progressing can help nudge them through. One upside of opting for multi-page, is you capture the customer's email early on the first page, allowing you to follow up later with an abandoned cart email if they do abandon it.

4. Build trust

From website errors, not enough information on returns and guarantees, to unusual payment methods, shopper trust can be lost pretty quickly when it comes to them feeling in the mood to hand over their credit card details.

• Make sure your eCommerce site is with a trusted provider, like Shopify, Lightspeed or BigCommerce to help ensure it’s not likely to error or crash.

• Offer different payment methods and use trusted payment gateways, like PayPal.

• Use security logos. In a test published by Get Elastic, an online retailer found that by placing a security badge on their site, sales increased 4-6%. Yet other studies show a decrease when using these logos. So it’s important to test the placement and style.

• Display total price upfront, before the customer is required to enter their payment details.

• Offer guarantees and refunds. By having a clear and practical guarantee and refund policy, you’re adding peace of mind to the shopper’s experience.

Of course, even with all these improvements, some shoppers will still abandon. Not to worry, here’s where abandoned cart recovery emails come in.

5. Recovering abandoned carts

When shoppers start the checkout process and add their email address, but stop before completing the sale, they aren’t a lost sale yet. You can still win them back with an automated abandoned cart email app.

Using Marsello, you can design a series of two great-looking follow-up emails that automatically pull in the products that were in the customer’s cart, reminding them of what they left behind. Once you’ve customized the design, you can set the times you want the emails to automatically send.

Tips for a successful email:

• Include product images of the item/s they selected.

• Include a strong call-to-action button that takes them back to their cart to complete their purchase.

• Make it your own with your branding and messaging, but keep it short.

• Send the first email out within 24 hours, and the second within a few days.

• Try adding a discount coupon code on the second email to entice them to complete their purchase.