Wake up your Christmas Sales

If you want your handmade business to have great sales at the end to the year and make the most of huge increase in Christimas gift buying that happens in November and December - you need to have a plan!

✨ Decide what you want to promote this season

✨ Find different marketing angles to present your offer to various buyer types

✨ Get your emails written and scheduled in your email service provider so it is DONE!

So, you’re about to wake up your Christmas sales and the first thing to do is to think about what sort offering you want to make to your email list this Christmas - and when I say offering, offer, promotion I don’t mean that it has to be a big thing with a huge discount or loads of freebies thrown in - I simply mean - what are you going to present to your customers this Christmas which products are you going to suggest to them and how are you going to talk about those products to help people in your audience to feel like your ‘offer’ is perfect for a Christmas gift they need to buy this year for someone. what reason are you giving them to buy it now?

[Christmas is obviously giving you a helping hand here because the reason might simply be that it is the perfect gift for someone they want to buy for and it’s Christmas]

The reason to buy now does not have to be a discount

So i’m going to say this really clearly - the reason to buy now does not have to be a discount - you do not need to be offering a discount of any kind to run a promotion or offer to your email list or to anyone as a matter of fact.

You can obviously offer a discount wether it’s on a single item or wether you bundle some products together give a discount because they’re buying them together and that is a really effective strategy but it doesnt’ suit every business - not everyone has managed to get enough profit margin in their products yet to comfortably offer a discount and some brands just don’t want to discount. both approaches are totally fine and you can still run a good Christmas promotion without discounting.

So… what sort of offers can you be thinking about?

The one and done

You could have one offer that you talk about across the whole season - you’ll talk about it from different angles to speak to the different buyer types in your audience - So maybe if you are a candle maker and you’re going to offer a pick and mix bundle on all of your candles you can talk about that bundle for the whole campaign but still be bringing in different marketing angles and speaking to different buyers by showing candle combinations that buyers might choose for example you can show all of your floral scents together and offer it as a solution for a gift for your flowery pals - or all the relaxing scents as a wellness bundle.

This works wether you are discounting the bundle or not - you can use the same strategy to sell your candles at full price.

Or you could build a series of offers

Or you could build a series of offers that may attract different segments of your audience and talk about each one once or twice throughout your campaign.

So maybe you have a few products that you want to hightlight that are ideal gifts for different people If you’re a Jeweller you could curate pieces that go beautifully together - and offer them as a gift set -your buyer may not have thought to put the two together but if offered together and it’s still within the budget that they had in their head for that gift they may well just add the set to their basket.

Or if you’re a stationery seller you can bundle together a set of notecards and a pen to make a beautiful gift for a friend that loves to write letters. and then also bundle together a notebook and a few cute sticker sheets for the sister who loves journaling - look at the products you have and which ones compliment each other. It can be helpful to have a specific type of person in mind

and again you can discount or not ,- you can just offer them together but at full price

[it’s worth considering how much money it costs you to process and pack an order and think about discounting the bundle by that much though because you won’t be losing any money if you pack two items instead of one in to the package but the customer will still get a discount. ]

When you bundle items

When you bundle items it’s not presented as a discount so if you dont’ like discounts because you feel they devalue your brand, then bundling can be a good way of increasing your average order value and giving a discount without having to use any of the language associated with discounted promotions. but also you can just offer them together but they’re still full price - maybe you have some fancy way of packaging them together but maybe you don’t

If you decide on a few different offerings

If you decide on a few different offerings then you can talk about each one once or twice during your email campaign - if you have lots of offers and want to go a bit further, having a page on your website where all of your Christmas offers live will make it super easy for folk to find and buy gifts and you can point people there from your email .

if you have lots of bundles or even single products that are suitable for one kind of person, you can group them together by type - so one email message might be for folk who need to find a gift for garden lover and another one could focus on gifts for pet parents for example.

A good starting point for this is looking at the categories that you already have on your website - if you have a gifts for artists category in your shop then that could make a good offer.

You can obviously offer a discount

You can obviously offer a discount on a product that you want to highlight , you can offer free shipping, a free gift with purchase or free gift wrap - do mind your profit margins when offering discounts and freebies - though and I’m happy to help you check that when you get to it.

If supply is limited

another way to present your products for Christmas is, If supply is limited, say you’re a ceramacist and you only have the ones you’ve made- and it takes 6 weeks to make each batch so no more are being made before Christmas - that also is a great offer to put in front of your audience because if they want it as a gift for someone they do need to buy it now.

And Just highlighting a product as a great gift for a particular kind of person is also a valid offer to make to your audience.

So, how to decide?

• do you have a best seller that you want to promote to sell more of?

• do you have a new product that you want to showcase?

• are your sales spread over a wide area and so you want to highlight different products

• do your products bundle together well so you can promote some bundles?

Your first step is to look at your product range and decide what you want to promote this Christmas and how you’re going to offer it

So which products make great gifts and are you going to bundle any of them together or offer an extra incentive to buy such as a discount or some added value?

TOP TIME SAVING TIP
Folk on your email list are likely to convert at 3 times higher than people arriving on your website from social media, but as you’ll have already worked on the offer and the messaging - take your emails and split them up into social posts too - some may buy this time, but if they don’t they may join your email list

[you do have a pop up asking them to join don’t you ;) ]

and even if they don’t buy this time - you can invite them back in the future through your regular email campaigns.