The holiday season is upon us and it calls for joy all around. And yes, I am talking about not only the shopper but the retailer as well (they should be able to win as well, no?). With the air of festivities hitting the shelves there are incredible tools and hacks for both retailers and customers to benefit from.
Loads of content on the web which speaks from a shopper’s perspective. I am going to flip the script and first begin from the retailer’s side followed by the customers. Considering the retailers are putting awesome offers out there for us, they deserve the best tech strategies as well.
Here are hacks and artificial intelligence driven strategies which a retailer can use to make this holiday season be a blow out success.
1. Use IBM Watson Holiday Reporting for shopping data.
Here is a giant. If big data marries a sleek shopping app then the IBM Watson Holiday Reporting is its adorable child. Its big data technology using hundreds of thousands of data points to give you key actionable insights which are useful for shoppers and retailers alike. With a host of featured data types, like web page views, orders, session length, marketing interaction, social media and news stories.
It gives a telling picture on customer behavior which can be very useful for marketers and retailers. It uses these data sets into actionable insights and trends giving a clear picture to the retailer to understand his customer at a very local level. What’s more, the tools where it gives you the insights on are very easy to access and understand.
2. Try using a one click up-sell.
What is the best way to maximize revenue after they buy your product? Sell them another item which compliments the main product they bought as a one-click up-sell. Say the customer bought a self-help book from Tony Robbins. After the customer adds the product to the shopping cart and heads towards the billing page, the website can give a quick one-click up-sell for a Tony Robbins audio book download.
This up-sell will typically be a low-cost product offered at a fraction of the price of the original product and perfectly compliment the main product. This will incentivize the customer to buy more and increase your sales.
3. Add FOMO timer to your homepage
Like I mentioned in the intro, the Fear-Of-Missing-Out Factor rides high in the customers mind during the holiday season. The retailer can take maximum advantage of it by putting a FOMO timer (it’s a piece of code that’s placed on your Click Funnels landing page to increase urgency) on the sales page. This will again incentivize the customer to act fast and buy the irresistible deal before the timer runs out. You can use Deadline Funnels for this. The only catch: Make the urgency real and not a fake one. After the timer is over, the product should not be available anymore.
Now to give some cool holiday strategies for the customers.
4. Leave your shopping cart unattended.
My marketing friends will kill me for this, but here is a little secret which will make you win this holiday season. Register at your favorite deal site, add the product to cart and fill your billing info, then abandon the page. Chances are high that in a day’s time you will get an automatic email from the website, offering you additional 10 percent or 20 percent discount on the same product which you left unattended. This means over the already existing discount you will get an additional percentage off.
5. Use a best-price finder tool.
Every product will have multiple deals running at the same time on different online shopping portals. You do not want to pay more money for the same product which you can get for cheaper from another site. To solve this add a browser extension like InvisibleHand. It will give you a discreet notification if there are lower prices for a product you are searching for.
6. Use a price tracking tool.
It is best practice to track the price fluctuations for the products you are eyeing to see the trends in discounts. If the prices are increasing, then the product is in demand and you should buy before they rise more conversely the same is true. You can study these fluctuations using a tool called CamelCamelCamel. Its a good addition to your product spying arsenal.
7. Don’t waste time researching coupons.
Not all brands offer exclusive discounts outside of their direct marketing. Shoppers should always check to see if a retailer has page outlining their coupon policy on their website. By visiting the website directly and reviewing a retailer’s coupon code policy, you can save yourself a lot of time searching for coupons. Examples of retailers that do this Truefacet, Zappos, Target and Amazon.
Until next time, Happy Shopping!
**Abhik Shome contributed to this article.