Holiday Season Preparation

Let's get down to business!
First of all I have to say that I am not a great write ;) I am a result oriented marketer so if there are things that you might not understand, send me an n email and I will be more then happy to explain or fix.

The holiday season is upon us, and as all good retailer we are in the swirl of promotional hurricane. The schedules and plans are ready or begin prepared :), the budgeting for the next year is done so it's time to get your hands dirty.
We all know that the holidays are the most important time of a year for online and traditional retailers, and we know that there are few obvious promotional elements must be implemented to increase you sales and customer loyalty during this season.

Let's look into these elements:

1. "Free Shipping" HA! If you ship, ship it FREE. Online customer is a price conscious customer and will calculate all of the costs including taxes and shipping. Give away free shipping if you can, you will make up for it in volume and it will increase customer loyalty. Free shipping is a great incentive, that $10 difference could be a decision breaker "Weather I buy online or save me some time and buy in the store!"
2. "No Hassle Returns" or "Money-Back Guarantee" Great Incentive... People like to be reassured that if they are not satisfied with a product they can return without any hassles within a specified time frame. Builds trust and loyalty
3. "Coupons" Everybody likes coupons :)... Especially when you run an Affiliate Program. Custom coupon codes have shown to convert at a very good percentage. Make your coupons available for both web and in-store use.
4. "Gift with Purchase" Who doesn't like free stuff :) I don't think that I have to go into details here but no matter what you give as long as it's free with purchase it's good.
5. Post Sale Email Return Discount I tend to come up with these complicated names :) Basically in a properly set and optimized business 20%-30% of your revenue driven by return customers. To reinforce customers loyalty would be nice to send an email after a purchase with a %OFF coupon on the next purchase.

Those are the main elements that I use in my strategies to get the holidays rolling. You really need to take care of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) during the holiday season and remember that the customer is god :)