Using a CRM During the Holidays - 3 Easy Steps

With an estimated 630 billion dollars spent on winter holiday shopping in the United States this year, your business has the opportunity to take advantage of an increase in shoppers to have, not just a successful holiday season, but also carry over steady traffic through the new year. To do this, you should utilize a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and follow these three steps to engage with your new customers during the holidays and for months to come:

1. Capture New Customer Data!

Retailers see an increase in foot traffic during the holidays, from parents shopping for their families to individuals shopping for their friends. Make sure your business is capturing key contact information from each person who walks into your business.

Make the signup process easy for your customers. A long form that requires more than a few moments is a deterrent for many customers, according to LoyaltyLion, 70% of customers don’t sign up for a loyalty program because of the time involved in actually signing up! Cut down on all of the work associated with signing up and make it simple.

Tip! Are your CRM or Loyalty Program sign ups slow? Incentivize your customers with a promotion to encourage visitors to sign up with a promotion - and make sure you advertise in your establishment with displays. Think Starbucks loyalty program advertising:

2. Marketing and Promotions

Once you’ve captured customer data, use that information to engage your new and returning customers to keep them coming back through the holidays and beyond! 19.7% of annual retail revenue is generated during the winter holidays.

Updates through email. Engage with your customers through email! Start with a “thanks for stopping by” to keep your business top of mind. You can also send periodic emails that provide valuable information. Got new items in? Or a new addition to your menu? Shoot your mailing list an email letting them know,

Promotions! Discounts are a sure fire way to bring customers back into your business. Use your favorite email marketing tool to send out a 20% discount to your loyal customers.

Ongoing Engagement with a Loyalty Program. A well thought out Loyalty Program is a smart way to continuously engage with your customers. Periodic updates to your loyal customers work to keep interest and encourage customers to keep coming back in order to hit program milestones.

3. Keep momentum going into the New Year

Remember, this is a long game. Your engagement may not pay off immediately, rather, getting to know your customers, finding out what matters to them, and engaging based on your CRM findings is important to building positive, lasting relationships.

Keep track of what your customers are buying and use that information to steer your offerings. If you notice a strong trend, lean into that, and offer more similar products.

Utilize promotions all year long. Here are a couple promotional ideas you can use with the information you collect with your CRM:

• Send Happy Birthday discounts. If you collect birthday information from your customers, use those details and send out a birthday promotion each month to customers whose birthday falls within that month.
• Keep the holiday spirit going all year long. Celebrate some of the lesser celebrated holidays. Groundhog day special, anybody?
• Let your customers know when their favorite items are back in stock and when similar items are available.

With an integrated CRM, like the CRM built into Revel, your business can leverage the increased foot traffic to maintain a steady flow of repeat customer for months to come. To learn more about using a CRM to develop profitable customer relationships, check out Revel's CRM Guide in the Resource Center.