Although many small retailers have offered early Holiday promotions at the point of sale, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching. The weekly roundup is full of Holiday Joy, featuring articles on using Black Friday to your advantage, what retailers are expecting for Cyber Monday, two imperative tips to help increase your Holiday profits and mobile shopping first Christmas. The kick off to the Holiday shopping season is almost here…make sure you’re prepared to impress your customers.
1. Black Friday 2009: It is Time to Shop for Your Small Business Needs – A different take on what Black Friday should mean for small retailers. With many large retailers slashing prices on products that will improve your small business performance why not take advantage of them. Take the time to look at the deals and maybe you could purchase that new computer to run your point of sale software more efficiently.
2. Retailers Make Push for ‘Cyber Monday’ – Will you be in the 87% of retailers that will offer a Cyber Monday promotion? Although some people debate whether there’s a real advantage to Cyber Monday, you will have to agree that sales do increase online and consumers are looking for them on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
“While it may not be the biggest online shopping day on the calendar, it’s still online retail’s alarm clock, drawing 33% more shoppers than the rest of November’s average.”
3. Email marketing will make a difference in your holiday business – If you’re not already collecting customer email address it’s a perfect time to start. Email marketing is a free, targeted way to announce your small retail Holiday sale promotions to proven customers. This article mentions a free “Holiday in a Bag” kit from Campaigner that features email templates and graphics, holiday e-cards, and 100 tips for holiday marketing including instructions for optimizing deliverability of email marketing.
4. Training for unit-level success for holiday 2009 – Having highly trained, helpful employees during this shopping season is extremely important if you want to retain customers. This article gives some great tips on how and what to train your employees on to assure customer service satisfaction.
5. Mobile Shopping’s First Christmas – Shopping from your mobile phone was practically non-existent last year but as technology has advanced it has brought Mobile Shopping its first Christmas. In this helpful article form Business Week, Paula Rosenblum explains why mobile shopping is here to stay.