Keeping the Holiday Momentum

Today’s post comes from Scott Sanfilippo, co-founder and President of Solid Cactus, a full-service web design company specializing in the development of Yahoo! Stores. Scott and his business partner Joe Palko co-founded one of the first e-commerce sites, FerretStore.com, in 1994. After years of selling ferret hats, Scott still enjoys working in the pet industry, he serves as company spokesperson for Solid Cactus and keeps busy scheduling free training webinars, “boot camps” and other interactive events for e-commerce store owners.

Sure, they love you in December. But will they still love you in January?

You’ve just invested big money in search engines to attract customers to your website for the holidays. It worked, and not only are seasonal sales up, you have a batch of new customers. Now, how do you keep them coming back in the New Year?

It’s one of the questions we’re asked most at Solid Cactus. “How do I get my holiday shoppers to come back after the holidays?” The simple answer is, marketing. The fact is; you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve already invested money to acquire that customer once, now use some creativity to get them to be a repeat shopper. Here are some suggestions:

Email Marketing

Right after the New Year, send an email to every new customer you acquired from November 1st through the end of the year and thank them for their business. Then, offer them something special such as free shipping or a price or percentage break on their next order. Or, go straight to premiums and offer a free gift with their next order. Be sure to choose something which matches their purchase profile when possible. I suggest using Got Marketing, which can be done right in the back-end of your Yahoo! Store. You can track the effectiveness of your email through Got Marketing, and you can offer the recipients of this email an easy way to unsubscribe.

Postal Mail

Email may be instant, but nothing can beat the impression of direct mail. Have a postcard created to send out to your holiday customers that not only acts as a “thank you” card but also a coupon for something off their next order. For your large orders, consider sending a greeting card. Everyone gets mail at their house and an attractive postcard that stands out, hits the message home. Best of all, postal mail doesn’t have a spam filter so your message is guaranteed to reach your customer.

The most important ingredient to the success of any follow-up via email or postal mail is “the hook” – some type of a call to action to get that customer to come back.

You may be saying “but most of my holiday shoppers buy my products as gifts for someone else.” That’s perfect! The gift givers can either keep your offer for themselves or pass it on to someone they know who can use the offer – perhaps someone new who can become a brand new customer!

Scott Sanfilippo,
Guest blogger for Yahoo! Small Business

12 Posts of Christmas: Post Three—Tell a Friend

In a recent Yahoo! sponsored survey about Holiday buying habits, sixty percent of respondents said recommendations from friends and family were a top influencer in purchase decisions. So how do you make sure that friends and family can easily make recommendations to others once on your site? Make it easy for them to send an email.

Below is one method for adding a JavaScript to pages that creates an email link with a pre-formatted subject and message along with a link to the page which the shopper is viewing. Note: The instructions below are for adding the script to pages built in the Store Editor but this script will work for any HTML editing tool where you can add code to the head section and body section of the page. This method also requires the shopper has an email client on their computer.

To add this feature:

1. From the Store Manager, click the Store Editor link.
2. Go to the Variables page and add the head section code to the Head-tags variable. (You can also override the head-tags variable on a per-page basis if you wish to use this feature only on a few select pages.
3. Go to the page(s) where you wish to add this feature and add the body section code to the page.

Note: If you wish to add the link to all pages, you have a few options of where to add the link

• final-text variable
• intro-text field
• HTML-below-nav-bar (Editor 3.0 only)
• HTML-above-nav-bar (Editor 3.0 only)
• Use the Link button to add a link to your contents navigation links
• Create a custom type that includes a new property for this link where you specify in a custom template

Head section (add the below part to the head-tags variable)


<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
function emailafriend()
{
var emailbody = "Insert text here to appear in the email message. Hint: Don’t include any words likely to trip up spam filters "+window.location;
var emailsubject = "Enter text here to appear as the subject—Hint: Don’t include any words likely to trip up spam filters.";
window.location = "mailto:?subject="+emailsubject+"&body="+emailbody;
}
// end -->
</script>


Body section (add the below part to your page where you wish the link to appear)

<a href="javascript:emailafriend();">Tell a friend</a>


You can also replace the “tell a friend” link text with a tell a friend graphic that you create to match the look of your site and make this feature stand out more. Also, while it is possible to set up this feature without using JavaScript, this method allows you to customize the subject and body message of the email to fit the season (for example “Saw the perfect stocking stuffer”, or “Here’s a great gift for Mother’s day”).

You can also set up a more formal solution that will not only send the email, but also allow you to collect the email address* (of those that approve) of the sender and recipient. This method allows anyone to send an email but it does require more time to set up, and some shoppers may be wary of providing email addresses to a newly visited site for fear of spam.

*Note: Be sure you are in compliance not only with the Yahoo! Small Business Terms of Service and the Yahoo! Store guidelines but also with all state and federal laws regarding privacy and unsolicited commercial email (spam).

So don’t wait. For a few minutes of set up time, you can start getting some highly qualified leads at no cost to you.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

Everyone Loves Free

My grandfather always used to say “For free you take, for pay you hesitate.” Well merchants it’s time to start taking. The nice folks over at Wiley, publishers of the Dummies guides, have graciously provided a FREE chapter of Rob Snell’s Starting a Yahoo! Business for Dummies.

The chapter, Converting Browsers Into Buyers, (PDF) includes:

• Ten tips for increasing customer confidence (and likelihood to purchase)

• Eleven tips for customizing product pages

• Over a dozen tips for improvements to your checkout pages

• Usability pointers such as monitoring the user’s of your site and increasing the page loading speed.

So now’s your chance to get a free taste of all the good advice Rob has to offer in his book. And if you like what you are reading, you can purchase Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies from Amazon.com.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

More Thoughts about SES

I attended a bunch of sessions last Tuesday and Wednesday at the Search Engine Strategies conference. I came away with a lot of information and insights to share, but these topics are so important that it’s going to take me a while to get to them.

However, I wanted to share one quote from one of the presenters, Brian Mark, CTO of Toolbarn.com. During the SEM Retailer session, Brian was showing screenshots of various search marketing ads his company ran and how subtle tweaks to the wording saw dramatic increases in conversion rates. He was trying to explain how his company really wanted to emphasize the value proposition of the products they sell (mainly tools). What was it he said?

Our customers don’t want [to buy] a drill, they want a hole.

If a big light bulb didn’t go off in your head, re-read that sentence. Customers are not so much interested in the products themselves, but rather how the product or some aspect of how you will fulfill the order is a solution to a problem or a need. (Of course there may be exceptions to this so feel free to take issue with my interpretation of his comment.)

What This Means to You

• Consider carefully how your search marketing ads (or any copy on your site) are speaking to the needs of the customer. Are you solving their problem be it by offering more variety, a better value, or unmatched service?
• Anyone can likely come along and match you on price. You can gain a competitive advantage by solving other problems such as shipping orders sooner than the mega merchants, offering phone support, or building a community of visitors.
• As soon as you know what your value proposition is, make sure your customers know as well. Use this test: Show your store to a stranger for 5 seconds and then ask them if they can tell you what you sell and why they would buy from you. If they can’t do this, you’re not making it clear enough to them.

So tool merchants, start selling those “holes”, and non-tool merchants, start figuring out what the “holes” are for your market.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business