Over seven days we bagged $5,708 in online sales from our Christmas in July promotion. Some of this was product we wanted to quit while some was bought in on a deal for the sale.
We spent nothing on marketing other than a small amount of time on two emails and some social media posts. $0 spent.
Looking elsewhere online in Australia and I can see that Christmas in July is being done by enough retailers online, with enough heft to say it is a thing, something that any retailer with an on line presence should do.
We didn’t pitch it in-store. Rather, this year, we wanted to try online only. We are very happy with the results.
Every purchase was made by someone hours and more away from the shop – to people who would never walk past our front door. This is one of the values of online, it opens the reach of the business, positions you to be less reliant on local even though all of us in local continue to pound the shop local drum.
Online itself is critical in retail today. Spike opportunities like Christmas in July, Black Friday and even Prime Day are opportunities to move stock that slow. They are also opportunities to connect with new shoppers.
In our situation, we won some good business because existing customers referred friends, for which we are grateful. We did this without leveraging are special tech skills or platforms. We use Shopify for the website and it is integrated with our Tower Systems POS software. Sales flow from Shopify to the Tower software and from there to Xero, another integration. For shipping management, choosing the most cost effective, we have an integration there – to reduce not only shipping costs but labour costs too.
These integrations have been closed to reduce labour cost and improve the customer experience – both critical to any online operation.
We have more sales events planned outside of the majors I have mentioned in this post. we have a terrific email database of engaged shoppers as I know if we use that with respect it will deliver more good news.
Footnote: around Melbourne plenty of businesses are pitching Christmas in July, including, of all places, KFC.