How retailers can beat the post-holiday sales slump

The holiday season is typically a busy time for retailers, as consumers are more likely to shop and spend money during this time of year. However, after the holiday season is over, retailers often experience a decline in sales — a post-holiday sales slump. This slump can be caused by a variety of factors, including the end of holiday promotions and discounts, returns, purchase on gift cards where the revenue was recognized in a previous quarter, and the general slowdown in consumer spending after the holidays.

To beat the post-holiday sales slump, retailers can follow several strategies. One is to continue promoting discounts and sales to encourage consumers to continue shopping. Retailers can also offer special deals and promotions to encourage customers to redeem gift cards and keep spending. A robust, data-driven promotions strategy can help retailers reduce any excess post-holiday inventory and limit the decline in sales.

Another strategy is to focus on customer experience. Retailers can create a positive and engaging shopping experience for their customers by offering personalized recommendations, providing excellent customer service, and offering in-store events and experiences.

Personalization makes it easier to reduce post-holiday returns by offering exchanges, to increase the average order size for customers using gift cards and more. This can help retailers both build customer loyalty and drive sales. Excellent customer service is critical any time of the year, but especially post-holiday, it can help in avoiding negative return experiences and in converting returns into exchanges, including upsells, and driving larger purchases when customers are using gift cards. Personalized customer service can make these kinds of transactions seamless, for example, by finding customers an appropriate exchange item from anywhere in your warehouses or other locations, and shipping it either to them directly or to your store for pickup.

Customer events during this post-holiday period are another way to deliver an engaging, memorable, and personalized shopping experience that encourages customers to come back to the store. They might offer special discounts or deals for customers who attend the event, or offer food and drinks or live music alongside an immersive and engaging shopping experience with themed displays or pop-up shops, or styling workshops. Another strategy is to leverage technology, such as virtual and augmented reality, to enhance the in-store experience and create a sense of excitement and novelty.

Retailers can also creatively use digital marketing and e-commerce in this period to reach and engage with their customers. By leveraging social media, email marketing, and other digital channels, retailers can continue to drive sales online as well as foot traffic in-store. Retailers can use social media platforms to run post-holiday sales and promotions, including discounts on specific products or categories, or providing incentives for customers to make a purchase in-store; leverage their email marketing campaigns to send personalized post-holiday promotions or invitations to customers based on their previous purchase history; or, host in-store events as discussed above where the invite was only available through their social channels.

Retailers can also consider expanding their product offerings or introducing new products to keep customers interested and drive sales. This could include offering new categories of products, such as home goods or beauty products, or introducing limited-edition or exclusive items.

Finally, retailers can consider using data and analytics to better understand their customers and predict future demand. By analyzing customer data and trends, retailers can optimize their inventory and product mix to meet consumer demand and drive sales.

Retailers are privy to a rich amount of first-party customer purchase and preference data that can be mined for insights. For example, retailers can use customer purchase history data to identify which products are most popular among their customers and promote them more heavily in-store to drive sales, use customer data to create personalized product recommendations for individual customers, increasing the likelihood that they will make a purchase, bundle products are frequently purchased together, and identify new product opportunities to stock more appealing post-holiday, non-gift inventory.

Overall, the post-holiday sales slump is a common challenge for retailers, but there are several strategies that can be implemented to overcome it. Retailers can continue promoting discounts and sales, focus on customer experience by creating a positive and engaging shopping experience including creative in-store events, and use digital marketing, social media and e-commerce to drive sales. They can also consider expanding their product offerings or introducing new products, and use data and analytics to better understand their customers and predict future demand. By implementing these strategies, retailers can more easily reduce any excess post-holiday inventory, increase customer loyalty, and continue to drive sales during the post-holiday period.