The holiday season has come and gone, resolutions for the new year have been made, and disposable income has been spent. With the festive cheer gone and the realities of a working life return, the entertainment and restaurant industries may see a “holiday hangover” with dips in sales throughout January and February, often setting the year’s lowest tallies. Despite this decrease in revenue, there are ways to help maintain customers’ spending momentum leftover from the Christmas shopping sprees and Boxing Day sales.
New Year’s Email Campaign
As the tradition of modern marketing continues, developing your email campaign for each specific event is the first step to increasing your post-holiday revenue. In the weeks leading into New Year’s, “year in review” emails are great ways to send to consistent customers to show them their spending (and saving) habits, while also showing them a positive retrospective of the year.
As the New Year festivities pass, use email and social media campaigns to promote your products or services as ways to engage with people’s resolutions. Most people make resolutions for a fresh start in the new year. Connecting common resolutions with your brand will help people think positively about your business while engaging with it in different ways.
Including customer surveys through emails is also a great way to increase customer engagement and interaction with your business. Customers who feel involved and heard will be more likely to support those businesses. Surveys at this time should be focused on improvements for the coming year.
Year-End and New-Year Promotions
Advertising year-end sales after Christmas will help you immediately sell off leftover holiday product or encourage people to come visit your restaurant for late Christmas or New Year’s celebrations. Including special gift card promotions will increase customer traffic. Having bonuses for customers who spend high dollar amounts or use gift cards can help incentivize those who have excess holiday spending to use it at your business. These promotions can be anything from receiving a percentage off their purchase or coupons for future purchases.
When January 1st comes, further sales and specials can be added to help support the New Year vibes. Many of these promotions should be short and sweet: keeping them to only a single month or two will encourage indecisive people. Encouraging loyalty programs with signup or renewal promotions in the new year can help further spending and increase your recurring customer base.
Stay Up to Date
Updating any of your social media pages, websites, email signatures, and digital signages to correspond with the correct year is more important than some might think. Using out-of-date messaging or information on these sites can quickly turn new customers away and upset recurring customers because it shows a lack of care for your business. Why would people want to engage with your products and services if it appears you don’t engage with them yourself? Updating any of your information for the new year will help keep people engaged with what is happening at your business with the year turning over, what has happened leading up to the new year, and what will be happening as the year progresses.
