5 Strategies to Increase Holiday Year-End Sales with Communication APIs

From Black Friday and Cyber Monday to Christmas and New Year’s, the great holiday shopping season is finally upon us. For retailers and eCommerce brands, it’s not too late to get that last-mile sales boost to impress your bosses and end your year on a festive note.

A survey by payment provider Klarna found that four in five shoppers tend to leave their holiday gift-buying to the last minute, planning only to finish their Christmas shopping within two weeks of the holiday. Even then, it’s not a hard deadline. Fifty-five percent of last-minute shoppers say they will still choose to purchase gifts online even if the order won’t be delivered in time for the holidays.

That means there’s still the tiniest window of opportunity for you to capture the attention—and wallets—of holiday shoppers. Here are five marketing and messaging tips that leverage the power of communication APIs to help get your brand and products seen by the right consumers, at the right time, this holiday season.

Tip 1: Curate and distribute holiday-themed gift guides

Reduce friction and shorten the buyer journey by curating shopping guides to help your customers find the perfect present, whether it’s for Mom, Dad, Best Friend, or Colleague. Secret Santa is also a popular festive activity, so be sure to round up all your best-selling products within budgets such as $20, $30, or $50. Consider also including a “Sustainable” or “Eco-conscious” gift category to align your brand with the rising demand for green products.

To generate publicity, consider distributing your guides over SMS. While most retailers tend to reserve SMS for delivery notifications or order confirmations, relatively few realize that the channel can also be a powerful marketing tool with unparalleled open and click through rates.

Tip 2: Create offers and discounts with holiday shoppers in mind

There are tons of quick and effective promotional strategies that businesses can use to drive holiday sales, such as:

  • Donating a percentage of each holiday sale to a local charity
  • Curating holiday-exclusive bundles, packages, or gift sets
  • Conducting flash sales and limited-quantity offers
  • Offering expedited shipping with minimum order amounts

According to Google, one in three last-minute holiday shoppers make purchase decisions based on which retailer can get their gifts to them soonest. This makes the year-end shopping rush a perfect time for businesses to offer limited-time, free expedited shipping to create urgency and encourage customers to checkout as soon as possible.

Consider this: In 2022, it is estimated that 3.21 billion mobile phone users are using chat apps to communicate. WhatsApp alone has got over two billion monthly active users! There is no denying that private conversations on chat apps are blowing up with discussions on the best deals, and this season is probably one of the best times to throw all your promotional tricks into the conversational mix.

With just one final month left until the end of the year, you need to be strategic, and that means being where your customers are. So, why not schedule and send timely reminders on seasonal, limited time offers through some of the most popular chat apps? With chat apps, you can alert indecisive customers on the types of rewards and discounts that they are entitled to, and tip them towards making that final purchase.

Tip 3: Ramp up social media campaigns

According to Smartly.io, more than half of consumers will turn to social media for their holiday shopping. Coupled with findings from an iKala report, which identified social commerce as the fastest-growing sales channel in Southeast Asia, the takeaway is clear: retailers hoping to win big during the year-end shopping season need to have a strong presence on social media.

Rather than rely solely on organic campaigns, consider running social media ads to grab shopper attention. Try taking advantage of the Instagram Shopping feature to tag your products directly in your ads, or use Meta’s click-to-Messenger and click-to-WhatsApp ads to give potential customers access to your sales or customer support teams for on-demand engagement. What better way to guarantee sales conversions than by chatting and tending to customers’ requests where they are already shopping, in real-time?

You might ask: ”Do I have to be on all the different social media channels?” Well, the answer is a resounding YES! All your customers have clear preferences when it comes to their go-to chat app. For example, most people in Indonesia are using WhatsApp, while Vietnamese very much favour Zalo. Casting your net wide and ramping up your presence across multiple chat apps is a sure-win strategy for brand awareness and customer acquisition.

Tip 4: Have an omnichannel strategy by adding video

Omnichannel commerce is the cornerstone of any successful holiday shopping season. Google found that 54% of shoppers use five or more channels to shop during the holiday period. This means that optimizing conversions across the end-to-end consumer journey, from discovery to consideration to sale, requires that businesses have omnichannel engagement capabilities.

In addition to SMS, chat apps, and social media, video is an underrated channel that retailers would often belatedly incorporate into their engagement mix. In fact, video in the form of live commerce has grown immensely popular around the world, especially during the pandemic.

During a 618 Shopping Festival, video live streaming accounted for 11% of the total sales. Embeddable video services and APIs, such as 8x8’s Jitsi as a Service (JaaS), allow businesses to have one-to-many, real-time video calls with customers for endless engagement possibilities, including live streaming events, product demonstrations, and community gatherings.

Tip 5: Make use of live video to provide the best customer service

As one of the busiest shopping periods of the year, the holiday season is often when retailers find themselves at the biggest risk of having customer service quality slip through the cracks.

Be sure to keep a close eye on all engagement channels to pick up on customer support tickets as quickly as possible, and communicate closely with your logistics partners to ensure that shoppers get their deliveries on time. If not, be proactive with your communications and pre-empt them early. Especially in the event of escalations, consider hopping onto a voice or video call to avoid further miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Live, one-on-one video calls allow your brand to connect directly with customers while letting them skip the holiday crowd as an added bonus through private virtual conversations. If you are concerned about the technical complexities of deploying a video tool, consider a web-based, plug-and play solution, where you can activate instant meetings through embeddable, transferable links that require no sign ups or downloads. It’s the perfect tool for clearing heaps of customer request tickets during the holiday season.

Juggling multiple messaging channels is easier with 8x8 Connect

Holiday periods can be particularly challenging and sometimes stressful for retailers. Managing human resources, logistics, and customer support, all while ensuring that customer experiences remain top-notch, is no easy feat. Businesses stand to benefit from having a single engagement management platform, such as 8x8 Connect, that makes monitoring, execution, and optimization of campaigns easier than ever.

8x8 Connect Dashboard

View campaigns and access analytics on your 8x8 Connect dashboard.

8x8 Connect streamlines real-time customer engagement by consolidating all your communication channels—SMS, chat apps, voice, and video—on one single dashboard. The result is radically enhanced employee experiences and increased efficiency, so your team can do much more with less. The no-code solution also easily integrates with your existing CRM and marketing platforms, including Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, and Adobe Campaigns, so there’s minimal onboarding time required to get started as quickly as possible.

Sign up for free at 8x8 Connect and start sending SMS messages today. Or find out more about how 8x8 Communication APIs can help retailers such as yourself take charge of their digital future, starting with omnichannel commerce, marketing, and engagement.