The holidays are closer than you think! If you're running a busy business, the fourth quarter (Q4) is crunch time, and getting ahead of the curve is crucial. That was the main takeaway from our recent Free Training Friday, where we dove into holiday readiness with a focus on all the backend preparation you can—and should—do right now to save yourself a ton of stress later.
Why Start Your Holiday Prep in Q4?
It might feel early, but starting now is your secret weapon against last-minute panic, and preparing early gives you three key advantages:
- Reduce Stress: Avoid the frenzy when the bulk of holiday orders start rolling in.
- Plenty of Time to Test: Testing is vital! You need time to ensure all your offers, promotions, and systems are working flawlessly before you go live.
- Time to Pivot: Things go wrong—packaging suppliers might be out of stock, shipping routes might change. Starting early gives you the necessary wiggle room to adjust your plans without major disruption.
Key Areas for Backend Prep
To keep the holiday season running smoothly, focus on these essential backend tasks before the rush hits:
1. Plan Your Offerings and Packaging
Before you can build anything in your system, you need to finalize your products and how they'll be shipped:
- Creative Ideas: Get your team together! Talk to your frontline staff to understand what customers are asking for. Use this feedback to build enticing bundles and gift packs.
- Pricing Strategy: Decide on the pricing for your holiday bundles and promotions.
- Source Packaging: Figure out all your packaging needs—from custom wooden boxes to tissue paper. Get it sourced and shipped to your fulfillment house well in advance to avoid last-minute crises.
2. Maximize Corporate Gifting
Corporate gifting is a huge revenue generator, and now is the time to nail down your strategy:
- Utilize the Corporate Gifting Feature: If you use Commerce7, familiarize yourself with the dedicated corporate gifting feature. It streamlines the process of sending large, personalized orders to multiple recipients, making it easy to manage bulk gifting for corporate clients.
- Market Early: Draft an email campaign to let businesses know you offer corporate gifts.
- Dedicated Web Page: Put a highly visible button or link for "Corporate Gifts" right on your website's homepage to make it easy for potential purchasers to find the information they need.
- The White Glove Experience: If you make the ordering process easy and provide an excellent experience, companies will return to you year after year. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to get your product in front of new potential, long-term customers!
3. Use Tagging and Smart Notices for Targeted Outreach
This clever strategy helps your team identify and communicate with high-value customers:
- Identify Corporate Candidates: Train your tasting room or sales staff to organically ask about a customer's profession (e.g., real estate agent, attorney, salon owner) to gauge if they might be a corporate gifting prospect.
- Apply Customer Tags: Tag these customers in your CRM so you can execute a highly targeted email campaign this year and in the future.
- POS Smart Notices: Set up a POS smart notice that pops up when a tagged customer checks out. This reminds your staff to casually mention your corporate gifting options, turning a routine transaction into a sales opportunity.
4. Leverage Cross-Promotion Opportunities
Look for local businesses to partner with, as this is a win-win for everyone:
- Unique Gift Bundles: Partner with a local chocolatier, artisan cheese maker, or artist to include their products in your gift packs, creating highly appealing and unique options for your customers.
- Expand Your Reach: This strategy gets your product in front of a wider audience—the followers and customers of your cross-promotion partner!
Mistakes to Avoid
Finally, make sure you avoid these common mistakes to ensure your holiday season is seamless:
- Don't Wait on Shipping Deadlines: Reach out to your fulfillment house or shipper now to get their firm deadlines for orders to be delivered by Christmas. All your campaigns and internal logistics will backfill from this date.
- Ensure SKU Consistency: If you create new SKUs for bundles or gift packs, make sure the exact same SKU is in your Commerce7 system, your compliance software (ShipCompliant/VinoShipper), and your fulfillment house system. Inconsistent SKUs cause fulfillment exceptions and headaches.
- Not Testing Enough: Test everything! Log in as different customer segments, click every link in your campaign emails, and place a live order as a real customer to check that all post-order emails and confirmations are correct.
If you focus on this backend preparation now, you'll be able to launch your holiday campaigns confidently and enjoy a less-stressed Q4!
Join us for Free Training Friday Part Two on October 17 at 10am PT/1pm ET, where we’ll shift our focus to your website. We’ll show you how to create a seamless, conversion-focused shopping experience with real examples of Commerce7 tools that turn holiday browsers into buyers.