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Why you shouldn’t bombard your customers with discounts this Christmas

I don’t know about you, but this year I feel bombarded by Christmas discounts.

Sellers often think that they’ve built up enough goodwill by mailing regularly (but not too often) the rest of the year to allow them to bombard their users with discounts during on the run up to Christmas.

However, during December your customers could be receiving several emails a day that are exactly like the emails you’re sending. And if you keep sending them, there’s a good chance that your subscribers will lump your emails in with the rest of them and simply hit ‘delete’.

A customer isn’t just for Christmas

The long-term relationship you have with your customer has to come first. Instead of trying to maximise your gains from your holiday sales in the short term, aim to maximise your long-term customer value.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t try to sell your products during the holidays. You should. But don’t do it at the expense of your relationship with your customers.

Email only two or three times maximum during the run up to Christmas. Send enough mailings that you let your customer base know about your offers, but don’t try to pressure them into buying.

Making your products stand out

If everyone is receiving multiple sales emails every day, the answer is not to mail them even more often to try and get sales. Instead, try to make your offer stand out.

Ask yourself why they signed up for your email list or purchased your products in the first place.

If you’re selling jeans, they might have signed up because they want to look great. If you run a website for work at home mums, they might have signed up because they want to make more money.

Identify what the core desire of your market is, then try to tailor your offers to that core desire. Instead of just discounting, try to come up with more creative offers that stand out.

Tailor offer around past purchases

Instead of just mailing all your customers with the same offer, try to segregate your list based on products they’ve purchased in the past. Then send offers based on what people have bought in the past. Whether this is possible for you or not will depend on how you have set up your mailing list. So if you can’t currently do this, it may be worth looking at the information you gather on your clients so you have the option to do it in future.

Ideally, this should give you a higher conversion rate as well as a lower unsubscribe rate.

So there you go, three ways of making the best of the run up to Christmas without annoying your customers.

Don’t miss a thing! Click here to get my newsletter.  I’ll also send you a copy of  my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Karen Roe

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Now this is definitely on my Christmas wish list…

You already know I’m a blogging and social media nut who lives half my life online.

In fact, some days I wonder if I’m starting to pixelate around the edges  smiley

 

Since I got my Android phone I’m glued to that too. (When I’m not in front of my PC, that is.)

So you might be surprised to hear that we don’t have a single iPad or Android tablet in our house. Mind you, it’s only a matter of time!

Ever since my Mum and Dad got a tablet each I’ve been experiencing tablet envy. I mean it’s not right that my folks are more technologically advanced than me, is it?

So you can imagine why I’m rather tempted by new Sony Xperia™ Tablet S.

Designed to be used in your living room or out and about, here are some of the things you can do with the Xperia™ Tablet:

  • Listen to high quality audio with the ClearAudio+ application
  • See a list of your Facebook friends’ ‘liked’ songs  with the ‘WALKMAN’ application
  • View, sort and share pictures and videos captured with the Xperia™ Tablet and consolidate users’ photos posted on social media sites like Facebook using the ‘Album’ application. (You can also store your photos in the cloud).
  • View, sort and manage all your social networking services and news feeds through one user interface, alongside your friends’ feeds and posts with the ‘Socialife’ application.
  • Enjoy video with high picture and sound quality with the Movies application.
  • View the latest movies, music and photos from a single account through the Sony Entertainment Network
  • Browse content for PlayStation® Mobile, and purchase and read your favourite digital books using the Reader application.
  • Control your home entertainment system e.g. switch on your TV and cable box, select inputs, adjust volume and more.
  • It has a slim aluminium body, splash-proof design – which will protect it from some of what your children will throw at it – and a wide range of accessories including covers, docks and stands.
  • And a built-in universal remote control.
  • Plus cross-device connectivity, network services and it looks good too.
  • And it’s powerful enough to enjoy your media, apps and games with a NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 quad-core processor and Android 4.0.3 operating system.

 

One feature I particularly like is ‘Guest Mode’, which lets you create individual profiles for family members. You can even set wallpaper, icons and apps access to for each person in the house. If your kids are getting older and are ‘borrowing’ your toys technology you’ll appreciate how useful this can be!

So do go take a look at the Xperia™ Tablet website and see what you think. Then please do leave me a comment and let me know which feature you like the best.

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Three good reasons why you should write an e-book now

Yes, you really should write an ebook as soon as you can. 🙂

In this audio I give my three top reasons for writing ebooks:

listen to ‘3 Good reasons why you should write an ebook’ on Audioboo

Here’s a summary of those reasons:

1. It’s a wonderful feeling when you wake up in the morning and find not only have you sold an ebook in your sleep, but there’s money in your Paypal account too! Of course, you need a plan to make sure you sell more than just the one! But the first few times it happens it’s incredibly exciting.

2. It’s a way to start selling your time one-to-one and start selling products one-to-many instead. Yes, I know it’s almost a cliche now, but it really is true. You only have 24 hours a day, but if you package up what you know as an e-book or e-course (information product) then you can sell an almost unlimited number of them. E-books are your first step.

3. E-courses and online communities (membership sites) are usually far more lucrative than e-books, but it really is best to start with an e-book. An e-book is a simple to produce as converting a Word file to a PDF and there are simple, inexpensive shopping carts you can use to take payments.

Having said that, actually writing your first e-book can be tricky because you need to find the time to do it and you have to deal with all the self-doubt that gets in your way. Then you have to add the extra blurb, get a good-looking cover and weigh up whether you should sell from your own sit or sell on other sites (e.g. Amazon’s Kindle). Best to get that first e-book out of the way now because the others will be far easier!

You can read how I turned an e-book into an e-course here: My first e-course – Earn What you Deserve as a Mumpreneur.

 If you’d like me to help you write your first e-book and get it up for sale, join me on Thursday for my ‘Write Your First e-Book’ webinar. Click here for more.

Image courtesy of anankkml / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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The easiest time ever to start a business. Seriously.

Seriously? After the credit crunch and double-dip recession? Yes.

Sage recently carried out a piece of research on entrepreneurship in the UK and found that…

… more parents (50%) are considering starting their own business in the next 2 years than those with no children (40%). One in five budding entrepreneurs wants set up their own business as they want a job that fits around their family life.  However, on the flipside, half said they are concerned about starting their own business as their family life means they appreciate the stability being employed gives them.

To that I would say “So what’s stopping you?”. The old days when you had little choice but to give up your job, get a huge bank loan and then work full time on your start-up are now over.

Instead, you can start a business in your evening and weekends, test your concept and grow your entrepreneurial muscles all without risking more than a few hundred pounds. How? Start any business that doesn’t involve a commitment to bricks and mortar or much stock, so I’m talking eBay, pop-up shops, Etsy and stalls at events or markets as well as online stores.

In my experience, what holds people back is the way we have been trained to only accept payment in return for employment. There’s this weird mental barrier in finding something that people want to buy and exchanging it for money. Learn more about this exchange process (selling in its most basic, one-to-one form) and how to do it well and you’re well on your way to starting up on your own.

Yes, the fact that starting up is so easy means that there’s a lot of competition and many copycats out there. But many don’t have the stamina, creativity or determination to keep going. You do.

So are women’s attitudes different to men’s? Sage say..

Women (41%) are less likely than men (44%) to consider starting their own business in the next two years; with the greatest challenge for women (23%) being not knowing where to start. For men the biggest perceived challenge is access to funding (28%). Women also worry more about the stress of starting their own business (30%) but interestingly are less likely than men (19% to 24%) to feel they don’t have what it takes to succeed in the current economic climate.

It’s no surprise that women are less willing to risk debt, and I’m sure the fear of stress comes from already having a lot on our plates.   But how much of this is a vague fear that comes from out-of-date assumptions about what it takes to start a business?

Of course, if you genuinely have problems with debt then it’s best to seek insolvency help or debt recovery advice or get in touch with the Citizens Advice Bureau.

As for the economic climate, yes people are more careful with their money at the moment. But there are signs that things are picking up and our communities are actively looking for new businesses to revive them. The Portas Pilot Towns (my home town Bedford is one) are a great example of this.

So don’t be held back by outdated beliefs about starting your own business. Keep it simple: find something, sell it and learn from the process. Then repeat it.

Want some company as you start your business? Click here to get my newsletter.  I’ll also send you a copy of  my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

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