The busy holiday season is officially over. What comes next for your business? Now, it’s time to focus on two of the most important post-holiday considerations: holiday returns and keeping the customers you gained during the holiday season. Understanding returns and customer satisfaction won’t only help you after the holidays end but will help you prepare for the upcoming holiday season because it’ll be here sooner than you think! Let’s unwrap our recommendations on post-holiday shipping considerations.
Feeling holidazed after the holiday season? Check out our How to Boost Online Sales Year-Round blog!
Holiday Returns
Returns are a major part of the holiday season, so this is a great opportunity to simplify your returns process for your customers. Offering prepaid return labels helps streamline the process and makes you a post-holiday hero. The customers returning gifts may not be the same ones who purchased them, so this may be their first experience with your business. Double-check your returns policy so that it includes up-to-date language and is as straightforward as possible. Clearly state whether or not your business covers the costs of return shipping, your return window, and how refunds will be issued for orders.
Unfortunately, an increase in holiday returns can lead to an increase in fraud. According to LPM (Loss Prevention Magazine), $23.2 billion dollars of the $218 billion dollars in returns last year were marked as fraud. And you don’t want your business to be included in that number! Steps to preventing this type of fraud can include minimizing the days in your return window, only offering store credit for refunds, and/or only allowing refunds to be given back to the card used to make the purchase.
Looking for more tips about fraud prevention? Check out our blog!
Spot Fraud Before It Happens This Holiday Season
Keeping Your Customers
During the holiday season, new customers purchased items from your store for the first time. Turning these new customers into repeat customers can be a year-round gift to your business. But how do you keep these customers coming back? With the help of shipping software like ShippingEasy, of course!
ShippingEasy’s Customer Marketing add-on feature gives you the opportunity to create email campaigns like offers for first-time buyers, including coupons and specialty-priced items. These campaigns are also used to ask for customer feedback and reviews and to encourage your customers to interact with your business on social media by following your accounts and sharing photos of your products.
In addition to our Customer Marketing add-on, ShippingEasy offers a free Branded Tracking feature to users. Branded Tracking provides users with more customization on tracking and return emails including adding your business’s logo, social media links, and a 500 character return policy.
Conclusion
Maintaining good customer service is just as important in the post-holiday season as it is during the busy holiday season. Holiday returns are a great way to establish relationships with customers by providing a clear and concise returns policy and prepaid return labels. Gaining new customers during the holiday season gives you the chance to keep these customers year-round through customized email campaigns and branded tracking notifications. Keep your holiday cheer all year with these helpful tips!
Need a hand with your brand? Our ebook, Driving Repeat Business: A Guide to Building a Loyal Band of Customers, is for you!
Baillee Perkins
