Get Your eCommerce Business Ready for Valentine’s Day!
Posted by Madison Claire on Sat, Dec 19, 2009 @ 05:09 PM
Christmas isn’t even here yet, but savvy ecommerce entrepreneurs are already gearing up for the next big gift-giving holiday: Valentine’s Day.
Next to Christmas, Valentine’s Day is the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year.
Last year, even in the midst of a nationwide economic recession, Valentine’s Day online sales amounted $905 million!
That’s a LOT of money!
You want to be sure that you get you share of these extremely lucrative holiday sales, so you need to start planning now.
Sit down and work out your email newsletters, sales, promotions, social media marketing and ad campaigns for Valentine’s Day; and be ready to roll with them early in January.
Here are a few stats from a survey by Discover Card that might help you plan your Valentine’s Day sales strategies:
- Men plan on spending an average of $127 on their significant others, while women plan to spend $74 on their men.
- Many people plan to give Valentine’s Day gifts to teachers, coworkers, and friends as well as romantic interests.
- Almost 40% of the people surveyed said they intend to purchase their Valentine’s Day gifts online.
Now, you have an advantage this year because Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday. This means that there won’t be much sending flowers to the office, and folks will have to pony up a gift in person.
This really is a definite advantage for online merchants! You will have a better opportunity of making sales for Valentine’s Day in the way of actual gifts besides candy and/or flowers.
Candy and flowers will still be great sellers, of course. But here are a few other items that are traditionally best sellers for Valentine’s Day:
- Perfume and body creams and butters, etc.
- Plush teddy bears and other cutesie stuffed animals with sentimental sayings
The Discover Card survey also found that about 65% of people will wait to make their Valentine’s Day purchases until one week before Cupid makes his appearance.
What this means for e-tailers is that you must offer FAST delivery!
Another interesting finding from the survey was that 39% of women do not plan on buying for their spouse or significant other. So, plan on making your main marketing push toward male buyers.
You won’t get much of a break between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, but the increased sales will make the hectic hustle and bustle worthwhile, and you can rest later!