9 Tips for a Calm and Bright Holiday Season
It’s the most wonderful (and busiest!) time of the year.
We hope your holiday season is off to a great start! While we all look for time to rest, unwind, and reset over the holidays, we know the first two weeks in December can be some of the highest-volume ordering weeks of the entire year. Trying to keep your orders flowing and clients happy can be exhausting, so we put together the following tips and tricks to help make this time easier, and more enjoyable for you and your clients!
1. Keep Offering Sales - According to Gallup, 20% of consumers wait until December to start their Christmas shopping. So, at this point, some of your clients are still considering what to get their loved ones for Christmas. Help make their decision easier by running additional sales and encouraging additional orders. Don't let your Black Friday sale be the last one of the season, but instead, run new sales every couple of days right up until your final ordering deadline. The more often your clients are reminded of the images, the more likely they are to make a purchase and give the gift of prints!
2. Be Realistic (and Kind) With Your Ordering Deadlines - We're talking about being kind to yourself. Make sure you give yourself some wriggle room with your ordering deadline so you have time to fulfill all of your orders. Select a hard deadline for orders and let your clients know that anything ordered after that date should not be expected before Christmas. Setting expectations will help you and your clients! To help you identify what your order deadline should be, we consolidated order deadlines from our lab partners.
Order deadlines aren’t the only information we’ve gathered from our lab partners. We created a lab partner landing page so you can quickly find valuable information in one, convenient location.
3. Overcommunicate Deadlines - Speaking of ordering deadlines, post them EVERYWHERE. We recommend posting them to your storefront, social accounts, blogs, and anywhere else your clients may visit. On your Instaproofs storefront, your deadlines can be added to the gallery login page, gallery description, promotional emails, order receipts, or all of the above. Log in now to quickly update these spaces.
4. Get (Christmas) Creative - In addition to your standard shipping options, try adding a new option labeled “Christmas Delivery” or “Delivery by Christmas." As your order deadline approaches, you can increase the cost of this option to help cover priority shipping fees that may be incurred to ensure the orders arrive on time. If you’re unsure how to manage your shipping options and/or shipping rates, don’t worry. We made a tutorial video .
5. Don't Wait - We probably should've listed this first. Fulfilling your orders promptly is always important, but even more so in December! Remember to be kind to yourself (Tip #2) and fulfill orders as soon as they come in so you don't find yourself in a last-minute rush.
6. Keep Your Customers in the Loop - Have you ever found yourself desperately tracking orders to see if they’ll arrive in time? Your clients are likely to do the same. Keeping your clients well-informed and updating the status of their orders will go a long way in easing their minds, and it may even save you from receiving panicked/frantic messages demanding to know where their orders are! If you want help keeping them in the loop, check out the tip below!
7. Considering Package Tracking? Do It. - This goes hand-in-hand with Tip #6. If you are self-fulfilling your orders, always opt for package tracking. This might cost you a little extra up-front, but the hassles it will save you if problems arise will more than makeup for it! Once you receive the tracking numbers for your orders, pass them along to your customers so they can monitor progress themselves. This will help alleviate their concerns while saving you time and energy!
8. Keep Things Current - If you do update your storefront and other client landing spots with holiday deadlines, remember to update your messaging once your order deadline passes. Let your clients know it's too late to expect orders to arrive before Christmas. If you added a Christmas shipping option (Tip #4) make sure you remove that too.
9. Let Us Make Your Life Easier - If you don't want to bother hunting down your ordered images and re-uploading them to another service, consider using our integrated fulfillment (and auto-fulfillment) services. Standard print orders generally ship the next business day, and all orders automatically receive tracking numbers when they are shipped. Our holiday fulfillment deadlines can be found here: Fulfillment Deadlines.
If you haven’t taken advantage of our integrated fulfillment services before, read this article for instructions on how to set up your account to do so.
If you follow any combination of these tips and tricks, we think you'll be set up for a great holiday season— including the hectic first weeks of December! We wish you, your loved ones, and your clients a wonderful holiday season.