A few creative ideas to boost your software sales after the holidays

The holidays are over, yet we're still gathering ourselves after weeks of rest from the holiday season, with many software companies suffering from sales slow-down blues. There are several techniques to yield more sales during this post-holiday period that will produce a better-looking bottom line for January and February.

E-mail marketing

Alright, you enjoyed great sales in December, now what? Well, now it's the time to unleash the power of your e-mail marketing and put those technical emails aside. No one wants to read about artificial intelligence or the benefits of global SaaS compliance during the holidays. Offers, however, are always welcome. Send discount coupons or gift cards for additional products and upgrades. This will be an excellent incentive for your holiday shoppers to return during the low-traffic period. The secret is that returning customers usually spend more than average, this is why they are so important. Hit them with a killer offer they just can't refuse. A "thank you" e-mail with an exclusive offer would be an exquisite way to do it. Include the urgency factor, and tell them it is a time-limited offer to push them to decide faster.

At this point, you're probably asking how much of a discount to offer. The experts say that a 10-20 percent discount or $10-$20 gift card is a good incentive for holiday customers to return to your store.

Deals

Generally, if you have more than one product on sale, some don't enjoy that much success. Well... not as much... Now is the time to maximize your weaker products' exposure. One great way is by offering bundles at the price of 1 product. This bargain, more often than not, proves irresistible to your clients.

Social media

Social platforms are a great way to drive referrals. So why not reward shoppers with social-only incentives? Very often, discounts earned by shoppers through sharing and bringing friends to the store can prove more effective than direct mail for some products. Social media can be your marketing playground; tags, shares, likes, and referral links don't only drive more sales, they also improve your brand awareness which may positively impact your bottom line for the whole year.

Retargeting

You were enjoying a lot of traffic coming to your website over the holidays, and yes, I know, they were mainly window shoppers. Maybe the prices were too high, or they didn't have the time to browse. Even so, you can win them back with retargeted ads through providers such as Adroll, Retargeter, Fetchback, or Chango. To do it effectively, segment your visitors by their location in the conversion funnel and the pages they have visited. Hit them with a great offer and haunt them wherever they go, they will come back and buy.

And last but not least...

In conclusion, we should never forget that Winter Holidays are about presents too. The most desired ones are gizmos, of course. If you sell photo editing software, for example, don't forget that this is when people start getting bored with the cameras they got for Christmas, now, they want to make albums. January is the best time to blog about cameras, editing tips, and tricks. This will be a simple and elegant way to introduce them to your fantastic product. Don't be self-centric, talk about related subjects and share them shamelessly over all channels, mix your post with your post-holiday offers and watch the bucks come flying your way:)