8 valuable tips to improve your back-to-school online sales

And yes, summer is coming to an end! And the beginning of the school year is fast approaching!

It is the Great Event so eagerly awaited by hundreds of thousands of students but also by a large number of Marketing and E-commerce professionals.

The back-to-school period is a crucial stage, a key moment, full of opportunities not to be neglected, which you must take advantage of to increase your sales, retain and expand your customer base.

Just behind the first highlight of the year, the holiday season, the back-to-school season alone would generate revenue of  $101.6 billion in 2020 (up from $80.7 billion last year), surpassing the $100 billion mark for the first time.

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Back-to-School Shopping Behaviours on the Web

The start of the school year in 2020 will not be in line with all other previous years.

Today’s back-to-school must-haves, in the Covid era, are no longer limited to school supplies and stationery. The proportion and type of purchasing category has changed considerably. Also come furniture and electronics but also decoration and groceries, and because of teleworking and the need to equip oneself at home.

The share of “omni-channel shopping” on the part of parents, a mix of online and offline experiences, is thus tending to increase especially this year.

This means that your online store Panierdachat can have a larger number of potential customers and that regardless of your sector of activity, you can all offer a back-to-school-themed offer.

With this in mind and with the knowledge of the online behavior of back-to-school shoppers, you will be able to optimize your site for a successful back-to-school campaign.

So what marketing strategy to implement?

We give you all our advice to prepare your online store Panierdachat at the beginning of the school year. 

To help you capitalize on the back-to-school season, we’ve put together some inspiring ideas and concrete examples that you can offer your customers, whether it’s for :

• boost your sales
• build customer loyalty

Being bold, imaginative and using a little common sense is the key to all success and does not necessarily require huge investments.

Our advice to boost your sales at the beginning of the school year

1. Propose promotions

To increase the incentive to buy, offering special back-to-school prices to highlight short-term offers will help your customers to spontaneously and quickly take advantage of the limited-time promotion. Since the back-to-school period is a period of high budgetary expenditure for households, they will be all the more receptive to promotions.

You can offer a single promotion for the whole month of September or several types of promotions, making sure that they are clear.

Here are some of our ideas for back-to-school promotions:

• Promo code in percentage or in dollars (ex: 5% discount on your shopping cart or $15 discount on your shopping cart valid throughout your online store).

With Panierdachat, nothing could be easier to create your promotional code, which you will be able to communicate by email with the newsletter (easy and fast, thanks to MailChimp, connected to Panierdachat) to your customers before the launch date.

Or by using our creative Pop up notifications feature. 

• 2 products for the price of one
• Use the cross-selling system: when you buy product A, get a discount on product B.
• Free delivery
• Discount for loyal customers thanks to our VIP feature

Here are a few recommendations:

• Clearly state the duration of your promotions
• Favour discounts in dollars, round figures, more concrete than a percentage
• Anticipate stock shortages to meet your demands. Panierdachat offers option of color chips for products out of stock

2. Offer a gift

At this very special time of the year, remember to thank your customers. This will strengthen your image of sympathy and your bond of proximity with your customer.

Here are some of our back-to-school gift ideas:

• Offer a surprise or mystery gift that will surprise your customers and arouse their curiosity.
• Offer a gift after a certain amount of purchase
• Or the choice between 2 if you can
• Think about Goodies with your company logo on them.

Here are a few recommendations:

Consider offering in exchange for their email address. That way, if they are not part of your customer base, you can add them to your subscriber list to send them newsletters later on; this will encourage them to visit your online store again and potentially turn them into loyal customers.

3. Create educational campaigns

If you don’t sell directly related products, consider marketing opportunities related to the back-to-school theme.

If you are an online store selling jewelry, cosmetics or essential oils, you could take the opportunity to launch a campaign with the message “It’s back to school, new start, new challenges”.

4. Open doors to the new school year

Think about the videos (see our article for the 1-click creation of your videos) in which you can present in an educational way and as a preview some of your new products received freshly on September 1st. Value-added eBooks or guides can be another way.

If you are a cosmetics brand, you can for example propose a virtual demonstration session in a friendly atmosphere with a promotion.

5. Add educational content to your Blog

Adding content to a Blog allows you to humanize your brand. By staying on the back-to-school theme, you could, for example, propose articles of Decoration Inspiration. Think about useful content.

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Our tips for building customer loyalty

1. Create a loyalty program

he back-to-school period is the ideal time to launch a personalized digital loyalty card that will strengthen the bond of trust and proximity with your customer. With Canva, it’s simple and free and you can then easily integrate it into a loyalty email.

2. Launch a contest

Organize a contest integrated on a page of your site and invite your participants to share their results on social networks.

3. Engage your community

Take advantage of the back-to-school period to exchange with your customers on social networks to strengthen your bond. Use the Quizzes, ask them what resolutions or activities they have planned for this September. This will then allow you to know your customers better and better target your offers.