Here’s how to avoid the post-holiday sales slump and maintain your momentum (updated for 2019)

The holidays were a whirlwind this past year. Orders were coming in fast and furious, and LHSers and I made more sales this holiday season than any previous year. Awesome stuff!

Now that the holidays have passed, sales have slowed a bit. But I want to keep the momentum going as much as I can, and I’m sure you do too.

Plus, after doing this for a few years, I’ve learned there’s still plenty of opportunity after the holidays, and you can keep your sales going strong with a bit of creativity and ingenuity.

Last year, I wrote about a list of ways to optimize your post-holiday sales rate, which you can check out here. And this year, I decided to do the same thing.

Not only will the strategies help, but right after that we’ve got Valentine’s Day! (Look out for an email about my upcoming Jumpstart program for V-Day 2019).

In the meantime you can check out my list of other strategies to keep your post-holiday sales going strong, updated for 2019, below.

Bundle products together at
discounted rates

Bundles are awesome and they typically sell really well. You can market them as gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, upcoming holidays, like Valentine’s Day, or gifts for people you may have forgotten during the holidays.

Here are a few examples of people doing well selling items as bundles:

Creating themed bundles is especially effective. For example, for Valentine’s Day, you could create bundles that include a mug, women’s tank top, and necklace all featuring wife- or girlfriend-related designs or saying on them.

Similarly, you could do the same with items aimed at husbands and boyfriends.

Your bundles don’t all have to have to themes, though. You can also sell generic bundles.

Ideally, though, the items in your bundles should feature similar or related designs. For example, you could create a dog lovers’ bundle with different items featuring the same dog design.

Or, you could create bundles aimed at certain occupations, like teachers or coaches.

Whatever types of bundles you create, just sell them at a slightly discounted rate to what the total cost of the items is when you add each of their individual prices together.

For example, if your bundle consists of a mug, a necklace, and a magnet that costs $14.95, $18.95, and $4.85 respectively, you might sell the bundle for $35.95 (as opposed to $38.85, which is what the three items would cost if they were purchased individually).

Run a winter clearance sale for a limited time

People love clearances. And just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean people have stopped shopping entirely.

After the holidays, people have gift cards and cash they received as gifts to spend. So running a post-holiday sale is a fantastic way to keep your sales momentum going strong.

Plus, it’s a great way to push unsold or slow-selling inventory.

It works best if you can add a sense of urgency to your sales by running them for a limited amount of time, like for two or three days. This way, people will feel more compelled to act quickly.

And if you have an Etsy shop, there’s a tool you can use to automatically put your listings on sale. (I wrote about it a while back. You can check out that blog post here.)

Incentivize exchanges (as opposed to refunds)

Refunds and exchanges are bound to happen after the holidays. Items may arrive damaged or late, or people may just not be 100% satisfied with what they received.

To combat needing to issue too many refunds, try to offer incentives for either offering only partial refunds (in the event of items arriving late) or exchanging items.

If people write in because their items arrived damaged or they just aren’t satisfied, try getting people to exchange their defective item for something else in lieu of a refund.

To incentivize an exchange, you could offer a coupon code to be used on the customer’s next purchase. Or, you could offer to throw in a free gift, such as a sticker or magnet or some other low-cost item from your store.

Leverage the “New Year” mindset

The New Year is a time for resolutions. People switch gears from gift-giving and indulging in treats and festivities to becoming more focused on self-improvement and achieving their goals.

With that in mind, you can tailor your promotions to this New Year mindset. Plus, you can create products that leverage it as well.

Examples of the New Year mindset might include…

– getting in better shape by exercising more or eating healthier foods
– becoming more organized or productive at work or at home
– learning a new skill or hobby
– traveling more
– or spending more quality time with friends and family.

There are lots of ways you could turn these types of resolutions into design ideas. Here’s a super cute design aimed at eating healthier that I just found on Etsy:

And here’s another one that has to do with goal-achievement in general:

There are so many things you can do to leverage the New Year mindset. Just run quick Google searches for phrases like “set goals mug” or “exercise more mug” and see what inspiration you can find.

Run a contest or giveaway

There are lots of different types of contests or giveaways you can run.

A few years ago, I had a lot of success with a necklace giveaway I ran and promoted via Facebook.

You can read about how the process worked and the results I saw here.

Basically, you pick a product from your inventory to give away. Then, you set up a basic web page where people can sign up for the giveaway.

Next, you promote the giveaway via Facebook or Fiverr or however else and send emails to the people who sign up, letting them know the winners and where they can purchase your product if they don’t win.

This technique earned me $171.85 and over 500 new subscribers to my email list.

Try your hand at sponsored ads

Sponsored ads aren’t part of the Low Hanging System and you certainly don’t have to use them. But if you’d like to give ads a whirl, many people have had good results.

I actually partnered with Doug Johnson to create a course called the Viral Buyers System, which goes over the process that I use. You can learn more about it here.

And you can check out two quick success stories below:

The way sponsored ads work is

Take down any holiday-specific deals or promises

During the holidays, you may have added special offers or deals to your store. For example, you may have offered free shipping or made some kind of guarantee that’s no longer relevant after the holidays.

If that’s the case, be sure to remove any mentions of these holiday-specific offers and deals. If you leave them up and customers see them and come to expect them on their post-holiday purchases, you will either have to honor them or risk upsetting those customers.

So, now that the holidays are over, do a quick check around your stores and delete any offers or inventory that are no longer available.

Start launching new designs right away

This is one of the things I most recommend doing. I know you may be feeling a little worn out after the holidays. But one of the best ways to keep sales flowing is to continue churning out designs.

The designs can be about anything. Or you can check out my previous post about wacky and weird holidays and make designs related to one or more of those special days.

Also, Valentine’s Day is the next major, commercial holiday coming up. So you can start drumming up ideas that would make great gifts for customers to give their significant others.

Ideally, you want to come up with ideas that are relevant all year-round, though.

But just because a design mentions husbands or wives, or boyfriends or girlfriends, that doesn’t necessarily mean it applies to only Valentine’s Day. People still like giving gifts like that for birthdays, anniversaries, and just because.

And if you don’t have time to come up with new designs yourself, you can always sign up for my design club and receive 50 new designs from me each month.

Or, you can use SpotNiches to find popular phrases customers are searching for and come up with design ideas that way.

Join the Valentine’s Day Jumpstart

Next week I’ll be opening up the next Jumpstart program. Valentine’s Day is the next peak period to get tons of sales, and joining Jumpstart is a great way to get primed and ready for sales to come in.

We’ll get you sending items in for FBA so you can accept sales on Amazon until the last minute, you’ll get done-for-you designs, access to SpotNiches, and my coaching for you.

I’ll tell you more about that next week — and for now, here’s to a spectacular 2019. :)

What do you think of these strategies for maintaining your post-holiday sales momentum? Can you think of any of other techniques or ideas? Leave a comment below and let me know!