6 Spring Promotions That Will Make Your Retail Store Bloom

We hope you got some much-needed rest and relaxation (and all the pie) during the break following the holiday shopping season, because it’s time to start thinking about the new year. Yes, already! Spring 2022 is on its way, and with positive spending reports that showed strong sales in Q4 headed into Q1, consumers are poised to be looking for what your business is selling. And there’s no time like the present to start two things: 1) already giving up on your new year’s resolution to eat healthier, and 2) positioning your sales promotions to truly bloom come spring. Let’s focus on the latter.

When you think “spring,” what comes to mind? Sure, allergies. But you also have St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Tax Day, proms & weddings, and of course Mother’s Day. Additionally, you may have excess inventory from last year to clear out, seasonal items (ie. winter jackets), and Q1 business supplies.

There are a slew of amazing retail opportunities to set sale events and your promotions around. Because of that, it’s important to maintain a promotional calendar for spring, marking the start and end of each promotion. And with a solid calendar of events in place, it makes it that much easier to set and track your goals in promotions as well.

Set specific promotion goals for your team. Some examples:

• Send 4 emails and 4 text messages promoting Overstock Sales by January 31st
• Increase Instagram followers by 20% by Mother’s Day
• Curate and A/B test Easter Lookbooks for highly engaged customers

More specific goals make it easier to track the progress and success of each promotion, and provide more actionable items to your team as well. Keep this in mind as we dive into some promotional ideas for your business.

That’s right, it’s time for your business to Marie Kondo the heck out of your old inventory (or whoever is more relevant to cleaning and reducing today). The point is, running a promotion that empties out last year’s stock while bringing shoppers at the start of the year is a double whammy win for any retail business.

This promotion is sure to attract bargain shoppers who love a good deal, so don’t hesitate to bundle items together to move even more products. Another savvy move is to provide January shoppers with coupons to redeem in spring.

Speaking of how powerful the visual element is to sales, take full advantage of a color scheme to generate an effective promotion. St. Patrick’s Day is a perfect example where you can group green products in your targeted ads. Or leprechauns, but very few businesses are allowed sell them these days.

Lookbooks are rocketing up in popularity for being such an effective way to visually promote your brand.

Endear clients who leverage lookbooks see their average order value (AOV)  increase by up to 11%.

Don’t tell your Marketing team, but the most effective promotions may not come from them at all. According to a study by TurnTo, 90% of customers are influenced the most by User Generated Content (UGC).

A powerful example of leveraging UGC for promotions is to leverage great reviews on certain products. Reviews are some of the best UGC that your brand can cultivate, and instead of simply adding them to your product pages as a nice-to-have, instead create a whole promotional campaign around these good reviews. An email subject line that reads “Find out why over 900 customers gave {this product} a 5-star review” will garner massive clicks.

You can also run a promotional contest on social media by asking customers to post an image or a video of themselves with one of your products, tagged with a specific hashtag; and choosing random profiles to win a prize. It’s an easy and extremely low-cost way of both compiling new user-generated content, as well as engaging with your brand loyalists.

According to the National Retail Federation, 2021’s Mother’s Day recorded a record spend of over $28 billion. For some context, Father’s day was about $20 billion (so doing the math, people love their mothers about 40% more than their fathers). It’s an absolute monster of a holiday for retail, and your promotions should regard it as such.

These customers have the funds, but what they’re sorely lacking is what your business can provide them: an ultimate guide to Mother’s Day gifts. These “gift idea” guides can be easily shared through social media, and the more specific you can get with the types of mothers out there, the better:

• Gifts for new mothers
• Gifts for outdoorsy mothers
• Gifts for cat/dog moms
• Gifts for retired moms

Create a dedicated landing page for your ultimate Mother’s Day guide with discounted items. Offering gift wrapping and personalization is a plus and can increase conversion rates. Finally, make the shipping date very clear with: “Arrives before Mother’s Day” to truly drive the point home.

Build-A-Bear is a perennial favorite gift because of just how personal and custom each bear is. And while most businesses can’t compete with or mimic a literal workshop where you build your own product (we imagine Build-A-Lawn-Mower wouldn’t be all that fun), you can still introduce more customerization into your business as well as your promotions.

While customization can (and should) be a part of your entire retail process, it can also extend to your spring promotions. One idea is to allow your customers to build their own sample box. Say you have 20 products listed on your landing page for samples, and the customer can choose up to 5 of them to ship as a bundle. By promoting this and a flat fee for this customized sample box, your brand can effectively leverage this sense of self-curation to improve conversion rates and sales.

In May, it’s time to promote your End of Spring deals as you make way for summer items. An obvious tie-in would be with Memorial Day, but that can often get crowded with other promotions from competitors. In 2021, your business may want to think outside the box when it comes to May promotions.

For example, did you know that the first week of May is national Teacher Appreciation Week? Promoting bundles for teachers can be a unique way to stand out from other businesses. National Pet Week falls in the same time frame, and if there’s anything people love to spend money on almost as much as Mothers (and definitely more than Fathers) is their pets.

Your business can promote these unique End of Spring Sales while also teasing the new summer items to come. Again, providing shoppers with coupons to be redeemed in the summer months is a great strategy to gain repeat business.