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CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn 12/14 – “Last Minute Holiday Marketing Tips.”

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Hi, everyone! Happy Wednesday and welcome to today’s CopyDoodles Lunch and Learn. This week’s topic I’m going to be talking about some last minute holiday marketing tips that you can do.

So, just a few side notes. If you’d like to ask a question there is a questions box on your GoToWebinar screen that allows you to type any questions in. Feel free to ask during the webinar, if you don’t have any questions during the webinar, then we do have a question and answer section at the end where I can answer anything from the webinar, any other questions you might have about CopyDoodles.

Next week’s topic I’m going to be talking about strategies for using CopyDoodles on envelopes to get the best response, so since you are already on today’s webinar you are already signed up, just make sure to check your email before the webinar for your GoToWebinar link so that you can get access to the webinar and you won’t miss a thing.

Also some side notes, I know that a lot of people were asking us for a non-profit edition of CopyDoodles, and you can now get that added to your CopyDoodles account by heading over the ‘Resources’ section and downloading the CopyDoodles Niche Edition order form. Just write that you’d like a non-profit Doodles and fax that back to us, or if you’re interested just hit me up on live chat and let me know and we can get it processed for you, if you’re looking for that.

Now, I move on to today’s members-only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week. It’s a blizzard of a deal. Today’s deal is The Perfect Webinar. I thought this was a good time just to put this up here and let you guys know about The Perfect Webinar, because it’s a great time to start doing some different type of marketing since we’ll be going into 2012. If you’re not doing webinars currently in your business, then make sure to check it out. The link for the perfect webinar is over at www.copydoodles.com.

Today’s webinar, Last Minute Holiday Marketing Tips, the replay will be posted up at www.copydoodles.com as soon as the webinar is over and I get it posted up there. So, it should only be an hour or two. If you miss anything or you want to send it over to anybody or you want anybody in your business, any employees to check it out make sure to send them over there. So, I’m just going to jump in. A really great way, obviously, since it’s pretty late and pretty close to the deadlines for any of the holidays that are coming up, I mean we’re what? A week away from Hanukah, so it’s really just days away, is using social media to promote sales. I’m sure you know this. I’m sure you know that social media is a great way to announce your sales and your specials. You can also do this on Twitter by posting pictures. If you’re not sure how, check out my Lunch and Learn where I talked about using CopyDoodles in Social Media: Part 1. I did that in October.

I’ve had a lot of questions about people using social media because right now our SocialDoodles application is down. Facebook made a bunch of changes on their end and the changes they made then caused some complications with our SocialDoodles application, which we’re currently having our programmer look at, but I think it’s going to take a little more time. But, there are some ways that you can actually post CopyDoodles on your Facebook wall, without the SocialDoodles app. I’m going to show you how to do that right now. It’s really quick and really simple.

What I’m going to open up first is the CopyDoodles Access Club. So, if you’re looking for any holiday doodles the best location to look is under CopyDoodles and then by choosing HolidayDoodles. We have a ton in here and I’ve just added some more a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago. There are 373 HolidayDoodles. And in a few weeks we’ll be adding some more Valentine’s Day and Ground Hog’s Day and things like that. So, as you can see there’s a lot of different doodles in here. There’s some new
New Year’s ones — poinsettias, things like that.

I’ve already downloaded a doodle, so I’m just going to show you what you’ll do. Once you download your CopyDoodle make sure you download it as a JPEG and not PNG, so that it has this white background. That just ensures that everything loads properly. You shouldn’t have any problems with Facebook, but it just makes sure that everybody can see it across all spectrums. You’re going to want to pull into Gimp or another image editing program.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is reduce the size of this image, because this is a really huge image. You don’t want to post something that big on Facebook, it will take forever to load. It will just be huge when people go to click on it. You just want something small. So, what you’re going to do is resize the image. So, I just like to click and resize my image pretty small, under 200 pixels, width and height. And, I’m just going to press ‘scale’.

The next thing you’re going to want to do is crop the image really quickly. I’m just going to use my crop tool. And, I’m just going to crop directly around the image to make sure that I don’t have any extra white space. I’m going to press ‘enter’. So, now that it has cropped my image I have my tiny little SocialDoodles, or my CopyDoodle that I’m going to use as a SocialDoodles, and I’m just going to save it. I’m just going to save it as a JPEG. I’m going to ‘X’ out of Gimp.

Then what you’re going to want to do is head over to your wall. I have our CopyDoodles wall ready, and all you’re going to do is attach a photo. You’re going to upload a photo from your drive. I’m going to choose that holiday bear that I just resized. So, this is the original sized one, which is really large. Then I renamed my “holiday bear,” and then just say something about the image. You could say, “Check out our special,” “Check out our sale…” anything like that. If you want to put a stamp or anything up, maybe “Urgent.” Tell people about the last days to ship, whatever you’re doing. But, I’m just going to write, “Currently on the Lunch and Learn webinar doing a tutorial.” Then you’re going to want to click to share it.

And, as you can see it comes up with a picture. It will stand out when people go to look at their entire Facebook feed. If someone wants to click on the image it will come up and they are still able to see the text that I’ve written. You can even put a link in here. Maybe you’re having a promotion or a special sale. You can put the link in after this. You could have people commenting on here, people doing that kind of stuff. So, you can still definitely put CopyDoodles on your social media, and you should be doing that for the holidays, if there’s any special promotions that you want to promote.

Also, what you can do is you can do something like using social media or emails for last minute contests. I’ve seen a lot of companies that I’m friends with or fans of on Facebook having some contests for the holidays. So, if you’re looking for something like this check, you want to send it in an email, just simply search in CopyDoodles for ‘check’, in CDAC, you can also play holiday trivia games to get your customers talking so they can win prizes, maybe ask them to answer questions to be entered in your contest — there’s so many things that you can do in social media today, and giveaways are a great way to get people interested in your business, you could add some people to your list.

Maybe these aren’t people that would necessarily buy or have the cash to buy right now during the holidays, but you’re going to get them on your list, you’re going to keep them on your list and they might — the emails that you’re sending out, they might need something additional for the holidays that they forgot. They might purchase from you, or they might purchase down the road, but getting people on your list is still a great thing to do during the holidays. Don’t just think about promotions, think about all different ways that you can kind of market to people.

And, if you’re giving away something small, you don’t have to give away a huge gift card, you don’t have to give away anything really big. Your contest could go viral, people might share this with their friends, they might pass it on to people. And one of the ways you can even get more entries in your contest could be to refer more friends. The more friends you refer the more entries you get in your contest. So, you’re definitely going to want to think about all the different types of opportunities that you could do here.

And, then a long those lines if you don’t have give cards currently, or even if you do have gift cards, make sure that you spice them up with some CopyDoodles. If you don’t have gift cards at all, offer them, because a lot of times people aren’t sure what to get people as gifts, they’re not sure what to get for the holidays, or they want to get something small, or they don’t have the time even, if it’s really, really close to the holidays, say they’re trying to order a gift at midnight on the 24th, the night before Christmas, you can offer e-gift cards. So, someone can still come to your business, they can still go on your site. They can purchase a gift card and then you will send them a PDF that they can download, print, and give the next day. So, it kind of captures some more people who maybe wouldn’t buy from you because maybe shipping deadlines have been missed, maybe they can’t come into your store because it’s midnight and you’ve already closed, but they’re still able to purchase from you, you’re going to get those very, very late, last minute shoppers. Then, if somebody prints this out, you can even suggest to them put it in a box or a card, wrap it nicely, print it on cardstock, something like that.

Or, what I see a lot of businesses doing, especially around the holidays is if you purchase $100 worth of gift cards or $100 worth of product for your business, then the person who purchases it gets their own $5 or $10 gift card, because they’re already shopping there, so you know they’re going to come back probably after the holidays to buy something for themselves, buy a last minute gift that they had forgotten, and $5 or $10 is just a really great way to remind them to come back to your store instead of going to all the other thousands of stores that are out there.

And, I just found this gift card template online when I googled ‘gift card’, then I just added some CopyDoodles right on top of it really quickly. So, you can do this with any of the gift cards that you currently have, or anything that you’re doing.

Also, create some CopyDoodled coupons, post them online, post them on social media. They could be friends and family coupons. I recently just got a ton of friends and family coupons in my emails, and they’re plain, blank emails that people were just forwarding me, but if there was something that looked like a coupon like this I’d probably be more likely to print it out, bring it into the store, I’d be more excited about it because it looks different. You know, most people just send the emails and you print out something or you use a coupon code. But, this is a great way to capture more attention, the coupon border can be found in the CopyDoodles Shape section, or you can search for it in the CopyDoodles search bar by just typing in the words ‘box’ and then the number ‘3’, so it’s just ‘box 3’. So, if you’re looking for that, the Santa hat is in the HolidayDoodles, and then the coupon border is there. And, you can send this on social media, email, or anything that you want.

If you do have time, or you can today start printing postcards and sending them out, feel free to do that too. I’m just thinking about last minute things that you can do, very last minute.

Send gift suggestion emails. I love when people send these out and it’s really, really easy to do, because a lot of times I don’t know what to get people for gifts for the holidays, or I get a lot of emails and it’s people telling me to buy their stuff, but they don’t tell me what to buy. They say, “I have 20% off of my entire store,” but you’re not showing me any product. So, maybe you could send an email or put a blog post up, or put a page up on your Facebook page featuring yourself, maybe gifts that you have on your wish list, featuring one of your employees, have a picture of them and pick just a few items that you have in your store that maybe they have on their wish list. Or, even if you have a pet, it could be a wish list of what your pet wants for the holidays. It’s really a gift suggestion. All of the suggestions are things that you sell. And, you could link to them so people can purchase right away.

So, you could also post this on social media as a daily wish list suggestion. So, there’s maybe ten, eleven days before Christmas now. Every day post a different gift suggestion for somebody, but think about your customer. If you know your customer is a parent buying for small children, then your gift suggestion should be from a child, maybe your child. And, vice/versa. If your customer likes to bake or shop, make sure your suggestions are age-appropriate. If you know that a lot of people on your list are moms, then think about the people in their life that they probably need to buy gifts for and make your suggestions based off of that.

And, it’s not too late. I know that there’s, like I just said, eleven or ten days before Christmas, but you can make up a great story and do six days of Christmas, or twelve days of Christmas, or just do a deal of the day before the holidays right now. You could even do this before New Year’s Eve. People are still buying gifts way past those dates.

The image on the left I just added the CopyDoodles on here myself. It’s actually a boutique down the street from me who’s currently running this. They’re doing it all via social media and their emails. They send me an email a day where they post on their blog a deal of the day, and they put it on their social media. And, every day it’s a different discount. So, one day it was 50% off of holiday cards. One day it was 12% off of holiday ornaments, or bird ornaments, or something like that. They just hung this flier around the area and they caught my attention because I knew I needed something small, a small gift from them. So, I’m going to wait until the day that they have their special and I’m going to go in and I’m probably going to buy more than what I need, because the store is awesome and I love going there.

And, if on the right-hand side, you can even do this in video. I shot these videos during InfoSummit. I’m sure you saw them if you’re on our list, or if you were paying attention to our emails that we were sending back in the beginning of November. And, it took me seriously five minutes to shoot these videos. I really shot them all in one day. I just changed what I was wearing really quickly. I picked out three deals for while we were away. I really quickly shot a video, you can add CopyDoodles to your videos really easily. If you check out my previous Lunch and Learn. It’s just a really great way to engage with us because people don’t normally send out videos.

And, I really like to see videos when it comes to purchasing online. I know that Zappos and I think that 6PM.com do this, they — if they’re selling shoes or any clothing they actually have videos of the shoe and the clothing, somebody holding it up, someone showing it to you, because you can’t see it just from a picture, but when somebody actually holds something and turns it, and moves it, you can tell a lot better what the item is going to look like when you have it in person. So, if you’re selling products or anything like that online, it’s basically online, shoot a really quick video just showing what the product is. Maybe if it’s a kitchen tool, use it in your kitchen. These don’t have to be great videos. As you can see these videos I shot very quickly with my Flip camera and we got a lot of sales off of this.

Also let people know of shop to you drop updates. There are so many stores that I get emails from, but I have no idea when they’re going to be closing before the holidays. I don’t know if they’re going to be open during Hanukah. I don’t know if they’re going to be open on Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. And, letting people know holiday hours is a really great way to get people into your store so that they know when you’re going to be open and they don’t miss out. Some of you might be waiting until 7 PM on Christmas Eve, but you might close at 6 PM, so you’re missing out on that sale. They’re going to have to go somewhere.

Also, make sure that if you’re shipping anything that you let people know of shipping deadlines. When is the last date for standard shipping, priority shipping, overnight, in-store pick-up, when are the last possible days they can order on your website and receive their gifts in time before the holidays? Make sure you’re letting people know, especially if your store hours are changing. People don’t normally pay attention to shipping times and shipping dates, and you need to let people know about this, because they’re not going to reach out and look for it. People are lazy. You’re going to need to let them know when you’re open, when they can come to your store, and when they can purchase your products.

Another really great thing that you can easily throw together very quickly is to host an open house or a class. This is from the Pottery Barn right down the street from me. I obviously added some CopyDoodles to it, and you should definitely add CopyDoodles to any fliers or anything you’re posting, but if you’re a local business send invites and reminders via email, post fliers around the area, post fliers in your store. Leave fliers in bags for people when they leave your store. If you’re mailing to local shoppers, put these fliers in the boxes that you mail to people — post it on your social media.

Have just a really quick open house. You don’t have to have — what Pottery Barn is doing here is just having a really short class, probably a 20 minute class on how to decorate for the holidays, or how to entertain for the holidays. There’s a lot of stores and boutiques around me who have wine, or snacks, or something like that to make it a fun party for me to shop at. And, those are the stores that I am constantly shopping at because I want to go and I want to enjoy my Christmas shopping and I want to spend more time there. And, I always spend more time there if they’re giving me wine and they’re talking to me, and there’s Christmas music playing, it’s happy and fun to do.

If you’re an online business you can still do this, have a live chat or a webinar — a live video webinar, something where people can maybe look at your products or browse your site while they’re talking to you. Maybe it’s a teleseminar and you’re going through your site and telling them about different products. You don’t have to do it all out. Or, maybe people just want to ask questions. Just have your live chat available at later hours during the holidays, so that people can ask questions about buying gifts and different products, or different services that you offer. Especially people are probably shopping during work, but a lot of people may shop on the weekends, or they may shop in the evening. If you’re an online business and you’re not normally available during the weekend and you don’t have people available at night, hire some people to do your customer service at those times because it will probably really pay off.

Also think about complementary champagne for New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve people are still, like I said, shopping. If you’re a restaurant — this is a really great idea too, you can always do something like this, a complementary gift or champagne. Make sure to promote it and make sure to let people know.

Train employees to mention your specials, whether you’re a restaurant, train them to mention that you’re taking New Year’s Eve reservations or Christmas Eve reservations, or if you’re open on Christmas, let them know when they’re answering their phone to tell people about it. If you’re a store mention your open house to every employee that walks in the door, even if they’re not purchasing because they might come back just to go to your open house and then you might teach them something and they might buy something.

Online customer service live chat. Have them mention your sales and the specials you may be having. If someone is asking you a question about a product have them say, “Oh, by the way we’re having a sale on this product in an hour. If you wait to buy it.” They may buy it at that point in time, immediately, but even if it’s $5 off later, let them know about it because your customer will value you a lot more for letting them know about the specials and the sale so they can save a little money and they’ll trust you a lot more than if you’re just trying to push your products and services out the door.

Something else you can do tweak your website slightly. If this is Dylan’s Candy Bar what you could do — all they did was they took their normal website, which is the center there, and they had their web guy add a green and red background in the back, which probably takes about two seconds to do. All they have to do is upload an image, but it’s very, very holiday-themed. You could do this just by adding a CopyDoodle, adding a holiday CopyDoodle to your logo, or adding a CopyDoodle to some of your pictures, images on your website, or things like that. So, if you tweak your website to kind of have a holiday theme it has a more happy upbeat theme. People are thinking about the holidays, and winter, and New Year’s Eve, and things like that right now.

When you’re sending your emails think about your email subject lines. What are people going to open? What subject lines can you create that are different than any other competitor out there? So, make sure you’re on your competitor’s email lists, the email list that you think your clients are on and make sure you’re using different subject lines than they are. Use words just like, “Last Day,” “Urgent,” “Don’t Forget.” Also use unique words, such as “Smoking Slippers,” if you sell slippers, or “Spa Treatments,” or anything that’s catchy, different. Use numbers in your subject lines, like “3 Days left,” “7 Hours to Go,” “Get $10 Off.” I’ve noticed that people a lot of times respond more when it’s a dollar amount off than a percentage off because you can easily figure out what a dollar amount is going to be off, but a percentage amount, even if you might get more by having 20% off an item, people just think about it differently when it’s a dollar amount because they can think about it right away.

Don’t use more than 50 characters because the end of your subject line will get cut off. Try putting your reader’s first name in the subject line, this was really popular a year or two ago. But, I started to see people go away from it because people weren’t responding, so try it again. There’s not a lot of emails that I get my first name in the subject line from.

Don’t mislead your readers. If you put something in your subject line that’s like, “I’m giving everything away for free…” don’t just put it there so that people open your email, because you’re going to get a lot of spam complaints and things like that.

Some things you should avoid — stay away from making your promotions really religiously focused. This one is for everyone, whether you’re celebrating Christmas or Hanukah or Christmahanukwanzaa. Unless you’re a religious organization or you know all of your clients or customers are the same religion, sometimes — I mean it doesn’t offend everyone, but some people do get offended by that and you don’t want to turn away customers from that. Or, if you’re sending out Christmas emails and people are buying Hanukah gifts, they just might not open the email because they might think that all of the gifts that you’re selling in your email have Santa on them, so they might not open your email. Try to stick to letting people know that it’s holiday and you have Hanukah, Christmas gifts, New Year’s gifts, everything.

Remember that if you’re nationwide it’s probably not snowing where many of your customers live. So, if you do a snowed-in special if you have somebody on your list that’s in Florida, they’re not snowed in. They’re not going to be snowed in at all. So, make sure that if you’re sending out anything like that you just think about where people are located in the country. If you can split your list up and send emails to people that are in different locations, depending on where you know you live, that’s a great thing to do.

Don’t forget about New Year’s or the first day of winter. The first day of winter is next Thursday, so you can always have a first day of winter special or sale and it’s different than everything else because everybody is promoting Hanukah, or Christmas, or New Year’s, or Kwanzaa and there’s nobody really that says, “Come in for my winter wonderland sale.”

Don’t forget to let your employees know about these last minute sales. So, if you’re going to get off this webinar and rush and have a 20% off sale or a $10 off a $50 purchase sale, make sure you let your employees know, so that when they’re chatting with customers they can mention it, when they’re online they can mention it, maybe you can have some people do some social media posts, they can tell their friends and family about it. Make sure that everybody knows about your sales before you post them.

Continuously sending emails to people who are not opening or responding — don’t do that, because you can check if people are actually responding and opening your emails, and clicking on them. If you’re sending five emails five days in a row and on the third day you notice that Sam still hasn’t opened any of your emails, don’t send him the last two because he might open the last two, or open the last one and be like, “You know what? You’re spamming me. I’m tired of your emails. I’m getting too many holiday emails. I don’t have any money. I’m tired of celebrating the holidays.” He just might be having a bad day. He’s going to opt off your list and mark you as spam. That doesn’t look good on your account.

So, make sure also on your social media that you always have a call to action, even if you’re saying Happy Holidays, “Happy Holidays from the team at ‘YourWebsite.com’, make sure to check out our specials,” something like that. Always have a reason that people can answer you, even if your call to action is something like, “Hey, let me know what your favorite Christmas song is to be entered in this contest.” “Let me know…” to get more people talking on your social media. Social media is not just about getting people to buy your stuff. It’s about interaction, it’s about becoming friends, it’s about letting people know about your life and opening up so your business becomes more friendly to them.

Don’t forget you need to have fun. That’s the most important part about any marketing, because if you’re boring and you’re bland, and all you’re doing is sending out special after special and deal after deal, bombarding people and trying to make them buy your stuff, they’re not going to like it, and they’re not going to like you, and they’re not going to like your business.

So, that is it for today’s CopyDoodles Lunch and Learn webinar. If anybody has any questions feel free to ask them at this time. I’m just going to move through the rest of the slides in case you guys are typing. Again, our Deal of the Week is The Perfect Webinar. Make sure to head over to www.CopyDoodles.com/blog in order to check that out. There is a link there and you can find out more about The Perfect Webinar, watch a video about it when you click on that link.

Today’s webinar replay will be located at www.CopyDoodles.com/blog in case you want anybody, your marketing team to look at this, so that they can get some ideas. You can just pass it off to them, you can create some last minute tips for you.

Next week’s topic again is Strategies for Using CopyDoodles on Envelopes to Get the Best Response. So, if you’re not doing any direct mail currently it’s a great webinar to attend because I’m going to give you some really good tips and hopefully in the new year you can kick off some really cool direct mail campaigns.

I’m just going to head over to www.copydoodles.com This is the site where we keep all of our CopyDoodles Lunch and Learns. Video replay will be up in an hour or two. Then if you scroll down you can watch all of our previous Lunch and Learns, or if you click on the right-hand side, previous Lunch and Learns, you can actually view every single Lunch and Learn that we’ve ever done, and you can click to view older and things like that. So, make sure to check all of those out.

If you have any questions find me on live chat. I will be on there if you think of anything after this. And, have a really great holiday and I will see you guys next week.