Statistics are in and here is what we know:
ShopperTrak reports that we only saw a .3% increase over Black Friday last year, but don't be discouraged. Overall reports show a 6.1% increase over last year for the first half of November. There are some attributing this to early promotions by retailers.
A survey conducted by the National Retail Federation showed that 212 million shopper visited stores and websites over the holiday weekend - that's an increase of over 17 million from last year. The average amount spent by a consumer was $365.34.
This year online retailers saw a 20 percent year over year increase in sales. Popular offers for Cyber Monday included deep discounted offers and free shipping promotions. Online retailers were were successful in enticing 107 million consumers to spend online this year.
Studies also show that during this holiday season, while online shopping is popular over 7 million consumers plan to use their smartphone to shop holiday deals as well.
The key for marketers in staying with the trends and strategies that are working this year is to focus on value and the promotion of discretionary gifts. You must keep momentum going with savings and incentives.
Attracting new customers, losing fewer and doing business with existing customers can allow growth in businesses. To assess the effects of losing customers on long term profitability and growth requires a detailed analysis of customer defections, because reduction of the latter can increase profits and growth. To reduce the defection rate, companies must do what is discussed in the following paragraphs.
First a company must define and measure its retention rate. Regardless of the industry, it is known that customer acquisition is a valuable endeavor when compared with the cost of keeping existing customers. The difference between getting new customers and keeping the old ones can go up to a few thousand dollars per person. Subscription renewal rate is a way to measure retention for a something like a magazine.
The second thing a company can do is decide the causes of customer churn and detect those that can be managed better. Companies usually make a distinction between voluntary and involuntary churn. Voluntary churners who switch to another company because of poor product or service can be managed. But involuntary churners that moved to a different region are excluded from the analytical models.
Companies should compare the lost profit equal to the customer’s lifetime value from a lost of customer to the cost to reduce the defection rate. Customer life time value has intuitive appeal towards a marketing concept, because in theory it represents exactly how much each customer is worth and exactly how much the company is wiling to spend to acquire each customer. If the cost to discourage defection is lower than the lost profit, the company should spend money to retain the customer.