Boost your sales in Q4 with these key gifting dates

October to December are a busy and exciting time of year for hospitality, with lots of occasions to celebrate.

Some of the biggest dates to note include:

31st October – Halloween
12th November – Diwali
24th November – Black Friday
7th – 15th December – Hanukkah
25th December – Christmas

With each of these events comes a high demand for gifting. So these occasions are the perfect time to bring out a new menu or a themed special. Here are some tips from on us on how to make sure you’re set up for a successful gifting season:

Let your customers order ahead

These kinds of occasions are usually planned for and so customers want to place orders in advance. Pre orders are also a great way to increase average order value (AOV), in fact last year, Slerp partners found pre order AOVs to be as much as 50% higher than same day orders.

Set your menu up for gifting

With celebrations come presents, and name a better present than food?

Make sure it’s easy for customers to find what they’re looking for with specific gifting bundles and options. With Slerp, you can split your menu into categories and have a section designed especially for gifting, making your customer’s user journey quick and easy.

Offer gift wrapping

It’s also worth offering gift wrapping and personalised notes as an add on. This is another easy way of boosting your AOV whilst giving customers the ability to add a personal touch for their loved ones. One of our partners made over £30k in sales last year from gift wrapping alone.

Slerp Tip: Our partners can use a convenient feature that enables gift wrapping on their online store with just one click.

Tell your customers

All of this is great but if you don’t give your customers a heads up they won’t know that they can order from your business for these kinds of occasions. There are three key ways you can do this:

SMS – An SMS offer is a great way to spike traffic and sales. Some of our partners have seen their sales increase by as much as 63% from a single SMS. Timing is key. Black Friday is a great example of this, it’s pay day so your customers have more to spend AND the countdown to Christmas is on so they’re looking to buy gifts.
Email – email marketing is a tried and tested tool, great for promoting a new menu or a gifting opportunity on a key date like Diwali or Christmas. This form of communication is great for promoting limited edition specials. Make sure to include some images to really tempt them into ordering.
App Notifications – If you have your own ordering app, notifications are a quick and affordable way to boost sales. Use these in a similar way to SMS to communicate a promotion. Try putting a timeframe on it like ‘available for 48hrs’ or mentioning that stocks are limited, this will drive FOMO and encourage the customer to order there and then.

All of this can be organised and managed through our own CRM system, designed and set up for hospitality businesses. Our experts can help you send communications to your contacts via SMS and email and set up automations to minimise effort and maximise impact.

Following these tips means you’re sure to have a great gifting season and finish the year on a high. Interested in working with Slerp? Get in touch with us now.