The holiday season is undoubtedly the most important time of the year for selling wine online. Shoppers are increasingly choosing online stores as a quick, convenient way to meet their holiday needs, and the VinesOS Holiday Sales Guide is here to get you started ahead of the competition and to ring up good cheer.

Offer Complimentary holiday shipping with a minimum order 

Although free shipping isn’t free to you, it is a customer expectation. Surveys show that over 93% of customers placed an order based on free shipping. A UPS e-commerce study showed that over 50% of consumers even add more items to their carts when they must meet a minimum to receive free shipping. Incentivize membership with the benefit of including shipping only for members on qualifying orders.

Toast the holidays with bundled offers 

Create a custom gift basket or collection with the VinesOS Gift Bundle feature. Give each bundle a festive name like 12 Nights of Wine Pack, World-Class Holiday Reds, and Fine Festive Whites. Make the packaging special by putting the wines in a wooden box with a fancy ribbon or adding seasonal bottle decor to single bottles or magnums.

Think outside the box and include wine charms, coasters, corkscrews, bottle openers, cocktail napkins, chocolate, cheese, crackers, merchandise, and whatever you can dream up to make it irresistible.

Be sure to take and publish several pictures of your bundles online. Customers prefer to choose from products with multiple photos of what is in the bundle.

Set a special price on the bundle for members or guests. The VinesOS cart will automatically create a special flat rate bundle price, customizable for club members or guests.

Promote the holiday bundles to club members as a gift by providing a special coupon via a quick email campaign and incorporating QR codes for one-click sales. Create hang tags in the tasting room or store to visualize the bundles as specials to your customers. 

Gift a Club Membership

Encourage your loyal base to "Gift a Club" to the wine lovers on their Holiday list. Set up a "Holiday Gift Club" that expires after one year with two bottles shipped per quarter or 3, 6, or 9 bottles per shipment. Invite the gifted member to join permanently, with auto-generated reminders to join after the gift membership expires. 

Offer a coupon thank you to anyone who gifts a club membership. And utilize QR codes again for a fast and uncomplicated sale in the tasting room.

Holiday gift messaging and wrap

Add holiday gift wrap as an upsell option and let your customers know you will write their gift message on a festive greeting card for holiday gift orders. This makes sending wine as a gift easy. To compensate for the gift messaging and wrapping, you can add a gift wrap fee or set it to be free over a minimum order value. 

Offer Holiday Tastings & Private Holiday Events

Set up special holiday events, such as a tasting of wines that pair well with all the favorite holiday appetizers, entrees, and desserts, or a Merry Barrel Tasting for club members. Create future events that can be gifted for the holidays.

Offer private events to mingle safely with team members, family, and friends. Invite customers to pre-book an event or a special tasting and offer something extra for pre-booked events.

Use the VinesOS option to sell tickets for events or to promote your events without online reservations. 

Event options include: 

* Coupons to offer your most loyal club members, for example, a complimentary Holiday tasting

* A special reduced cost for members

* A limited number of free tickets for members, with a special discount for a certain number of additional tickets, also with the option to restrict how many tickets at that reduced cost

* Ability to restrict ticket purchase to members only or to members of a particular wine club

* Tasting reservations with table management, limited seating, and the option to include pre-ordered flights or food. 

Remember to collect the names of all attendees when they purchase event tickets or reserve a wine-tasting online. You can easily export the RSVP list for streamlining guest management, sending special instructions, and facilitating check-in at the event.

Promote your special Holiday events to club members as a gift by providing a special coupon in a quick email campaign.

Create a Coupon for Your Most Loyal Customers, Club members, or for All Guests

Create a coupon code to give to your customers. You can set a discount off the purchase price – either as a dollar amount or as a percentage and set it for all items or just particular items.  

Offer Gift Cards

Sell e-gift cards and plastic gift cards that you can mail out to all the customers who cannot decide what to give this year. Run a limited-time promotion for a sale on Gift Cards, and create a coupon for 5% off gift cards over $100. The e-Gift cards can make for great last-minute holiday gifts.  

Promote specials for  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Super Saturday, Hanukkah, Three Kings Day, Winter Solstice, St. Lucia Day, St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year 

Offer discounts, bundles, and more for all the upcoming holiday sale days to consumers who want a head start on their holiday shopping. Meet their demand by offering special deals – both online and in-store – on key holiday gifts or case specials.

12 Days of Christmas Gift Marathon

During a 12-day holiday marketing event, you can surprise your customers each day with a new gift idea or special. It builds excitement and gives customers a reason to visit your shop daily. And once they're in-store or on your shop page, they may purchase even more.

Do something good: Offer a toy drive in your tasting room, wine bar, or store

Providing holiday toys for children is a struggle for many low-income families. Take action to start a holiday toy drive this year. You'll be surprised by the positive feedback from your customers and the appreciation of struggling families. Plus, the drive brings in new customers.

Partner with charities such as Toys for Tots, Goodwill, The Salvation Army, or Operation Homefront. Invite your community to drop off new, unwrapped gifts by a scheduled date so that you can get the donations to the charity on time to distribute them to families in need.

Use Page Pop-Up Promos on your VinesOS site and QR codes

Remember to use Pop-up Promos to alert your site visitors about any special promo you have going on, so as soon as customers come to your site, they will see your special offers and incentives. Also, be sure to send out emails to your newsletter subscribers and club members. The VinesOS Mailchimp integration makes it a cinch to filter for customer segments and automatically add them to your mail campaign.

Use Holiday templates for your Email Marketing

Send emails to your newsletter subscribers and club members well ahead of your shipping deadlines. Filter your customers based on their wine preferences and assign your holiday bundles through a targeted email or link to your holiday landing page using Holiday Mailchimp templates. The VinesOS Mailchimp integration makes it a cinch to filter for customer segments and automatically add them to your mail campaign.

Holiday Offer Landing Page 

Next to emails, creating landing pages for your promotions and sales can be highly effective at helping further bump up your conversion rate for the holiday season. 

How to stay atop your holiday sales

Decide which holidays you want to promote. Prepare for key dates with a holiday planning calendar.

If this is your first time doing a major holiday promotion, we suggest choosing two or three to tackle — such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

Knowing which holidays you want to participate in, it's good to start mapping things out with a promotional calendar. When you set up a promotional calendar, you want to add items such:

• Dates and times you will update the graphics and banners on your site

• Dates and times of your promotional email deployment

• Dates to start and stop advertising for each promotion 

Creating a promotional calendar doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as using a printed calendar or an online tool like Google Calendar. 

Publish a calendar for shipping deadlines 

Create a page or section on your site to let customers know the cut-off for shipping deadlines. Include this in your email campaign to promote sales before the cut-off period. 

Achieve your Holiday Sales goals with VinesOS.

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