Hey, it’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of real retail TV, you’re going to learn a great holiday tactic that can help you drive post-holiday sales. So this is a super easy to execute. Marketing tactic that works is proven, will make you a lot more money.

And what I’m talking about here is blizzard bucks and blizzard bucks as a concept. We’ll get into the details here in a second. Is a tactic where you give your holiday shoppers a bounce back gift certificate to be used after the holidays, to be used in January and February. One of the biggest opportunities that independent retailers like you have that they don’t take advantage of is taking your casual holiday shopper, the person who might come into your store once or twice a year, but they find you during the holidays, or they only come in during the holidays.

And then the challenge in the opportunity is to get them to come into your store after the holidays and then again turn that customer into a regular, turn that customer into a loyal customer, turn that once or twice a year customer into a four or five or six times a year. Customer you know, there’s only three ways to grow your business, get new customers, increase the average sale. But the big money comes from more transactions per customer. How do you get them in more often?

This tactic is perfect. So first of all, let’s talk about what to call it. We call it blizzard bucks because we live here in Michigan. And it just makes sense if you live in Phoenix or Key West or Miami, blizzard bucks might not be appropriate.

You could call it doggy dollars if you’re a pet store or find a name that resonates with you and your team. This might be a perfect opportunity to add this with your team. Ask, discuss, decide. Ask what would be a great name for this promotion?

What would be a great name for these blizzard bucks? Discuss it with them and decide on it. So come up with a name that works for you. The second thing is what is the percentage?

And the percentage typically, traditionally is 10%, but more and more people are just using 5 and 5 works just fine. So here’s how it would work. Somebody comes your blizzard books are pre printed there is no denomination. So Indy comes into my store and she spends $100 and I am a 10% blizzard buck store.

So what do I do at the point of checkout I give her I fill in 10% of $100 is $10. I fill it in. I fill the denomination in. When she’s in the store, when she’s at the register, I hand it to her and I explain the program.

Hey, you have earned 10 blizzard box. These this certificate, this gift certificate is good any time after Christmas, all the way until the end of February. It could be that you change that timeline, that it’s good from the 1st of January to the 31st of January, again, that’s entirely up to you. But the denomination, it is filled out at the counter, given to them immediately.

Explain to them immediately. But here’s what starts to happen. People like to get blizzard books. They’ll come in and shop more during the holidays because they want to get more blizzard bucks to spend in January.

In February. So do you see how simple it is? Do you see how it can be incredibly effective? And I’m looking at you and telling you that it is effective, that our clients who do use this program are seeing great results for it.

You know, you want to drive that first quarter traffic. This is a great way to do it. And I want to share a simple twist on it for you to consider. So Misha Pussetto is one of our favorite marketers.

She’s a member of the platinum mastermind group, and she always did blizzard blizzard books. And during covid, she was really afraid. She was like, if I’ve got traffic now, I want to take advantage of it now. So she got rid of the only use it in January and February, February caveat and she gave them blizzard books right away at the point of purchase and people were able to use them immediately.

And what she said and what I found really interesting was that by not putting the first quarter stipulation on the program, by allowing people to spend their blizzard bucks immediately, she saw a lot more transactions per customer during the holidays. So what was she doing? She was getting them to come in more times during the holidays. And she was willing to sacrifice a little bit of that first quarter traffic to ensure that she got the money while she had a chance.

So blizzard barks. It’s a great tactic. I hope that you’ll consider it if you use blizzard books already and you have success, or if you use blizzard books and you have any questions, put them down below. I’m Bob Negen and we’ll see you next week.