Hey. It’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, you’re gonna 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 and 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 a d d 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 ten percent.

But more and more people are just using five and five works just fine. So here’s how it would work.

Somebody comes your your blizzard bucks are preprinted. There is no denomination.

So Indie comes into my store and she spends a hundred dollars. And I am a ten percent Blizzard bucks store. So what do I do at the point of checkout?

I give her, I fill in ten percent of a hundred dollars is ten dollars. 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 explained the program.

Hey, you have earned ten blizzard bucks.

These this certificate, this gift certificate is good anytime after Christmas all the way until the end of February.

It could be that you change that sort of that that timeline that it’s good from the first of January to the thirty first of January. Again, that’s entirely up to you. But the denomination, it is filled out at the counter given to them immediately, explained to them immediately. But here’s what starts to happen.

People like to get blizzard bucks. They’ll come in and shop more during the holidays because they want to get more blizzard bucks to spend in January and 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 wanna drive that first quarter traffic. This is a great way to do it. And I wanna share a simple twist on it for you to consider.

So Misha Seto is one of our favorite marketers. She’s a member of the Platinum Mastermind group, and she always did blizzard blizzard bucks.

And during COVID, she was really afraid.

She was like, if I’ve got traffic now, I wanna 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 bucks 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. What 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 bucks, it’s a great tactic.

I hope that you’ll consider it. If you use blizzard bucks already and you have success or if you use Blizzard Bucks and you have any questions, put them down below. I’m Bob Negen, and we’ll see you next week.