For business owners Christmas brings with it some of the best times of the year.  It’s exciting to know that most of your competitors aren’t going to do anything, they think they’re too busy to do something.  There are many ways to drive your customers back to your front door.  Many companies will offer “Black Friday” deals, 12 days of Christmas deals, last minute Christmas Eve sales, etc.  These ideas are great and work really well when paired with a good marketing attack, but I love to see out of the box ideas.

Back in the early 2000’s (seems like SO long ago) I read an article about a jeweler in New York who came up with a great Christmas shopping promotion.  His main issue was that guys would come in and under-spend on the jewelry  for the lady in their life.  The men weren’t sure what they wanted and the jeweler knew this was dramatically effecting their sales.

They came up with a great idea.  He knew in order to fix this he needed to know what his female clients wanted from his store.  So he held “Ladies Only VIP Night” complete with massages, mini-pedi’s, manicures, etc.  He invited their top customers to this event with the promise of a free gift and all the pampering they could handle.  While the ladies were there they were asked to fill out a “Wish List” and then list on the bottom the men in their lives (brother, dad, husband, boyfriend, etc) that they wanted invited for the Black Friday men’s event.  In order to get the gift, they had to list 3 and their contact info.

Next they invited all the men listed on the wish lists to a Black Friday Men’s Only Event.  These men were promised exclusive deals on the EXACT gifts the lady in their life wanted.  They also had food and drinks and sports on TVs as well.  When the men showed up with their invitation, they were personally walked through the items on the list by an associate and given package deals.

What happened?  He not only saw his gross sales #’s skyrocket, he sold a larger quantity of items as well with great combo deals.

We did a similar promotion when we were in the boat business.   I was tired of seeing ladies come in every December and spend $25-50 on gift cards because they weren’t sure what fishing gear their husband/father would really want.  So we did something very similar to what the New York Jeweler did.  We invited the men into our store to fill out their Christmas wish list.  If they filled out the wish list and gave us 3 women to invite (including contact info) we gave them a $25 gift card.   The first year we had approx. 200 people participate.  This led to 3 VERY successful ladies only nights and a sales increase of around $25,000 in fishing gear…IN THE WINTER!  Plus the men spent way over the $25 gift card they were given, so all around, this was a huge success.

So I ask you, what is your business doing this Christmas season to capture your customers attention???