Boost Holiday Sales by letting Customers Order Out of Stock Items

The National Retail Federation recently announced that it expects sales in November and December to increase a solid 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion — significantly higher than the 10-year average of 2.5 percent. Adding on to that, the report also states that, holiday sales in 2015 are expected to represent approximately 19 percent of the retail industry’s annual sales of $3.2 trillion. But as a retailer, are you ready for it?

[Tweet “Total holiday retail sales this year is predicted to increase by about 3.7% to $630.5 billion”]

The holiday season can often be a double-edged sword. While on one hand, it can boost sales which will in turn help increase your store’s bottom line, on the other, a sudden influx of orders can spell doom for your inventory levels which can then lead to unhappy customers. According to an Emory University study, customers are increasingly willing to go elsewhere if they find a product out of stock. The report also found that, almost 50 percent of intended purchases are lost when customers encounter stockouts.

[Tweet “Retailers lose out on almost 50% of intended purchases when customers encounter stockouts”]

For businesses that do sales worth millions of dollars during the holiday season, this could translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses. That’s not a game you want to play.

In this post we will talk about how you can easily create a campaign using Beaconstac to boost holiday sales by rain checking items with just a few beacons. To get started with your beacon pilot, you can take a look at Beaconstac, that includes everything you need to get started. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!

Campaign Objective: Let’s set up a campaign that allows your customers to place an order for the hottest items that are currently out of stock in the women’s clothing section. This message will be sent only to those customers who are in the range of the beacon deployed at the women’s section, on Thanksgiving day, November 26th, 2015.

[Tweet “How to use beacons to boost holiday sales by rain checking the hottest picks“]

Step 1: Add beacons to the dashboard and install them in your retail store

Before we begin, the first thing to do is to purchase beacons. Once you have your beacons in place, add their details to the Beaconstac dashboard. Details of the beacon include UUID, major and minor numbers as shown in the screen below. You can also name the beacons for easy identification.

For the purpose of this campaign, we are using just one beacon to cover the women’s section in the retail store. Let’s name it as Beacon 1. Once you have added the beacon details, it is ready to be installed.

For this campaign, I suggest placing the beacon at the entrance of the women’s clothing section since our goal is to target customers specifically in that section.

Step 2: Create cards

Next, we’ll create a card that users will see on their device. Cards are basically creatives that show up as a notification on the user’s mobile phone when certain conditions are met. Beaconstac offers several types of cards such as Summary, Photo, Media, etc. I’m creating a Summary card titled ‘Get the HOTTEST Picks’ for this campaign.

Step 3: Add Rules

After this, all we have to do is create a rule for the beacon placed on the women’s section such that it triggers the message when a customer is in its proximity for 30 seconds or more.

Step 4: Create Custom Attributes

Next, we need to add a custom attribute which will determine which users will qualify to receive this offer. Custom attributes can be used to filter users based on criteria such as number of visits, previous purchase history, etc.

Here we are creating three custom attributes called ‘Date’ and ‘Out of Stock’. In this case, when the customer enters the store, the app first syncs the list of hottest selling items in the store and their inventory. Once that is done, the app then updates the Facts Dictionary with the inventory list.

This way, if any of the hottest picks are out of stock then once a customer enters the beacon zone in the women’s section, the message is triggered on his/her phone.

[Tweet “How to use beacons to monitor your inventory in real-time“]

Step 5: Set Actions

After this, we’ll add the action to be triggered when the rule is true. Here, the action is to trigger the ‘Get the hottest picks’ card we created. Besides this, it is also possible to direct people to a webpage or set up a custom action type.

And we’re all set! A customer who is in the women’s section of your retail store will see the following screen on her device if the criteria set in the campaign are met.

[Tweet “How to boost holiday sales by letting customers order out of stock sale items”]

Do try this out and let me know your thoughts about this campaign. If there a specific campaign you would like to read about, I’ll be more than happy to share how you can get it done using Beaconstac. Meanwhile, if you are planning a beacon pilot, take a look at Beaconstac, that includes everything you need to get started. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!