The hustle and bustle of year-end holiday planning is underway, and much of that excitement revolves around gifting. To ease the workload, here are a few tips to promote gifting and keep the process easy and stress-free for you. All of them reinforce your commitment to deliver a great shopping experience for your customers.

Reminder #1: Promote Your Registry’s Value to Consumers

The National Retail Federation predicts a 3-3.5% increase in holiday sales in the U.S., reaching up to about $990 billion. Of note, 92% of all adults plan to get into the holiday spirit and celebrate. Other markets will also see busy shopping going on, too.

As always, a big driver of sales growth this year comes from gifting. Even as the projections suggest that sales growth will be somewhat lower than last year, consumers are still prioritizing gifting and celebrating with loved ones. However, all the marketplace uncertainty out there is making them more value-conscious – with heightened focus on what products choose to buy and how much they spend.

That’s the recipe for registry success. The use of a registry or holiday gift list is the perfect tool for thoughtful gifting. And, as you know, here’s why:

• Personalized Gifting Registries allow recipients to select meaningful, lasting gifts, avoiding unwanted clutter. Such careful selection is important; research tells us that ‘customers want what they want’ and enjoying enduring use of gifts is important to them.
• Thoughtful Spending At a time when consumers are looking for value, shopping from a gift list makes it easy to focus on gifts that fit their budget and know with confidence that the choice will be happily received. That in itself reinforces a smart purchase and ensures that the money is well spent. 
• Eco-friendly Shopping: Registry use reduces waste, saves workload, and supports an environmental consciousness. These are important considerations for today’s consumer and make your workload more efficient as well.

Bottom line, registry use aligns with important consumer shopping influences – whether related to their values or financial concerns. So, be sure to play up these core registry benefits in all of the marketing you do for gifting this season.

Reminder #2: Mine the Registry Data in Your Dashboard

There’s a lot of useful data in your dashboard that can frame your gift marketing messages.  Registrant and gift giver information is available along with insights into what gifts are trending on your registries. Put all of that information to work for you.

• Popular Gifts: The ‘added gifts’ data identifies ‘popular’ gifts. Promote them as top trending items and feature them as favorites for gifting.
• Targeted Emails: Leverage registry data to craft personalized emails for registrants and gift givers
•  Personal gifting is a hot trend at the moment, so encourage both registrants and gift givers to ‘treat’ themselves.
• Remind registrants planning for milestone events in the future to complement that registry with a holiday gift list. It’s a perfect excuse to be in touch and share new gift ideas.
• Invite gift givers to shop. Often overlooked, they may become future customers themselves and even future registry users.

Reminder #3: Boost Brand Awareness with our Marketing Tools

Competition for consumer attention is fierce these days so let us help you create more marketing impact at no extra cost. Programs we offer are easy to use. Helpful any time, but that added brand visibility can be especially helpful now. For instance:

Leverage our site and social media platforms to gain more market visibility for your products

• Gift Idea Boards: Share product details for inclusion in our Pinterest-style boards, which prompt customers to add items to their registries or purchase directly.
• Social Media Sharing: Send us your posts, and we’ll re-share to increase visibility among shoppers. Take every advantage of the power of social media for customers researching products or shopping

For those who deploy marketing campaigns to drive business, use our tools to assess the productivity of your efforts. 

• Campaign Tracking: Use Our Google Analytics tool and Campaign ID tracking will monitor traffic and ensure your marketing dollars are well-spent.

Reminder #4: Rely on Our Customer Care Team – and Reduce Your Workload

With holiday staffing tight, let our team handle registry-related questions, freeing up your resources. Our Customer Care team is available 7 days a week for 16 hours a day to assist registrants and gift givers in a professional, brand-right way. You can even add a live chat button to your registry page for added convenience.

We’re here to help you succeed! For advice and support, contact us anytime at marketingguru@myregistry.com.