3 Clever Ways to Leverage Your ePos System in Your Marketing Campaigns
The point of sale has become much more than a simple monetary exchange point; evolving into a marketing hub, customer relationship-enhancing tool, and more. Using your ePOS system in your marketing campaigns will grant you a unique advantage over the competition, with better insight into customer behavior, purchasing habits, and preferred items or services. Keep reading to learn more about these three clever ways to leverage your ePOS system in your marketing campaigns.
1. Customer Profiles are Information Caches
Your ePOS system likely has a customer profile database where you can store things like email addresses, phone numbers, etc. This priceless information on your customers provides you with a sort of bridge to them when they’re not shopping at your store. Besides collecting personal information, you’ll also be able to track their purchases and learn which items they prefer.
What better way to market to a customer than by understanding exactly what they want to purchase, to begin with? Customer insights grant your business the ability to better understand the customer, and with understanding comes better marketing.
What makes a successful marketing campaign, anyway? The ability to effectively reach your customers with information on items or services they’re likely to purchase can spell the difference between success and failure. Without those precious insights, you’re essentially shooting in the dark; hoping that what you’re marketing appeals to a specific set of customers and they follow up on the promotions.
Take a close look at which of your products or services are customer favorites. These are probably worthy of a little extra attention in your marketing efforts if they’re already bestsellers. Imagine being able to increase the number of customers purchasing your store’s bestselling items; you’d increase your profits while simultaneously introducing customers to the very thing your business does best.
When viewing your customer profiles, be sure to pay attention to certain demographics as well. Age, race, gender, and even location can have a considerable impact on how your customers’ shop and what they spend their money on. An 18-year old customer is likely to have different tastes than an 80-year old customer.
Tailoring different marketing campaigns to specific demographics will increase the chances of a response and follow-up to the call of action, making your campaign that much more effective. Customize the marketing experience for your customers and you’ll find that it’s much easier to appeal to their unique preferences.
2. Tracking Sales Numbers
We’ve covered tracking sales for individual customers, but what about sales for your business as a whole? What can this information tell you about your business and the behavior and preferences of its patrons?
Your business will have access to daily, weekly, monthly, and annual sales numbers via an ePOS system or register; giving you unlimited data from which to create effective campaigns. Wondering which days have the highest foot traffic? Or maybe what time of year is your busiest? Your ePOS system can tell you.
From there, you can create marketing campaigns centered around specific times of the day, the year, or the month. If Tuesdays are generally slow, maybe having your biggest sale of the month on that day isn’t such a great idea. If Saturdays are your busiest days, having your monthly sales during the day may drive more customers to your store.
Once you’ve identified sales trends, your marketing campaigns will be more effectively timed, and thus much more effective in reaching your customers. If you identify a sudden shift in sales numbers or foot traffic, you’ll want to analyze that data and find out exactly what’s causing it, and launch a campaign to combat it.
3. Up-Selling at the POS
Up-selling is an excellent way to provide on the spot marketing to your customers as they’re purchasing their items. Your point of sale can become more than just a place to exchange money for goods and services, but rather a place to educate customers on other products they may be interested in.
You’ll get the change to explain to customers why certain items are of a higher price, usually citing the fact that the higher-priced items are of better quality. Your customers may find that they do, in fact, want something of higher quality, and could be willing to purchase that marketed item in lieu of their current purchase.
You can also try cross-selling; that is, offering products of a similar niche to the customer, or items that may work well with their current purchase. Let’s say your customer is purchasing something that requires a specific battery. You could cross-sell the batteries or other accessories that accompany that item.
Never misunderstand marketing as simply sending a promotional email now and then. Marketing begins at ends with you. You should be marketing to customers directly or indirectly from the moment they enter the business, to the point of sale and beyond.
Conclusion
Marketing campaigns can be the step your business needs to move up to the next level. With a modern ePOS system, the marketing tools you need to grow your business are located right at your fingertips, granting you valuable insight into customer behavior and sales trends.
Remember that marketing begins and ends with you. Always treat your customers with respect and build a reputation for quality and service and products to make your marketing efforts that much more effective.
Written by: Gary Wilkinson
