Let's face it, Christmas is really, really close. In the next few weeks your store will go from busy, to crazy busy. So before the crazy begins, here's a few tips on how to make this your best Christmas ever.

If you missed part one of this blog series, you can view it here  Using the 5% Factor to make this your best Christmas ever! In that blog we discussed three ways to increase your sales: 
- Increasing the number of customers
- Increasing how frequently they purchase
- Increasing how much they spend

In this blog we will look at ways you can increase the number of customers buying from you, to generate more revenue. Part 3 and 4 of this series will then look at the remaining two.

Increase Number of Customers

Before we head of, aimlessly looking at ways to increase customers, the first step is knowing who your customers are, how those customers found you, and what keeps them coming back. If you are a Swim jewelry software user, you can analyse your customers by looking at the customer reports:

• who - CR001: Best Customers
• how found - CR017: How Customers Found the Store
• age - CR007: Customers' Details List
• location - CR020: Customer Marketing Report
• why purchasing - CR016: Reasons for Purchasing
• who for - CR016: Reasons for Purchasing

With this information you can build a profile of your customers. You can also use this to build an 'ideal customer' profile and segment what type of customers you would like to target. Use this customer profile when creating your campaigns and use wording, visuals, offers and mediums that would attract your ideal customer.

As this blog is focusing on Christmas sales, we look at quick ways to attract more customers. In saying that, the customer profile and ideal customer information is priceless. Use it before starting any marketing plan or campaign. Let it be the first thing you look at in 2017 when setting up your year's marketing campaign.

Now, back to getting more customers. The first place to look, is in your store. Every day you have shoppers. These are people inside your store who are not customers. They have not bought from you, yet they are right there, in your store.  Find out why they are not buying from you. How many dollars each day are walking out the door. If a customer asks for a product that you don't have write it down. Look for trends in requests and get that stock in to maximise your sales. Judy Cameron from Cameron's Fine Jewellers (a long term Swim user and marketing guru, wrote a wonderful article about this. You can read it here)

Another place to find new customers is by looking at your customer database and re-connecting with customers on your list that have not purchased within the last twelve or more months. Send them an incentive to come back to your store. For example, you could hold a special pre-Christmas event, sale or VIP night where they are exclusively invited. You could give them a gift voucher that is redeemable after spending a certain amount of money. You can give them a free gift upon purchasing. Other options are to look at what they did purchase from you before and recommend something to go with it.

Text messaging and emailing has made it easy to perform the above tasks quickly and cost effectively. Swim users you can use the 'customers who have not purchased since' option in the bulk SMS and email area to perform this task. We wrote a blog article last Christmas about a jeweller who sent out a text message campaign to customers who had not purchased for over two years and he received $7000 in sales in the first three hours of the text message being sent out.

Other places to find new customers quickly is through word of mouth from your existing customers. You could host a VIP night giving your customers two tickets, one for them and one for a friend who has never shopped at your store before. Both could receive a special gift. Another really quick way to ask for a referral where everyone benefits is to send out an SMS text message or email offering $50 off their purchase and their friends purchase, when they introduce a friend.

A few quick social media campaigns you can run to attract more customers are:
- For stores with an e-commerce site, on social media run a competition where people submit their best Christmas gift ideas from items within your store (i.e stock pictures from your website). Your fans can then vote on the one they like best and the person who submitted the one with the highest vote receives a voucher. (This campaign highlights your products, has potential customers looking for items they like on your website and engages your customers)
- For manufacturing jewellers you can do the same campaign as above with customer submitting their own designs for the perfect Christmas gift. During the campaign write articles about how to best design your own piece, why a special hand made piece is the perfect Christmas gift and ways to recycle existing jewellery into new custom made pieces. 
- Post your own ideas on perfect Christmas gifts.  Make it fun, different and suggest ways to package or present the item to make it more memorable. Have fun with this and your customers will to. The more your customers enjoy it, the more chance they will share it with their friends (your new potential customers).
- We all have Christmas stories in retail. Stories about last minute purchases, customers ordering the oddest gift, the sweetest present you've sold. Think about your Christmas's past and place a few of these stories up, for your fans to share.

If you implement just one of the above suggestions, you are sure to increase your customers and increase your sales this Christmas.
There are so many ways to attract new customers. Here we have just covered a few to get you started. If you have your own ideas, add them as comments below.  In the next blog we will look at increasing the frequency of your customers purchasing from you.