Many posts about ecommerce over the holidays urge you to get started early.

But the great news is it’s never too late to set up a discount, sale, or deal in your store. As long as the holidays are still happening, you can take a couple of minutes to get in on the holiday action.

Try these last-minute holiday sale ideas now, or the next time a holiday rolls around.

Finish Your Stock: Give Away or Discount Slow-moving Goods

If you’re aiming for something to set up in a hurry and  have a complete warehouse to empty, these ones for you.

Discounts aren’t accepted for every store, however, if your margins are healthy enough, you can drive more customers by offering instant savings on your goods. Said savings can additionally help you move merchandise quickly, making room for more desirable stock.

So, if you want to clear out last season’s styles, mark them down by 40% and call it a holiday special. Have a new product model coming in? Slash the prices on the existing one to make room.

If you have products that you are desperate to get rid of ––like old stock or items you’ve found lying about the warehouse — you can promote a free gift with orders over a certain amount.

Giving away leftovers or undesired items to customers might feel a bit cheap, but consumers love free gifts. They can even motivate purchases, much like free shipping might. So if you’ve got the margins and want to make space, go for it!

Set Up a Smart Discount

A “smart” discount’s criteria decide whether or not it automatically applies to a customer’s cart. For instance, you could create one that takes 40% off orders of three or more men’s shoes. It will only apply when three or more shoes are in the cart, however, will no require code.

The huge benefit of these discounts is that you just need to create them once, and they apply the consumers doing anything special.

Enable them when you’re prepared, disable them when you’re finished. Couple with a site-wide banner or on-page notice to promote.

A couple of ideas for easy smart discounts:

• Buy x products from a particular category, save $y
• Spend $x amount, receive $y off your entire order

Note: It’s important to spend some time on how much discount you can afford to offer. More revenue doesn’t always lead to more profit if you’re discounting to the skies.

Offer a Discount Off their Next Purchase

If you’re aiming to run a sale for Cyber Monday or Black Friday, you truly don’t have much time. Even the above-mentioned ideas take some time to plan, not to mention the manpower you will need at the moment.

So, let’s take an idea from some of the huge box retailers. Some of these stores are selling pricier items, yet are giving gift cards toward the customer’s next purchase at checkout.

Thinking what we’re thinking?

The summary is: offer your customers a discount off their next purchase or gift certificate if they buy with you at the moment. You may not have anything on sale now since you didn’t get the time to set it up. However, maybe you will have it in a month when they arrive to shop with you once again.

Make Sure The World Knows About Your Special Offer

Running a stellar sale at the last minute is an achievement in and of itself. But your efforts could be wasted if you can’t attract your shopper’s attention and get them to your store.

Although your time is undoubtedly limited, you’ll still need to find a couple of ways to market your deal to the customers who might not naturally consider your store when they’re searching for holiday sales. Here are some amazing ideas for you, ordered by fastest to not-as-fast:

• Publish social media messages about the offer to all of your channels. If you’re about to be out of the office, then Buffer is a good tool for this: it allows you schedule posts, tweets, and now even pins in advance.
• Ecommerce call to action or Add in-cart notices. With Builderfly, you can do this easily with the Cart Notices extension. If a customer wants to spend another $20 to get a gift, it ought to only take a couple of minutes to set up that automatic notice.
• Prepare and send an email campaign. Emails generally take some to create, however, if you’ve got a solid template, your copywriter, and a graphic ready, try for it. This is by far the most ideal way to get a customer’s attention during the holidays.

You can do only one of these things if you’re short on time… however, ideally, you should try a combination of three or four.

Conclusion

The holiday season is the most vital time of the year for retailers. Implement some amazing new ideas and tactics this year and see what there is to create for the future. It will be wonderful to see what this year’s holiday shopping data looks like.