Preparing for holiday sales
There are many common seasonal sale periods during the year, such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Merchants will want to begin planning their promotions and training their sales team to ensure everything is set up for success.
Use this guide to learn about Recharge tools and resources you can leverage during the sales period as well as Recharge Support help and troubleshooting coverage during the holidays.
Use Recharge sales tools
Recharge provides a rich array of tools you can use during seasonal sales. Certain tools may require setup time, be part of our Early Adopters Program (EAP), or be exclusive to Custom or Pro plans. Prepare appropriately to ensure eligibility and familiarize yourself with these tools before utilizing them in a crucial sales period:
- Bundles: Bundles allow you to group items together under one SKU to create a “build-a-box” experience.
- Cancellation prevention strategy: Create unique win back and churn mitigation strategies to prevent customer churn.
- Discount Codes: Recharge supports all discount code types offered by Shopify, allowing you to create fixed discounts, offer free shipping, and more.
- Dynamic pricing: Use dynamic pricing to offer customers an alternative product price at the checkout than what they pay on their recurring orders
- Enhanced Analytics: Evaluate the success of your holiday sales with our newly enhanced analytics suite. No implementation is required.
- Product subscription plans: Quickly manage products at scale to save time and reduce operational costs.
- Rewards: Offer credits, rewards and subscription discounts using Rewards
- Quick Actions: Use Quick Actions in your Klaviyo notifications to cross-sell or upsell to new and existing subscribers.
- Workflows: Workflows allow you to apply different rules to specific charges. For example, you could swap out a free trial product for the standard product or offer different pricing on the first few charges.
Explore sales techniques to boost campaigns
Looking to run a specific campaign? Check out the following resources to implement different sales techniques:
- Create a discount code with a minimum purchase amount
- Offer a discount code or set up a Workflow to offer free shipping
- Create a free trial offer using Workflows
- Create an abandoned cart e-mail using Klaviyo to send to customers after your sale period ends
- Upsell one-time products to a subscription order while in a customer's cart
- Post-purchase cross-sell: Encourage customers to add an additional product to their order post-checkout, either as a one-time or on a recurring basis.
- Promote seasonal subscription offerings on your store’s homepage
Custom use cases
- Offer a discounted price for new customers only by changing the subscribe and save price in Recharge, or changing the product price in your e-commerce platform
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Offer a discounted price on the first order by doing one of the following:
- Using a discount code for the first order
- Updating the subscribe and save price and then bulk updating customer subscription prices after
- Create a Workflow to change the price of the product after checkout
Checkout our FAQ section for more commonly asked questions and cases.
Plan ahead
Recharge wants to ensure that your sales run smoothly during the holiday season. It is better to plan ahead now than to troubleshoot during busy sales times. We recommend following these tips to ensure the best possible performance during your sales:
Discounts
- Confirm if your discount codes are set to apply to the correct channels.
- If using the Shopify Checkout Integration, make sure you have created the discount code in Shopify with identical settings.
Checkout
- Test shipping prices at checkout and upcoming orders for accuracy.
- Test all workflow, discounts, and shipping flows you are using by running a test transaction.
Other settings and tools
- Make any theme changes in advance of the sales period as changing your theme may require the widget to be re-installed.
- Review upcoming subscriptions using your exports and make any bulk changes at least five days before the holiday sale. See the Bulk updates section for more information.
Support coverage and services
In-app support will be available 24/7 during the holiday season, providing all Recharge users with instant access to helpful resources, including FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and product information.
Live chat coverage
Note: Live chat coverage will be unavailable on Black Friday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. You can utilize our in-app support to receive help through our virtual assistant or create a support ticket. Live chat coverage will be available on Cyber Monday.
When you require personalized assistance, our support agents will also be able to assist you further in live interactions through our in-app support. You can reach out to a live agent for support from 6 AM to 6 PM PST, Monday to Friday, (except for observed US holidays) or create a support ticket at any time.
Priority levels
Recharge handles tickets based on the priority level and will prioritize business critical issues during high sales periods. For example, broken checkouts or app outages would take precedence over incorrectly set discount codes or workflows. Contact support by clicking Get help in the Information menu.
Priority Level |
Definition |
|
Urgent |
Store down: Recharge is entirely down, or system-critical functions are inaccessible to users. |
|
High |
Orders Affected: A major component of the store’s ability to operate is affected. Some aspects of the business can continue but it's a major problem. |
|
Normal |
Degraded Service: Where there is a moderate loss or degradation of services, but work can reasonably continue in an impaired manner. |
|
Low |
General Questions: Non-critical issues or general questions about the application. |
Bulk updates
Most bulk updates can be done easily by your team. Updates that require Recharge Support are indicated in the help document. Bulk updates are not performed on the weekends.
We recommend merchants review upcoming subscriptions at least a week before seasonal sales and submit eligible bulk update requests five business days before any upcoming holidays.
FAQ
The following guides are often useful when preparing for holiday sales:
- Bulk upload discount codes
- Can customers use multiple discount codes on a single order?
- Can customers use Shopify Gift Cards?
- Can I exclude subscription products from my discount code?
- Can I hide subscriptions from my storefront during a sale?
- Can I use automatic promotions or discounts in Recharge?
- Can I use Shopify Scripts with Recharge?
- Changing the price of subscription products
- How can I put my subscription products on sale?
- How can I track the performance of my discount code on Recharge?
- How do discount codes work with subscribe and save products?
- How do expiration dates work for discount codes?
Other resources
- Maximizing your BFCM sales: Subscription models that boost customer retention
- Turning holiday shoppers into lifelong subscribers: A DTC brand's 6-step plan for Black Friday/Cyber Monday success
- 5 ecommerce holiday planning tips to stay on the nice list this year
- How subscriptions eliminate the need for holiday order stress
- Get Ahead of the Holidays: Five Tips for your Subscription Business
