The Holiday Season is here and it’s time to offer competitive offers and rental discounts. The market anticipates attractive deals and responds with enthusiasm, so tailor these to your customer’s needs and business goals for maximum profit.
A well-executed rental discount campaign can strengthen your brand image, uplift revenues, and build a loyal customer base. According to a Statista survey that included 1000 people, 88% of consumers in the US used coupons for making purchases last year. Implementing rental discounts is an effective marketing tactic to grab customers’ attention and increase sales.
Here are some attractive discount campaigns your rental business can implement to boost sales this holiday season:
1. Create holiday gift guides
The holiday shopping season is just about in full swing. Your customers are searching for tailored gifts for friends and family. This is where rental businesses can get creative and think beyond standard product categories. Rental businesses can use rental order history from last year and determine which gift categories will work best for customers.
Let’s say you are an owner of a party rental business. You can create a customized holiday gift guide that can include stocking stuffers with other Christmas party decorations. You can also create personalized gift categories, for example, Christmas gift ideas for Teachers.
SEO Optimized holiday guides with highlighted gift categories for recipients, occasions, or holidays can drive traffic to your website and steer customers in the right direction.
2. Personalized rental discounts to loyal customers
Offering special rental discounts is a great way to say Happy Holidays to your most loyal customers. Sometimes customers have items saved in carts to rent out later and are waiting for good deals on selected items. 49% of customers expect brands to send personalized promotions in line with their preferences.
An equipment rental business can categorize customers as good, best, or loyal and send personalized discounts as per their frequency of renting out equipment. For example, a loyal customer category can receive up to a 20% rental discount on every rental order during the holiday season. Similarly, you can also send discounts for recently searched, or saved items in the cart.
3. Offer loyalty programs for new customers to return
Promotional offers and rental discounts can also attract potential customers to your rental business. During the holiday season, many new customers are willing to try new brands so your rental business can direct some extra marketing efforts to entice and retain these potential customers.
How can your rental business entice new customers to return? Promote subscription offers during check-outs. They can sign up and create an account with their email address. Any new product launch or updates can be sent to registered email addresses to remind them of your rental business. Another important way to attract new customers is to offer loyalty programs, for example, customer win-back emails can be sent after 30 to 60 days after the first purchase. Depending upon the previous rental order, you can cross-sell other products and offer come-back rental discounts on renting from your business again.
4. Send gift cards with rental discounts to existing and new customers
Gift cards are incentivizing, but combined with rental discounts, are difficult to ignore. Incorporating discount gift cards into holiday sales strategy can help boost customer engagement and increase chances of renting out from your business.
Rental businesses can offer discount gift cards at check-outs, in-store or online. You can encourage customers to visit brick and mortar stores on specific days like Black Friday to redeem a gift card with order check-out during the holiday season. You can also associate discount gift cards with low-selling items, for example, an AV rental business can bundle cameras with tripods and attract bundled offers with a gift card to get customers through the door and increase the chances of rentals.
5. Discount on shipping
Running a small rental business in a competitive landscape is challenging in terms of balancing between providing exceptional rental service and maintaining lower costs.
To keep up with other competitors providing free shipping, you can also provide discounts on shipping of large rental orders – for example, greater than $500. Customers will be enticed to rent out a larger order to avail discounts. You can also offer free shipping to designated locations during holiday festivities to make it convenient for customers.
6. Drive website traffic to promote rental discounts
How can customers know your business is offering holiday discounts? Run holiday-special social media campaigns and showcase promotional discounts on your rental webstore.
Over the past few years, Thanksgiving weekends and Cyber Mondays have become huge online and offline shopping sprees. According to Adobe Digital Insights, total e-commerce sales over the entire Thanksgiving weekend amounted to $34.4 billion, with Cyber Monday alone accounting for $10.8 billion of that total.
Rental businesses can focus on attractive online campaigns to facilitate the rise in e-commerce sales. One of the ways to gain customers’ attention is to start pre-holiday social media announcements for upcoming discounts, deals, and gifts. Direct them to your rental website specifically designed for upcoming holiday rental deals.
Creating hype about discounts not only attracts potential customers to your website but also increases traffic to your website. Sharing discount deals on all social media platforms at regular intervals can further drive traffic and increase awareness of your rental business.
The second way to gain attention is by showcasing your discount deals and other holiday offers for your customers on the Webstore. Any rental customer visiting your Webstore can be attracted to discounts and might avail these during the holiday season.
7. Provide exceptional customer service
While your rental business can offer exclusive discount deals, one thing to pay attention to is providing exceptional customer service. It is important to focus on noteworthy customer service to make the experience smooth and pleasant.
Customer service is the first point of contact for your rental customers to get an immediate response on problems with rental orders, discount deals, or any queries in general. A great customer services team to help them immediately is an effective way to turn curious one-time customers into loyal ones.
About EZRentOut
EZRentOut, a cloud-based equipment rental software can help. EZRentOut offers companies in numerous industries seamless rental management along with a host of other features. You can integrate your website with our EZR plug to keep track of all your rental Assets and operations. Try us out today!
