Spooky Season Loyalty Tips

Halloween is less than four weeks away! Are you ready to market your products and services with a spooky Halloween twist in order to gain new customers, increase sales, and secure customer engagement that will last throughout the entire holiday season, and beyond?

The frightening fact of the matter is that Halloween kicks off the biggest shopping season of the year! That’s right, the day after October 31st is Christmas as far as the retail marketing world is concerned. As a retailer, your planning should start no later than right now, and it needs to include a strong marketing strategy that’s designed to increase customer loyalty.

As if the waxing crescent moon this Halloween won’t be eerie enough, here are some spooky loyalty tips to help you engage and retain customers this October.

Americans are projected to spend a monstrous $3.3-billion on Halloween costumes this October, according to Statista.com.

Decorate Your Store by Spookifying the Decor

Memorable Halloween marketing begins with transforming your brick-and-mortar location into a harrowing haven that captures the spirit of both your brand and the holiday itself. Your window displays can be your most powerful in-person marketing strategy, so be sure to decorate your windows artfully with spooky accents and feature your most festive products front-and-center.

Spruce Up Your Social Media Profiles

Similar to decorating your retail store, you can amplify the Halloween spirit on social media by revamping your business profiles using the classic orange and black Halloween colors. Add a few bats, pumpkins, and ghosts as graphics to play up the fun vibe. Once the overall look and feel of your profiles display Halloween themes, simply post regularly using photos of your Halloween products, your employees in costumes, and anything else that matches the season.

Create Limited Time Offers

Halloween isn’t just about scary decor and candy galore. For retailers, this festive holiday is all about generating sales. Provide your customers with sweet deals and big treats on the seasonal products they want most by creating limited time offers. A limited time offer is any kind of discount, deal, or reward that shoppers can claim during a fixed period of time. Halloween is the perfect occasion to promote limited time offers, because October 31st, or really November 1st, is an obvious end-date.

Use Branded Halloween Hashtags

Promote your Halloween sales on social media using creative hashtags that incorporate your brand’s name in clever ways. Remember Starbucks’ #ZombieFrappuccino hashtag and Twitter’s #TrickOrTweet hashtag? Puns and plays on wording works, just be sure to #CreepItReal when branding your own.

Creepy Halloween decorations are expected to be all the rage this October, according to Statista.com, which projects $3.2-billion USD will be spent across the nation.

Host a Halloween Event

It doesn’t matter if a customer is 5 or 95, everyone likes a party, especially when it’s a costume party for kids and adults. Throw a Halloween costume party at your retail location, or simply host a Halloween event that resonates with the theme of your store, like hosting a “Hoppy Halloween” event at your pet store to help home baby bunnies with caring families. The purpose of having a Halloween event at your store is to create a sense of community with your customers and give them an experience they won’t forget.

Post UGC on Social

Unsure of what content to post throughout October? Try classic Halloween greetings, photos of your decorated store, close-up pictures of your Halloween bestsellers, and even short videos of your costumed employees hyping up your Halloween discounts. But let’s say you’ve done all that and you’re in need of additional content. You can never go wrong with UGC, otherwise known as User Generated Content. Simply scroll through your followers’ posts and if something looks good, repost it to your own account, being sure to tag them with a shout out.

Offer FANG-TASTIC Sales

You can pretty much never go wrong with the classic BOGO deal of Buy One, Get One free. But have you heard of the brand-new acronym, DEAD? If not, it’s because we made it up three seconds ago. That being said, by offering your customers a fun-sounding sale that uses a Halloween pun acronym—like DEAD for Deal Ends After Dawn, or SLASH for Sales Last Another Six Hours—you can add a little holiday flair to your promotions.

Market Scary Swag

Using swag, also known as promotional products that feature your branded logo, can be a creative way to promote your retail store year-round. But if you want to up the ante and make things interesting for your shoppers right now, try offering Halloween-themed swag this season. It doesn’t have to be a major production, either. For example, if you already offer branded tote bags in your Swag Shop, simply add a limited time only tote bag that’s orange with black lettering. Do the same for your branded hats and tee-shirts. In this instance, a little Halloween spirit will go a long way.

Enrolled loyalty program members are 62% more likely to shop repeatedly with the loyalty brand or store, as compared to non-loyalty program consumers, according to Statista.com.

Menu Items for Trick-or-Treaters of All Ages

Restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, and bars aren’t exactly considered traditional retailers, and yet these types of stores serve even more customers than most retailers in their neighborhoods. In addition to decorating your window displays and front-of-house with spooky Halloween accents, the most effective way to boost customer retention this season is to enhance your diners’ experience at your establishment. By simply offering new Halloween-inspired menu items this October, you can add fang-tastic fun to your appetizers, entrees, and cocktails.

Launch a Customer Loyalty Rewards Program

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, Halloween kicks off the entire holiday season, which includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Years! This means that if you play your promotional cards right, you can win over customers that remain loyal to your brand all winter long! Our final, biggest loyalty tip for you today is to suggest that you launch a customer loyalty rewards program in time for Halloween.

Hopefully, these spooky loyalty tips have inspired you to launch a custom Halloween campaign that will result in a sales spike this October at your retail location.

Remember, the right customer loyalty rewards program has the power to build brand awareness, boost customer engagement, and strengthen meaningful relationships with customers who appreciate you for appreciating them!

Get started with Loyal~n~Save, a premium customer rewards program. Our platform comes with a user-friendly mobile app, trendy Swag Shop, and fun gamification options, all of which your customers will use, love, and rely on. Contact us to find out about the industries we serve and what our loyalty program can do for your business.