Did you know that statistics show that 88% of Americans already feel stressed during the holiday season. That includes retailers and shoppers alike.
Trade printers face pressure with tight deadlines even in a typical holiday season. There’s high demand for beautiful, custom-printed greeting cards with a quick turnaround for both businesses and families. Small businesses look to their local printers to create product catalogs, flyers, signage, and postcards, as well as festive custom packaging. Printed, personalized promotional gifts from calendars and mugs to ornaments and corporate gifts, are always popular choices, but it often takes time for customers to choose products and finalize artwork — and with the rising costs of shipping and production, this year is expected to be more challenging as we face rising costs and a looming recession.
While the smell of everything pumpkin spice still hangs heavy in the air, it’s important to encourage your customers to start ordering their holiday items now to avoid disappointment later. Following these tips is a great start.
4 Tips for Happy Holiday Printing
- Start the conversation early. By early, we mean today. Waiting will put pressure on both you and your customers. With over half of consumers expecting inflation or a potential economic slowdown to impact their 2023 holiday celebrations and shopping, they will be looking to save money. And two-thirds of shoppers say they’ll buy holiday items on sale, and half will buy fewer items overall. Encourage them to work on their gift lists and any custom artwork now, so they can order early.
- Use incentives to get them shopping now. Shoppers have been conditioned to wait for deals, which is why savvy retailers like Target, Amazon, and Walmart are rolling out savings typically reserved for Black Friday and Cyber Monday much earlier. You can do the same by leveraging tips and ideas from trade printers like 4over to create deals and generate excitement for your own customers (download our Q4 Marketing and Promotions Calendars here).
- Consider upgraded shipping. Especially as it gets closer to the holidays. Every type of business is going to be competing for the same shipping options, with most carriers offering the same cutoff date of 5 to 7 business days. Save yourself stress by fast-tracking your orders’ shipping sooner than you normally would. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay a little more to upgrade shipping. And don’t forget about 4over’s upgraded shipping options like next-day turnaround on select products like business cards, postcards, banners, yard signs, and more!
- Look for time-savers. Free, ready-to-use marketing assets like those on the 4over resource website can help you easily accelerate sales. Integrations like Printer Bridge and APIs can also ramp up your online sales efforts with a branded web portal for your customers to visit.
Partnering with a trade printer that is ready for all of your holiday orders is the key to your holiday sales success. The entire 4over team wants to make sure that you and your customers have the happiest of holidays this year. We’ve been anticipating all the challenges that await us this season and have some great news: We are ready to fulfill customer orders for the top holiday print products like beautiful greeting cards, product catalogs, custom calendars, gift packaging, and more! While there are certainly factors beyond our control, we will do everything we can to make this a successful season for you and your customers.