How To Encourage and Boost Secondhand Holiday Gifting

It’s the holidays and it’s the gift-giving season. A lot of people are reluctant to give a used Christmas Gift. Some people are perfectly fine with it and will take it home, spruce it up put it in really nice packaging, and wrap it beautifully and, voila! A gorgeous gift that the receiver will enjoy! 

Other people like to give gifts that come with a price tag on them. They might cut the price part but there is a feel-good factor in giving an item that has an original tag on it.

In past years we have experimented with beautifully designed hang tags and gift tags with artistically written verbiage about gifting resale items but no matter how fancy the tag or how fancy the lingo it wasn’t overall a big hit.

Enter Plan B… or is this Plan C?

Strategy 1

Gather up all your NWT items in your store and put them all in one spot. Create a sign that says “Gift Giving Starts Here. Shop NWT items here.”

Strategy 2  

Every single item that comes into your store that is NWT should go on your website and it should be coded NWT in attributes. Because when it’s in the attributes it can be separated on your website.  

Every single item in your store that you purchased wholesale from the market should be coded as MKT in the attributes.  

On your website, you can create a category called Gifting or NWT if you want and pull all of the NWT and MKT items into this collection.  

Strategy 3  

Your message.  

Several years ago when Sonya Nix (Better Than Before) and I had our first Christmas working together, she said, “We need a slogan to promote all the NWT items for Holiday gift giving.” We tossed out ideas in a brainstorming session, when all of a sudden Sonya blurted out, “Thrift Gift Revolution.” Winner, winner chicken dinner Sonya! 

We hired our fabulous (& inexpensive) logo graphic designer to create a custom logo for use during November – December. 

This is not copyrighted although I am recommending Sonya do that, but please don’t use Thrift Gift Revolution without asking Sonya’s permission. I actually have some plans to help her expand on that but that’s top secret for now so just use that for now as a springboard to your own creative ideas.  

One of the amazing women at The Vault Luxury Resale came up with Retail to Resale.  

Article Consignment is using Shop Resale Before Retail.  

After you come up with your tagline, you can take a step further and create a branded logo with it as Sonya did. That way your customers will get to see and recognize your logo every holiday season.  

But more important than that is your messaging. Most Customers don’t realize the large amount of items that are for sale in your store that have been consigned or if you’re BOR, that have been sold to you with original price tags on them.  

That’s the message. Let customers know to shop your store for their gift-giving needs because you have NWT items. Never before worn, brand new items that can be purchased at resale store prices.  

Strategy 4  

Create a graphic with your slogan and your message on it and resize it to 8 1/2 X 11 to create a Store Poster, resize it to FB, IG & Stories sizes, and create a Reels. Schedule these SM posts out now – Dec. 23rd. Let customers know they can shop in-store or online and suggest the online shipping cut-off date to arrive before Christmas. 

You can also do an FB Ad to reach NEW customers not currently following you and you can do an FB Boost to reach current followers & their friends.  

Strategy 5 

Put your Gifting graphic in every product email that goes out and you can include a special Gifting Section at the bottom of every email to feature 6 items from your NWT/ Gifting Collection.  

For example, if you’re next product email is all luxury handbags or new arrivals, add your products from those categories into the top part of your email, and then below that insert your Gifting graphic and insert 6 items. Also, live link the graphic itself to your Gifting or NWT collection AND include an additional button that says “Shop all NWT Gifts Here.” This is an actual email strategy to increase your CTR – you provide multiple links to the same category giving customers more than just one opportunity to click through to where you want them to go.  

Strategy 6  

Send out a dedicated email once a week or once every 10-12 days that is only items from your NWT/ Gifting Collection and include items from that category in the email.  

A few additional notes:  

Be sure your messaging includes verbiage about how you can save more and gift more. Save more, buy more. Up your gift-giving and spend less. Give the gift of designer and luxury at a fraction of the retail price.  

Really reinforce your customers that shopping Resale is the way to go or to at least check out your store before they head to the Retailers to pay full price.  

Remember to remind customers that new items come in every day so they should check your NWT/ Gifting collection every day or multiple times per day to see what has come in.  

Lastly – keep this collection live on your website because you can use it for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Birthday suggestions, Father’s Day… all the holidays that involve gifts.  

Interested in the summarized video version? Click here.

For the complete training video, tap here. Note: To access, you must join the Consignment Marketing FB Group.