Wouldn't it be great if these busy holiday shopping days became a year-round happening? And wouldn't it be nice if you could just wave a magic wand and make it happen? Sorry - wishful thinking.

So how do you turn all of your holiday foot traffic into year round buying customers? - by reaching out to them. How? by staying in touch with email. Offer them specials - tips of the month - sales held in conjunction with a neighborhood or mall event or maybe coupons with redemption dates for your slow days. You're only limited by your imagination.

But first things first. You MUST create an email list. And NOW is the time to do it. The single best time of the year to build your customer list is when you have the most customers in your store. It may be a pain to collect contact info with a full store and a line at the register, but it's worth the effort.
 

• Have your cashier ask for and enter the customer's email address and name directly into your POS software while he/she is still processing the sale.
• On extremely busy days it helps to hire an "assistant" to gather the information at the checkout counter. Maybe hire a local teenager. That person doesn't have to be "sales" trained - just friendly, outgoing and willing to help the customer sign up.
• Or go the good old-fashioned way, with a sign up sheet on a clipboard at the counter.
• Once this hard part is done, if you are using CounterPoint software with CounterPoint's "Customer Connect", you are ready to send targeted email and even an occasional "shotgun" email from the get-go.

 
All the information about what a customer bought, how much they spent and if they trended to a particular category of merchandise is in the system.

So stay in touch - keep your name in front of your customers and watch what happens.