I am seeing excellent newsagency charity boxed Christmas card sales already this year with sales significantly up on 2023.
For one of my newsagency businesses they are up 20%, off a strong number from 2023.
This growth has been driven, I think, by a few factors:
- An expansion of range. We have 50% more designs than last year. We source our cards from five different suppliers.
- The ability to capture sales online – 90% of online sales are to people nowhere near the business.
- A focus on charities first. Customers can buy by charity and many are. Boxed Christmas cards used to be arranged by design theme: religious, Australian, humour etc. Our charities first approach is paying off. Smart card publishers provide details on card packaging and the cards about the charity being supported, offering another engagement point for customers.
- A secondary focus on Australian designs. Smart card publishers promote the Australian artist connection on their external product packaging.
- Going out early. The money we have stock it is out and being pitched.
- Marketing to previous customers. We know who they are and reach out to them to let them know what’s new and in.
- Tactical in-store placement so that every shopper passes the cards as they enter and leave the shop.
Charity boxed Christmas cards are a good fit for any newsagency business as the charities are local and this fits with the localness of the typical newsagency business.
On the topic of online sales, on Melbourne Cup day one of my shops that was closed for the whole day did over $500 in sales of charity boxed Christmas cards. That’s a good result given nothing was spent on marketing to achieve this. The key to the online success is the SEO work I have done to drive ranking for this website.
Charity boxed Christmas cards are an excellent opportunity for our channel. I think anyone not embracing them should consider doing so. They are an easy win, and they are a terrific opportunity to do good, I especially like this connection.
For a financial reference, for many years in my various newsagencies, sales of charity boxed Christmas cards have been 3 and, often, more times the dollar value of sales of single Christmas cards.
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My newsXpress newsagency marketing group has, for many years, provided guidance and help to its members to maximise the charity boxed Christmas cards opportunity. Some of what I have covered above is based on that advice.