• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 29, 2023

Retailers and ecommerce brands pay close attention to their holiday sales totals. But they should not start celebrating until they look at the other side of the process: returns. These tell quite a different story, according to Loop. 

This year, returns were up 35% YoY on December 26 (Boxing Day), Loop reports. 

On the positive side, brands retained +40.4% more revenue by focusing on return strategies — i.e., by persuading consumers to make exchanges or accept gift carts.  

Another stratagem is to allow the consumer to simply keep an item instead of paying for the shipping cost to return it: It’s a wash. This practice increased by+55% this holiday season. 

On its web site, Loop claims that it can make returns profitable with practices like these.  

All of which results in challenges to email teams. Many of these communications combine promotional and transactional messaging. 

Moreover, a customer’s return behavior should be built into their profile. And brands should be aware of chronic offenders.  

A running daily snapshot on the Loop site shows that there have been over 20,000 returns (and rising) on the morning of December 29, resulting in almost $190 million in refunds. 

The total for exchanges hit almost $600,000, with $246,000 in gift cards issued and $35,043 in upsells.

The aggregate distance covered was over 25 million miles. 

On another front, small businesses are especially challenged in this area. And even without the return question, too few have strategies in place to retain new customers, judging by Holiday Trends For SMBs, a recent study from Constant Contact, conducted by Ascend2.  

Only 49% of the consumers polled receive an email after making a purchase, and 27% never hear from the business again. Yet 81% are open to receiving messages from a small business they have visited or bought from during the holidays 

It pays to keep the day after in mind.