Holiday Guide: Prepare For Seasonal Success With Recharge

Throughout the year, seasonal sales mark a great opportunity for merchants. To maximize your success during these small windows, it’s important to plan out your promotions and make sure your sales team is well-prepared. 

This guide will introduce you to Recharge tools and resources that can enhance your sales efforts, along with details about Recharge Support’s assistance and troubleshooting coverage during the upcoming holiday season. 

Please note certain support services such as live chat will be temporarily unavailable from November 23rd to November 26th, but will resume on Cyber Monday.

Leverage Recharge tools to boost your holiday sales

Recharge provides a rich array of tools you can use during seasonal sales. Some of these tools may require setup time, participation in one of our Early Adopter Programs (EAPs), or be exclusive to our Custom or Pro plans. It’s essential to meet eligibility criteria and become well-acquainted with these resources before deploying them during a crucial sales period.

• Flows: Create personalized shopper journeys that increase AOV and LTV while reducing churn. With prebuilt templates for common customer experiences, you can quickly set, test, and optimize your programs. Available in our EAP.
• Gifting subscriptions: Enable customers to gift subscriptions while offering recipients a hassle-free way to self-manage their gifted subscriptions. Pro and Custom stores only; in EAP. Sign up using this link.
• Enhanced Analytics: Evaluate the success of your holiday sales with our newly enhanced Analytics suite. No implementation is required. 
• Discount codes: Recharge supports all discount code types offered by Shopify, allowing you to create fixed discounts, offer free shipping, and more. Low-lift implementation. 
• Passwordless login: Enable customers to log into their customer portal using a secure 4-digit code, instead of a password, for fewer password-related support tickets. Low-lift implementation. 
• Product Subscription Plans: Quickly manage products at scale to save time and reduce operational costs.
• Quick Actions: Utilize Quick Actions in your Klaviyo notifications for effective cross-selling or upselling.
• Bundles: Bundles enable you to group items under one SKU for a “build-a-box” experience.

Customization guides

If you’re planning specific campaigns, explore these resources to implement various sales techniques:

• Create a discount code with a minimum purchase amount
• Offer a discount code for free shipping
• Implement buy one, get one discounts on checkout orders (Shopify Checkout on Shopify)
• Apply a discount code to checkout orders automatically (Recharge Checkout on Shopify)
• Create a free trial offer using Workflows 
• Create an abandoned cart email using Klaviyo to send to customers after your sale period ends
• Upsell one-time products to a subscription order while in a customer’s cart
• Promote seasonal subscription offerings on your store’s homepage

Please note that some customizations may require HTML or Javascript. Custom coding is not supported per our Recharge design and integration policy.

Plan ahead for seamless sales

Recharge wants to ensure your holiday sales run smoothly. Here are some additional tips for optimal performance:

Discounts 

• Confirm if your discount codes are set to apply to the correct channels.
• If using the Shopify Checkout Integration (SCI), make sure you have created the discount code in Shopify with identical settings. 

Shipping

• Test shipping prices at checkout and upcoming orders for accuracy.
• Test any workflow, discounts, and shipping flows you are using by running a test checkout on SCI or RCS.

Other settings & tools

• Make any theme changes in advance of the sales period as changing your theme may require the widget to be re-installed. 
• Review upcoming subscriptions using your exports and make any bulk changes at least five days before the holiday sale. For confirmation of dates, see Bulk updates.

Tip: Plan a Recharge refresh training with your Support team to make sure they can answer customer questions quickly and efficiently, creating a better subscriber experience for your new customers and cutting down on support hours.

Support coverage & services

Rest assured, our systems are primed for the holiday season. If there is something you know will require Support assistance, please submit any requests 5-7 business days before Black Friday. 

If you encounter any technical issues during the holiday, our Recharge Support Team is available 24/7 to assist with troubleshooting. For critical issues requiring immediate attention, select “urgent” in the priority drop-down. We prioritize tickets based on priority levels, giving precedence to business-critical issues during high sales periods. 

For instance, issues like broken checkouts or app outages take precedence over incorrectly set discount codes or workflows. To submit a ticket, use the Recharge Support webform.

Priority level definitions

• Live chat coverage: Normally operates Monday to Friday, excluding observed US holidays.
• Most bulk updates can be done easily by your team. Updates that require Recharge Support are indicated in the help document.

Because of reduced holiday customer service hours, we advise merchants to examine their upcoming subscriptions a week before any seasonal sales and to request bulk updates five business days in advance of holidays to provide Recharge support sufficient time to complete them.

FAQ

The following guides are often useful when preparing for holiday sales:

• Applying discount code to checkout automatically
• Bulk upload discount codes
• Can customers use Shopify Gift Cards?
• Can I exclude subscription products from my discount code?
• Can I hide subscriptions from my storefront during a sale?
• Can I use automatic promotions or discounts in Recharge?
• Can I use Shopify Scripts with Recharge?
• Changing the price of subscription products
• Do I need to use a discount code to put my subscription products on sale?
• How can I track the performance of my discount code on Recharge?

Prepping for a successful holiday season 

We know how important holiday sales are for merchants, which is why we’ve created this guide to help you start the season prepared. By prepping your website and customer support teams, plus honing in on the best discount codes and subscription offerings to showcase during the holiday season, your online store will be ready to make the most of this busy sales time.