When is Labor Day?

Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September and, this year, it falls on September 3, 2018. Labor Day is a legal holiday, which is celebrated in America, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and the Canal Zone. For most people, Labor Day indicates the official end of summer and the start of fall.

According to Adobe’s Digital Dollar Report, Labor Day will be the first day that e-commerce sales will reach the $2 billion mark. Adobe’s report used analytics to measure one trillion online visits to over 4,500 retail sites and 55 million products. As well as a growth in Labor Day sales, Adobe’s report predicts that e-commerce will grow almost 20% year on year.

How to increase your Labor Day sales this year

Given the potential for businesses to make massive profits, you should be taking steps to increase your Labor Day sales this year. Small changes to marketing your business can make a big impact on your profits.

Here are 11 ways to increase your Labor Day sales:

Send Labor Day emails
Include a giveaway
Create a contest
Offer items on a limited-time sale
Start accepting mobile payments
Join forces with other businesses
Place popular items front and center
Use a theme
Offer deep discounts
Reward your loyal customers
Provide an omnichannel experience

How to Increase Your Labor Day Sales This Year

<div id="emails" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>1. Send Labor Day emails</strong></div>

Email your customers before Labor Day to inform them about the special offers that will be available. Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods of reaching customers. Therefore, let your customers know what they can expect on Labor Day by providing a sneak peek of your sale items and also the items that will no longer be available after Labor Day. You should start emailing your customers in relation to your Labor Day promotions a few weeks in advance. Remember to also send an email on Labor Day itself. Lastly, you can send another email to your customers about an after Labor Day sale, as this will help you to clear out excess stock that was not sold on Labor Day.

<div id="giveaway" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>2. Include a giveaway</strong></div>

Customers love freebies, so use this fact to get more customers to visit online and in-store. You can place a limit on the number of products that you will give away to protect your profits and to create a sense of urgency in customers. You should also include a minimum spending limit before customers are eligible for giveaways.

<div id="contest" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>3. Create a contest</strong></div>

People like to win prizes, therefore, contests are a good way to increase sales over the Labor Day weekend. You can choose to run your contest online using social media, like Instagram, or set-up a dedicated stall in-store or at an event. A simple way to run a contest in-store is to ask your customers to leave their email addresses or business cards to win a prize. Another way to increase customer participation in your contest is to increase the chances of winning a prize when customers refer their friends. For example, Isernio’s 2018 end-of-summer and Labor Day giveaway provides more opportunities to win if visitors to their website get their friends to enter the contest too.

<div id="limited-time" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>4. Offer items on a limited-time sale</strong></div>

As Labor Day signals the end of summer, holding a limited-time sale is ideal to reduce your summer inventory and products. Labor Day limited-time offers encourage your customers to act quickly in order to get the product. The offer should only be available for a short period, ideally over the Labor Day weekend. Create a sense of urgency by stressing the fact the sale is ending soon and the items will no longer be available at that price after the Labour Day weekend. Launching a limited-time Labor Day sale is beneficial to both you and your customer as you have the opportunity to clear out last season’s stock and your customer has the opportunity to get a great deal.

<div id="mobile" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>5. Start accepting mobile payments</strong></div>

Mobile phones are increasingly used for every area of our lives and payment is no exception. Customers find that using their phones to pay for purchases can be more convenient than using credit cards or cash. If you are already using a payment solution like Square, you can accept payment by both Apple Pay and Google Pay. The list of retailers who accept mobile payment is growing so you should consider using this new technology to improve your customer experience. Accepting mobile payments will speed up payment transaction times, which will reduce the amount of time that customers have to spend in a line. You can also use a kiosk to securely house your iPad or tablet to make payment even more convenient for your customers over the Labor Day weekend.

<div id="forces" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>6. Join forces with other businesses</strong></div>

If you own a physical store, you should consider working with non-competing businesses in your area to cross-promote products and services. Social media influencers are also another great way to expose and promote your brand. This is an effective tactic to increase your Labor Day 2018 sales and to help you reach a new customer base. An example of cross-promotion of non-competing businesses is where a cafe owner provides a coupon for two-for-one drinks at the local bar, while the bar owner offers a coupon to his/her customers for discounted items at the cafe. Cross-promotion can also work online as Labor Day offers can be provided through affiliate marketing. This type of promotion involves including a product or service on your site and when someone clicks the links and buys an item, you receive a commission.

<div id="items" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>7. Place popular items front and center</strong></div>

An effective point of sale system will enable you to access data about your popular items. The best Labor Day sales are the ones that use data to inform their decisions about which items will go on sale. Consider giving your visual merchandising a boost by changing your store’s layout for Labor Day 2018. Carry out an inventory of your products to ensure that you have enough stock to cater to your customers’ needs. Place your most popular items at the front of the store so that customers will not have to make any effort to find them. You should amend the home page of your online store to highlight your Labor Day weekend sale products. Use attention-grabbing design to encourage visitors to your site to click and buy.

<div id="theme" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>8. Use a theme</strong></div>

Incorporating a theme into your Labor Day sales provides a fun element to your marketing ideas. Your theme could be linked to different aspects of fall, for example, back to school, or football. You can utilize fun props to emphasize your theme and decorate your store with colors associated with fall, like oranges, and browns. Alternatively, you can also choose to use the traditional red, white, and blue theme online, in-store, and throughout your social media accounts.

<div id="discounts" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>9. Offer deep discounts</strong></div>

The number of discounts you can offer for the Labor Day sale weekend is endless. You can combine discounts, for instance, back to school and Labor Day to provide double or triple discounts. The amount of discount you provide will depend on how much surplus stock your business is carrying, as well as whether your financial reporting shows that you will still remain profitable.

<div id="loyal" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>10. Reward your loyal customers</strong></div>

If you currently operate a customer loyalty program, you should provide members with special Labor Day offers. These discounts should be exclusive to your loyalty card members, which could be used as a promotional tool to grow your program. You could provide incentives for Labor Day weekend, which include double points on all purchases, cashback offers when a specified amount is spent and bonus points when specific items are purchased.

<div id="omnichannel" style="margin-top: -86px; padding-top: 86px;"><strong>11. Provide an omnichannel experience</strong></div>

Customers today are accustomed to shopping across different channels and using a number of devices. For example, some consumers may research a product online and go in-store to buy the item. Incorporating different channels into your Labor Day offers and marketing plans will provide an improved customer experience, which could result in more sales. You could include touchscreens in-store so that your customers can search your website while on your premises. Alternatively, you could offer a click-and-collect service where your online customers can save on shipping costs because they will collect their items in-store. Lastly, ensure that your staff are fully trained to answer questions about items in-store and online. This is especially important if you will be hiring seasonal staff to help you to cope with the Labor Day weekend sales.

Best Labor Day sales
To gain some inspiration for your Labor Day sales, here are a few of the best sales on items such as home goods, mattresses, and appliances in 2018 according to Esquire magazine.

Artifact Uprising provides printed books, gifts etc. and provides a 15% discount on anything on the site when a customer spends $150 or more. The sale is available from August 31, 2018, to September 3, 2018, with the promotional code LABORDAY.
Bear Mattress sell sleep-related items including bed frames, mattresses, and sheets. The Labor Day 2018 sale offer is $100 off any size Bear mattress and $200 off any size Bear Hybrid mattress. The sale starts on August 24, 2018, and ends on September 4, 2018. Customers must use the promotional codes LD100; LD200 to access the discounts.
DreamCloud Sleep provides luxury head frames, mattresses, and other headboards. For Labor Day, customers can get $200 off a DreamCloud mattress. The Labor Day special promotion has started and will end on September 3, 2018.
Nectar Sleep sells adjustable frames and mattresses and, for Labor Day, customers can get $125 off a Nectar mattress plus two free Nectar pillows. This Labor Day sale has started and comes to an end on September 3, 2018.
REI Adventures provides products and experiences to help people enjoy the great outdoors. For Labor Day 2018, REI Adventures are offering customers $600 off a “Czech Republic Hiking – Vienna to Prague” trip if booked for any departure date in 2019. This Labor Day sales promotion is only available from August 24, 2018, to September 3, 2018.

How to Increase Your Labor Day Sales This Year

Labor Day TV sales

According to an article on Nasdaq, TVs are one of the best items to buy on Labor Day. The best bargains on 55 inch or larger TVs can be found during the Labor Day weekend. Retailers, like Best Buy and Walmart, generally have high markdowns on TVs for Labor Day.
Here are some Labor Day TV sales available last year, according to Tech Radar:

Best Buy offered a Hisense 50DU6070 50-inch 4K Smart TV $349.99, when the original price was $499.99. This Labor Day sale TV came equipped with smart TV apps.
Customers could get a bargain on Labor Sale TVs on Amazon last year and this year may not be any different. An example of a TV that was available for the Labor Day sale 2017 was a Samsung UN65MU7600 65-inch curved 4K TV for $999.99, which was originally $1949.99.

Labor Day clothing sales

Labor Day retail sales normally consist of clearing the summer styles to make way for fall and winter fashion. That is one of the reasons that swimwear is a popular choice for Labor Day sales.

Last year, InStyle magazine listed 39 Labor Day clothing sales that consumers would be over the moon about. It is likely that all the retailers listed in InStyle magazine will also have a similar Labor Day sale in 2018. Some of the best Labor Day 2017 clothing sales according to InStyle magazine included:

Missguided
Nordstrom
Rebecca Taylor
J.Crew

Manage your workforce easier

If you are planning to increase your Labor Day Sales this year, you might need extra staff or you may need to schedule your existing employees differently to deal with the rush. Consider signing up for a free trial of Deputy, so that managing your workforce will be one less thing to be concerned about over the hectic Labor Day weekend. <script src="https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js" charset="utf-8"></script><script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[ hbspt.cta.load(3040938, '072adc0c-f0a0-4dd0-b206-8e77ea69aab6', {}); // ]]></script>

Deputy can help save your business money and time. Download this free Scheduling ROI Calculator and see savings on overtime, scheduling, payroll processing, time theft, and more:

How to Increase Your Labor Day Sales This Year

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