Due to COVID-19, the sales of greeting cards in retail stores have dropped. What are some of the strategies to increase sales?

Clarifying Questions:

1) Is this drop in the greeting card sale in any specific geography or is it worldwide? US

2) By how much there is a decrease in the sale of Greeting cards?

3) How many COVID 19 cases are in the US and whether the entire US is in lockdown?

4) Are you trying to increase the revenue or the profit? Let's say revenue

Using Jobs to be done framework to answer this

Users :

1) Kids in the age group of 0-10. These are young kids who send greetings to there parents or teachers etc.

2) Young people in the age group of 10-545who are mostly going to school or working professionals. These are the people in the digital era who mostly communicate via email text messages or send digital cards.

3) Elderly people (45 and above) these people still want to send wishes to others via greetings as they are little traditional and want to follow the old pattern of staying connected with each other.

 

I will focus on the elderly people as my target market as this is the major group that still communicates via Physical mail with each other.

Jobs to be done here: To send wishes to your loved ones on different occasions and people "hire" greeting cards to do that job.

Experiences/Customer Journey:

1) To send warm wishes to people on their birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's day, fathers day, etc.

2) People want to buy a bundle pack of greetings for e.g. to sending wishes on New Year they send it to all of the family members.

3) People look for greeting cards on the basis of different occasions so they prefer to buy it from the place that has variety and it is cost-effective as many people in this age range are old and retired and might not want to buy expensive cards.

4) People mail greeting cards via Postal mail and they need a postal stamp for the same.

5) People will prefer to buy greeting cards from the place close to the post office so they do not have to go to a different place for posting

 

Solutions/Integrations

1) Because of Covid 19 people are not visiting retail stores but they are ordering groceries online via Amazon Fresh or Instacart. There should be an option to shop for greeting cards within these apps itself. When people order groceries they can order the greetings as well.

2) These greeting card companies should partner with these online delivery stores and some promotional offers can be given for e.g. like when the order is placed above $50 then people will get one free greeting card worth $5.

3) Since the pharmacy stores are still open, the greeting cards should be sold at the pharmacy stores like CVS which will lead people to buy greeting cards. Also, the option should be there to place the order of greeting cards online and there should be pick up option or drive-through option.

4) Restaurants are still open for take-outs, there should be an option to place an order for greeting cards along with the food which will make people buy greeting cards.

 

Amongst these, I will prioritize #1,#4 as it is high impact and low effort. #2 should be the third priority. #3 might probably exist.

 

Metrics:

Activation: % of users who place there first order of greetings card on a monthly basis.

Customer Retention : % of users who returned to make a purchase of the greeting card again per month.

Revenue: % of revenue getting generated on a monthly basis on the sale of greetings from different channels.

Referral: % of traffic getting directed to the purchase of greeting cards via referrals for e.g. through Facebook promotions, or youtube or word of mouth. It could be direct referral also which means people directly coming to the website and making a purchase.

Task - Success: % of people who add the greeting card to the shopping cart and make a successful purchase.

 

I will prioritize Customer Retention, then Activation, then Revenue.