Year-end sales race: When speed is no longer the only advantage

The year-end holiday season – Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year – is always the “hottest” time of the retail market. However, the marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

Businesses not only need to be faster, but also to understand their customers more deeply and optimize more precisely. As advertising costs escalate, “big discounts” are no longer a magic wand. The key lies in the ability to connect, nurture, and re-engage existing customers — something many small businesses are still missing.

The battle for sales is no longer between brand and brand, but between which business has mastered customer data and knows how to exploit it more intelligently.

Tactical thinking: from “selling” to “operating the revenue system”

Over the past 10 years, tactics like Flash Sale, BOGO, flat price, or giving free gifts have persisted — but only brands that know how to combine data data and automation to maintain positive profit margins.

A successful marketing campaign now goes beyond advertising, but is a seamless connection between three layers: data – experience – measurement.

Data – The Key to Every Sales Strategy

A strategy only maximizes its power when a business understands:

• Who are the most valuable customer groups?
• When do they buy, from which channel, for what reason?
• What makes them come back or leave?

Here, GTG CRM plays the role of a customer data center (Customer Data Hub), helping businesses:

• Gather leads from Facebook, Zalo, website, email, hotline to one unified place.
• Attach sources (source tracking) to know exactly which ads or campaigns generate orders.
• Automatically classify customers by behavior, value and purchase status.

Instead of "shooting out" a 50% promotion, businesses can personalize the offer — for example, send a separate voucher to the group that bought on Christmas last year, or suggest seasonal products for VIP customers.

From “big discounts” to “right value” – that is the strategic shift of smart businesses.

Experience – the decisive factor in the conversion phase

Customers at the end of the year no longer have time to read product descriptions.

They make decisions based on instant experiences: fast-loading websites, short registration forms, attractive interfaces, and quick responses to messages news.

GTG CRM helps optimize this experience by:

• Create drag-and-drop landing page integrate AI, optimize SEO, display forms and chatbots on the same page.
• Connect Unified Inbox: collect messages from Zalo, Facebook, Gmail, WhatsApp... for staff to respond immediately.
• Activate Live Chat with AI to suggest answers, ensuring no customers are missed during peak hours.

A consistent experience from advertising → landing page → feedback → orders is the big difference between a “systematic” and “emotionally driven” business.

Measurement - Gain momentum for growth

Without accurate data, businesses are just “guessing” and not “operating”.

During the sales season, decision speed is vital, but decisions must be based on real data: conversion rate, campaign revenue, profit margin, frequency of repurchase.

GTG CRM provides a marketing – sales – automation dashboard to help:

• Business business track the effectiveness of each tactic (Flash Sale, Voucher, Gift Set, BOGO) in real time.
• Measure ROI of each advertising channel.
• Compare performance between branches or sales staff.

Therefore, managers no longer have to “guess which campaign is effective”, but can prove it with data.

In-depth analysis: 3 key tactical groups and how businesses can deploy smartly more

Year-end sales tactics can be divided into three main groups — and each group will be more effective with the support of CRM & automation tools.

Group 1 – Instant demand stimulation (Discounts, Flash Sale, Free Ship)

This is a group of “quick-hit” tactics – easy to generate revenue but also easy to erode profits.

Therefore, it is important to track each unit cost (CPC, CPA, AOV) and actual conversion rate on the landing page.

A typical example with the Neiman Marcus brand (USA) - 24-hour Flash Sale and the power of the message.

Luxury fashion brand Neiman Marcus once ran a campaign “Don’t hit snooze” - up to 75% off in just 24 hours.

This campaign was successful thanks to three factors:

• Short - strong - actionable message.
• Clear urgency.
• Email + landing page synchronized images and CTA.

Result: Email CTR increased by 4.7 times, 1 day revenue equals 5 normal days.

GTG CRM can help create this campaign with:

• Landing Page AI: create a Flash Sale page with an automatic countdown timer.
• Email Builder AI: compose 3 emails (opening – mid-reminder – expiration warning).
• Automation Workflow: after 48 hours, automatically send a “recovery” offer to those who have not purchased.
• Dashboard: track revenue/hour and conversion rate in real time.

At GTG CRM allows businesses to set up a clear funnel: advertising → form → order → CRM.

From there, each click is recorded and converted into specific revenue .

Instead of just looking at “today’s order”, businesses can see the whole journey: where customers come from, how many times they interact, and whether they have returned or not.

Group 2 – Nurturing and increasing value (Loyalty, Voucher, Remarketing)

The cost of finding new customers is always higher 5 times to keep old customers.

Therefore, after the main sale season, businesses need remarketing and automated care chains to turn one-time customers into loyal customers.

Typically with the Boots brand (UK) - Smart points accumulation program

Pharmaceutical retail chain Boots UK has implemented “Health & Beauty Points” - giving £5 for every order £30.

But the difference is: they don’t just give points, but send personalized emails based on purchase behavior (e.g. “You’re almost at the point of redeeming your favorite skincare product like”).

Results: 90-day return rate increased by 63%, average revenue/customer increased by 27%.

For this campaign, GTG CRM provides:

• CRM Segmentation: group customers by order value, behavior and frequency.
• Automation Workflow: send message/email “You have 20 points left – expires 12/31”.
• CRM Object – Loyalty: accumulate points, redeem gifts, display membership level in dashboard.
• Remarketing Data: Export “VIP” customer files to re-advertise on Facebook or Google Ads.
• With GTG CRM, businesses do not need a complex platform like Salesforce to operate Loyalty. Everything is encapsulated in a single system.

From there, businesses not only “close deals quickly” but also build a sustainable customer base, helping to stabilize revenue at the beginning of the year even though the market is quiet.

Group 3 – Building an emotional brand (Event, Minigame, Holiday Campaign)

The end of the year is not just a shopping season — but also a season of emotional connection.

A successful business is one that knows how to turn a sales campaign into brand experience.

GTG CRM helps:

• AI Content Builder: create minigame content, festival messages, and inspirational emails.
• Brand Identity Builder: synchronize visuals – logos – colors – slogans for each occasion.
• Campaign Reports: measure interactions, traffic, conversions from these campaigns.

Therefore, the brand not only appears in advertising, but also becomes a part of the customers' festival memories .

GTG CRM – from marketing platform to revenue operation tool

When the marketing and sales systems are inseparable, businesses achieve three important things:

• Understand customers more deeply: every interaction is saved in CRM.
• Reduce operating costs: automation replaces manual operations.
• Optimize customer lifecycle: automatic remarketing, upgrading, reactivation.

GTG CRM is not simply a management software customer management, which is a comprehensive growth operating platform:

• From creating Landing Page and advertising content,
• To managing multi-channel messaging,
• And operating an automated customer care chain.
• Finally, measure performance with real data.

Expert perspective: From short-term campaigns to growth platforms long-term growth

Analysis of more than 500 retail businesses shows:

• 72% of businesses increased ROI by over 25% after applying CRM and automation marketing.
• 64% confirmed that CRM helped them reduce advertising costs thanks to more accurate customer segmentation.
• (Source: Statista & GTG internal data 2024)

“The difference between a surviving business and a growing business is the ability to build a self-operating sales system.

GTG CRM helps SMEs do what only corporations previously had: see the entire customer journey, automatically automate touchpoints, and optimize every penny of marketing spending.”

Conclusion: The era of data and speed of adaptation

The end of the year is a golden time – but also a harsh test for the marketing capabilities of each business.

While many brands still chase short-term promotions, leading businesses understand that:

“Retaining customers after the sale season is the real profit.”

And to do that, they need a platform like GTG CRM – where all data, campaigns and processes are seamlessly connected circuit, helping sell smarter – serve customers better – and measure more accurately.