The holiday season is a busy period for almost everyone, but it’s no time to skimp on ramping up your marketing plan. If you don’t have a strategy for leveraging the festivities to your advantage, you could be missing out on one of the most important sales periods of the year.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to implement holiday marketing ideas into your business plan. Fun strategies such as loyalty programs and sending holiday greetings can expand your reach. Furthermore, having a marketing plan during the holiday season can grow your sales year-round.
In this post, we’ll discuss why it’s important to have a holiday marking strategy. Then, we’ll look at a few ways you can integrate the festive season into your e-commerce store. Let’s get to work!
Why You Need A Holiday Marketing Strategy
Marketing is important to your business year-round, no matter your industry. However, the holidays are an especially crucial time for e-commerce sites.
In 2020, holiday shopping accounted for over 19 percent of total annual retail income. Furthermore, e-commerce was responsible for more than 25 percent of all retail holiday revenue in the same year. This means that it’s a crucial period for online businesses.
Ramping up your marketing for the holidays might feel like another item to add to your ever-growing to-do list. However, it doesn’t have to be a drag. Integrating holiday marketing ideas can be fun and engaging for both you and your e-commerce site visitors:
This doesn’t mean you have to go overboard and deck out your entire website with jingle bells. Certain websites are dedicated solely to yuletide themes, such as Santa Tracker:
Although you can get heartwarming ideas from sites like these, you can also try implementing just a few elements, such as free shipping on orders before December 24th or promoting a holiday-themed loyalty program. These holiday marketing ideas can enhance your marketing strategy without creating a lot of extra work.
Employing some festive ideas for your e-commerce site will show your buyers the Christmas spirit and help promote your products. This can gain new customers that will potentially stick around after the New Year.
7 Fun & Wholesome Holiday Marketing Ideas (For This Year)
Now that you know why it’s essential to have a holiday marketing strategy for your e-commerce business, it’s time to take a look at seven fun and wholesome ideas that you can implement on your website. Let’s get to work!
1. Run holiday giveaways on your social media channels
Social media engagement is crucial to your marketing plan. This is especially true during holidays when people are often scouring the web for discounts and gifts to purchase.
To further engage with your followers, consider running a holiday giveaway on your social media channels:
A giveaway has the double benefit of promoting your brand while creating an exciting opportunity for your followers. In turn, this can help strengthen customer satisfaction.
To use this strategy in your WooCommerce store, you can use Advanced Gift Cards:
Our plugin lets you create gift cards for your e-commerce page so your winning customers can receive store credit. Then, they can either give it to their friends and family — or keep it for themselves!
2. Promote a loyalty program
Creating a loyalty program is a great way to get your customers to return to your store. It incentivizes shoppers to spend more to earn more points or rewards.
The holiday period is the perfect time to start this kind of program. Consumers are bombarded with advertisements during this time of year, so providing them with an exclusive loyalty program can help your business stand out from the crowd.
To create a holiday-themed rewards plan, you can use our Loyalty Program plugin, where clients earn points the more they spend or engage with your site:
To use our tool, you’ll first have to download Advanced Coupons for WooCommerce. Then install and activate the Loyalty Program plugin in your WordPress Dashboard.
From here, you’ll be able to set up a loyalty program for your clients:
From the plugin dashboard, you can edit multiple settings, such as the points-to-price ratio, point names, and messaging:
In the Redemption & Expiry tab, you can set expiry dates for just after the holidays:
This will encourage consumers to use their points to get gifts before they expire. Then, you can offer different incentives once the holiday period has ended.
3. Send a holiday greeting to your email list
Almost everyone loves receiving warm messages around the holidays. Reaching out to your audience with a personalized greeting can remind them about your brand and show them some seasonal love.
This is a great time to use email marketing. You can write a heartfelt season’s greetings message to your audience. You can also include promotional material that will further engage consumers:
There are plenty of exciting things to include in your holiday greeting email, such as:
- Product giveaways (you can set this up easily with RafflePress)
- Discount coupons
- Free downloads (such as e-books)
You might even ramp up the wow factor by including a holiday-themed GIF or video to make your email stand out from the rest of the crowd. Just don’t forget to include a Call-to-Action (CTA) button with a link that leads customers to your website.
4. Run a BOGO deal
One fun idea for marketing your products is running a Buy-One-Get-One (BOGO) deal for the holidays. These sales can get customers excited to double their purchasing power.
For example, Bath & Body Works puts a festive twist on its classic candle collection by promoting Christmas scents and offering a buy two get two free deal:
To accomplish this in your e-commerce store, our Advanced Coupons plugin enables you to easily create BOGO deals with single products, groups of products, or even whole product categories.
Just head to the Coupons dashboard. Then, click on Create your first coupon:
Next, choose the Buy X Get X (BOGO) Deal in the discount type dropdown:
From here, you can select which products you want to include in this offer. Remember that you can run these deals year-round, but it’s worth offering festive or popular products during the holiday period.
5. Personalize your website for the holidays
What’s more fun than decorating your house for the holidays? Doing the same thing with your website! Editing your page with festive headings, popups, images, and features is a great way to show visitors the holiday spirit.
The White Company demonstrates this by displaying yuletide-themed images on its site:
You can draw visitors in with an eye-catching header and include “decorations” that feature Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah themes. Plus, plugins such as Unique Headers help you customize your header image easily:
You might use this tool to upload a header image that displays a snow-covered scene, Santa’s helpers, or Christmas baubles. Then you can easily switch it out after the holidays are over.
6. Provide special deals or free shipping during the holiday period
Providing special deals is essential to reducing cart abandonment since high shipping costs deter many customers. This is especially crucial for the holiday season when many people are on the hunt for exclusive deals and discounts.
The Shipping Overrides feature in our Advanced Coupons Premium plugin lets you provide discounts on any shipping method in your e-commerce store:
For example, you can give short-term discounts on express shipping, specific carriers, or geographic locations. Then, advertise your free shipping prominently in your online store.
7. Offer holiday discounts
Offering discounts specific to the holiday season is one of the best ways to draw in customers. Deals can also help you clear out stock that you anticipate will sell well over the holidays.
To make it fun, why not try running a “12 Days of Christmas” sale where you discount different items each day? This strategy keeps your audience engaged over an extended period and entices them to come back for each day of the sale:
Alternatively, you can start on Black Friday and do weekly promotions that include all of the December holidays.
Fortunately, our Advanced Coupons plugin makes it easy to set up coupons for your products. For instance, you could try offering a discount to customers when their cart subtotals reach a certain amount. This incentivizes shoppers to spend more in your store over the holiday period, even with the discount applied.
Conclusion
December is already an overwhelming time of the year for many companies. Integrating fun marketing strategies into your online business, such as discount codes and BOGO deals, can help engage new customers and ramp up sales. This, in turn, enables you to create rapport with your audience that will last into the New Year and beyond.
To recap, here are seven fun and wholesome marketing ideas for the holidays:
- Run a holiday giveaway on your social media channels by leveraging our Advanced Gift Cards plugin.
- Promote a holiday-themed rewards program using our Loyalty Program plugin.
- Send a fun holiday greeting to your email list.
- Offer a BOGO deal using our Advanced Coupons plugin.
- Decorate your website with holiday-themed graphics with tools such as Unique Headers.
- Surprise your buyers by offering free shipping.
- Offer holiday discounts by setting up coupons for your products with Advanced Coupons.
Do you have any questions about integrating holiday marketing ideas into your business plan? Let us know in the comments section below!
