How to Launch Successful Holiday Promotion Campaigns?
Holidays are an excellent opportunity to not only celebrate but also promote your company. Holiday marketing campaigns and sales promotions allow you to show creativity, gain customer sympathy and stand out from the flood of similar offers. Are you wondering how to use the holidays to increase sales and promotion of your company? Read on to learn the best tips and examples for Christmas promotions in 2022.
The holiday shopping season is just around the corner
Holidays are an amazing time for each of us. It is also an opportunity for many companies for additional sales. It’s no secret that in the pre-Christmas period, we spend much more on gifts and our own needs and pleasures. In Christmas 2021, retail sales rose by 7.3% compared to 2020 and the overall sales total even exceeded 2019’s results by £2 billion. It’s no wonder that you can count on Christmas promotions in almost every company. In the annual holiday frenzy, a lot of customers take advantage of special discounts, actively searching for them, or encountering them as a result of advertising, as well as word-of-mouth marketing.
For marketing specialists, the Christmas season is the hardest and most demanding time of the year.
What are the key elements of a successful holiday marketing campaign?
Each holiday marketing campaign is different and it’s impossible to prepare a bucket list that will apply to all the activities, however, there are some areas that you should focus on.
1. Start early
Christmas products, decorations, and advertisements appear early, so it’s no wonder that we start thinking about gifts two months earlier.
Source: Source: Klarna, 2021 — Holiday unwrapped
Nevertheless, according to the aforementioned report, 47% of the average Christmas budget in 2021 was spent online.
To take full advantage of the holiday season, you’d better have your holiday marketing campaigns planned already in September. From the moment you decide to create promotional campaigns for the holidays, until the actual launch, there are many things to prepare. You can also think about early-bird campaigns, for those who don’t like to wait until the last minute.
2. Do the research
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Well-prepared promotional activities are largely based on the analysis of reliable data. Instead of trying to come up with the most original sales promotion yet, I definitely recommend approaching it more methodically. Start by collecting data from last year: what worked well? What had no effect? Maybe you managed to collect feedback after last year’s holiday marketing campaigns, or measured the discount ROI? If not, it will be worth doing after this year’s holidays.
The next step is to reflect on and set goals for this year. What do you want to achieve? How will you measure it?
Also, do not forget to check how your competition is doing — maybe you will find some inspiration or tips on how to prepare your marketing activities.
3. Define your goals
In the first step to a successful holiday marketing campaign, you need to ask yourself — what do I want to achieve? Generate leads? Increase sales? Can it strengthen brand awareness? Without a specific goal, you will be wandering in the fog in the next stages of campaign planning, and after completing your actions, you will not be able to measure their effectiveness.
It is also a good idea to prepare several versions of the promotion, under one goal, to test which one performs better. More about this approach in the article: Building A/B Tests for Product Managers.
4. Include all channels
If you sell your products and services via multiple channels, you must definitely bear in mind that all planned activities must be consistent and thoughtful. If in one channel, e.g., in a mobile shopping application, you decide to provide consumers with a code for a higher discount than, for example, on a website, you must clearly communicate it. If there are no reasons to favor customers from a given channel, try to unify the amount and type of benefits to avoid the impression of randomness.
5. Be creative
It is not so easy to stand out with your holiday marketing campaigns from other holiday actions. Of course, customers will be looking for the most profitable offers, and huge discounts will certainly attract their attention, but promotions also have their limits, and not always the biggest ones will ultimately push people to buy.
So what can be done to encourage visitors to your website to buy Christmas gifts? The next piece of advice is simple, but challenging as well. Creatively constructed promotions and offers that engage users can positively influence the acceleration of purchasing decisions, build brand loyalty and positively impact sales. These can be, for example, promotions based on meeting certain conditions, or those that strongly build a positive user experience. We are happy to share with you ideas for interesting campaigns in this article 30+ Sales Promotion Examples: Definitions, Types, and Ideas.
6. Personalize holiday promotions
Personalization is always welcome, the offer that gives the impression of being tailored to us has a completely different tone than the duplicated mailing sent to many customers. Therefore, in the case of holiday campaigns, it is a good idea to prepare personalized mailings, individual codes, and unique offers based on customer segmentation.
The need for personalization will also arise for participants of loyalty programs, who will certainly count on unique offers at this time, and among people who buy gift cards to make such gifts unique.
During the holiday season, you must not forget about the customer group that is most valuable to you. Whether they will be loyal customers or those whose shopping baskets are always the richest, or brand ambassadors — it is worth preparing a specially tailored Christmas promotion for them to strengthen their existing behavior.
Christmas promotions your customers will love
Let’s assume you already know which customers and channels you want to reach, you have analyzed the trends and previous activities of your competitors, and you are planning to create specific campaigns.
What discounts should I offer? What, apart from “regular” coupons, will be a nice idea for Christmas? How to pack it all so that customers feel pampered?
Below you will find some holiday marketing campaign ideas for sales promotions.
1. Special discounts
The most obvious path is to give a significant discount so people can buy themselves or their loved ones a valuable and unique gift. A 5% or 10% discount is unlikely to impress anyone. Try to calculate the breakeven point for the profitability of such a campaign, perhaps it is worth indicating selected products for which such a promotion will be valid and providing a discount code for several dozen percent.
The combination of several promotion conditions (a given product in the basket, the duration of the promotion, or other rules) is not a huge challenge — using a comprehensive discount solution, such as Voucherify, you can design promotional campaigns that you dream of.
Below you can find an example of a Fossil Christmas season promo with a 50% discount code.
2. Bundle sales
It’s obvious that it’s more fun to get more for less, so bundle deals continue to generate interest and boost sales. How does it work? When deciding to buy one product, the customer gets the option to buy the same or a different thing on preferential terms, or a set in which individual elements are cheaper than in individual sales.
3. Free delivery
Despite the fact that many companies ignore it, consumers treat free delivery as a standard, rather than an exceptional profit. It is definitely an element that encourages consumers to buy as costly delivery is one of the key factors in cart abandonment. However, you must remember to calculate your shipping costs in the product’s final price. Such a change in price is acceptable because it simplifies the billing for a specific product. The price the consumers see on the website is then the actual price they pay — not a component of it.
Prepare a nice code for the holiday season that your customers can use for free delivery purposes and share it with them in the mail.
4. Gift giving
An even more attractive benefit than a discount for another product is the possibility of receiving it for free. Create a list of gifts, depending on the value or content of the basket, which will be automatically added to the order after using a special code.
5. Vouchers and gift cards
Gift cards and vouchers are nothing more than cash-back actions. The customer pays the full price for the product but receives a gift card with funds to be used for any products. It is a form of discount, but provided in a slightly different shape — it gives the customer the feeling of a tangible gift, and gives you the chance for a returning customer who will probably spend more money than what the voucher says.
6. Advent calendars
Advent calendars are a very nice Christmas tradition which gives you a unique experience of waiting for this special day. In a traditional advent calendar, we pull a little gift, a surprise each day, until Christmas Eve. Why not offer your customers an advent calendar with a different discount or bonuses for 24 days of December?
Hints and tips on how to support your holiday campaigns
The last step in preparing an interesting and effective promotional campaign for the holiday season is to add attention-grabbing accents to make sure that your action will not be overlooked by anyone.
So what can be done to make Christmas promotions even more attractive?
1. Create landing pages offering incentives
Create a special place for your special offers. If you decide to put information about discount coupons only on your website, or you decide to send them by email, this information might get lost in the flood of others and will be overlooked by potential customers.
It is a good idea to create dedicated landing pages that, thanks to proper positioning and SEO strategy, have a chance to gain some traffic. In addition, they will be a source of information about the promotion in a transparent and encouraging way. What else? Make it easier for you to analyze the behavior of people interested in the offer, which will be useful for planning future actions.
2. Make engaging content
Another thing that will surely help you attract potential customers will be nice, interesting Christmas-themed content. You can create blog posts, guides, videos, or anything you’re good at, have something interesting to share with your audience, and make sure it’s related to the products and services you sell.
3. Support charity
Christmas is a time of helping. Supporting charity organizations and campaigns is also great in terms of building the company’s image, during the holiday season, but not only. Why not add the function of increasing the basket by the number of donations that will launch a special, holiday offer? Try to combine your campaigns with charity — satisfaction is guaranteed!
4. Use social media
Nowadays, it is difficult to find companies that do not use the potential of social media. In the context of holiday campaigns, it is not worth limiting yourself to standard activities such as publishing posts. These tools have great potential — you can engage influencers, and come up with interesting games and activities where you can get discount codes or gift cards. Photo contests are also very popular — you can get some awesome user-generated content for your future publications.
5. Beautiful packaging
If you ship your parcels in standard packaging on a daily basis, and you only care about the safe packaging of your products, make an exception for Christmas and add some magic to them in the form of Christmas boxes, personalized cards with wishes, and coupons. Your clients will feel special and will want to celebrate Christmas with you more than once a year.
6. Email marketing from Santa Claus
During this holiday season, you will surely send many Christmas mailings as a part of your Christmas marketing. Make sure that this communication is not only an intrusive form of sale but something unique. Maybe it is Santa Claus who will write to your subscribers asking if they were nice this year, and rewarding them with a unique discount coupon.
7. Holiday gift guides
Gift guides are a very popular form of building interest in the content and creating unobtrusive advertising. Before Christmas, each of us struggles with the challenge of finding the perfect gift for loved ones. Any suggestions (preferably with links to products and information about current promotions!) will be appreciated.
Holiday campaign mistakes to avoid
Where are the traps? What mistakes to avoid? Below you will find some examples of situations that will certainly not have a positive impact on the final tone of your holiday marketing campaigns.
1. Too big discounts
The first mistake to avoid is overshooting the promotion amount. If you start giving away everything for free, just to attract customers, you will find yourself a bit short on revenue. In addition, you will get customers used to the fact that your brand is willing to significantly reduce prices, which will make them reluctant to buy according to the actual price list and postpone shopping until they got better discounts.
Remember to keep a safe level of discounts and overall ROI under control at all times.
2. Holiday marketing campaigns only for new buyers
Many companies design their holiday campaigns only as if they were dedicated to new customers: better conditions, and special treatment. This may cause existing customers to leave the competition because they feel cheated and get a better offer elsewhere.
Use loyalty programs to address the needs of existing customers and strengthen their loyalty to the brand, also as a holiday marketing idea.
3. A free gift is not always the best gift
Of course, everyone likes gifts and it’s fun to get something for free, but as psychological research shows, sometimes we value goods for which we had to pay more than those we got for free. What is the conclusion? That you should wisely manage gift actions. It is worth adding small gifts to orders, while larger gifts should be paid for at least partially.
4. Protect your codes and vouchers
Many companies that use unique codes for discounts and gift cards face this problem. People try different ways to lower the purchase price — exchange codes, steal them, try to break the algorithm, and much more. Some codes, to fulfill their role, must be single-use or be used only by a given person.
To protect yourself against coupon fraud, it is worth implementing a solution to handle this type of promotion, thanks to which your coupons and vouchers will be safe.
5. Not collecting and analyzing data
This point is worth re-emphasizing — if you want to design your holiday marketing campaigns well and consciously manage the level, type, and time of discounts, you need to collect and analyze data. This is also where dedicated software comes in handy, in which you can have access to all campaigns carried out, their results and in-depth analyzes. Christmas can be much easier next year!
6. Don’t be late!
Finally, the point with which we actually started — hurry up! If you want to get the most out of your holiday promotions and shopping opportunities, there’s no time to waste. Where possible, try to help yourself with new technology, applications, and software. Do not invest in complex solutions that require a long implementation time, instead choose plug-and-play solutions.
Summary
I keep my fingers crossed for a great Christmas — both for your company and your clients. Remember that selling is one thing, but the magic and holiday spirit is a very special thing that should be cherished and treated specially.
You shouldn’t be late with your holiday sales, and bar in mind that some of your clients will be so with their holiday shopping, then it’s good to prepare some special offers for those purchasing gifts at the last moment.
Holiday marketing campaigns require a huge portion of creativity, preceded by solid analysis and marketing strategy building. Avoiding mistakes that can ruin your holiday deals is also a challenge. But I also believe that with appropriate support it’s a great opportunity to boost your sales, and have a moment to relax after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Happy Holiday everyone!
Originally published at https://www.voucherify.io.
