After a busy 5-day holiday period comprising of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, follows Christmas, which is also one of the most popular occasions rejoiced by shopaholics as well as the e-retailers.
The last week of the year holds immense potential to add huge revenue to your online business. Adding a fact to this statement, the previous year Christmas retail sales captured approximately $719.17 billion in the United States, as per Statista.
In this article, I have put forward 8 Best Christmas Marketing Ideas that you can look to adapt to your online business for a successful Christmas campaign.
1. Add a Christmas Touch to Your Brand
Your Brand appearance should go hand-in-hand with the holiday mood. When one holiday approaches a close, you need to develop the curiosity for the next one. Let the customers’ mood be on the same track. Do not let the holiday feel fade away.
Start by customizing the colour of your website to something red and white. Go for Christmas hats, bells, lights, Christmas trees next. Every time a visitor lands on your website, it should give them a joyous Christmas feel and add a spark to the shopping mood.
Get your website cover banner ready to catch the Christmas holiday spirit. It should immediately grab visitors’ attention. Display your Christmas deals on the banner to make your visitors aware about the Christmas sales.
Christmas Marketing would be tasteless if you do not restyle your social media accounts. Set a Christmas theme for your social media pages by having a Christmas-personalized profile picture and cover picture.
These are some of the basic Christmas marketing ideas.
2. Introduce Christmas Gift Cards If You Do Not Have It Yet
Digital Gift Cards or e-gift cards are the shoppers’ primary gift choice during the holiday season and add a huge sum to your revenue, simply because they are convenient, easy to purchase and time-saving.
People are found scratching their heads when it comes to choosing gifts as they are surrounded by multiple gift ideas. And there is always the uncertainty about the receiver liking the gift.
Gifting one or two persons can still be managed but when the numbers are high, digital gift cards tend to be the best option, and this is why Christmas themed Gift cards would be one of the best Christmas marketing ideas.
No more wastage of time in searching for tons of gifts. Get a gift card for your loved ones and deliver it to their email address within no time. Recipients are also delighted to receive gift cards as they can buy whatever they want of their own choice. This is the reason why most of the e-retailers have added a Gift Card section on their store/website.
Believe me, Gift cards prove to be extremely beneficial in boosting your sales. If you do not have a Gift Card section yet, add it today.
Knowband offers the Gift Card Manager module for PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento and Magento 2.
3. Leverage Web Push Notifications
Well and good, if you are having a mobile app for your business and using app push notifications to reach out to your customers. In case you don’t, Web Push Notifications would make up for an ideal Christmas marketing idea.
Web Push Notifications allow you to interact with your subscribers in real-time even if they are not present at your website. They help you keep your customers updated about the trends and promotions on your website.
Ask your users to subscribe to your Christmas updates to receive enticing offers regarding the Christmas sale.
Web Push Notifications module, by Knowband, lets you use the communication power to announce a flash sale, product price alert, product availability alert, etc. The module is available for PrestaShop, Magento and Magento 2.
Give a read to:
Web Push Notifications: 5 Best Practices to Boost eCommerce Conversions
6 Major Benefits of using Web Push Notifications in eCommerce
4. Create a Christmas-Themed Video
Adding to the list of Christmas marketing ideas would be creating a Christmas-themed video.
If it fits your budget, prepare a video to boost your brand awareness. Make sure it is not overly promotional else people would likely skip it. Keep it short, creative, engaging and a bit entertaining.
Post the video on social media platforms and promote it using social media ads. If users like your content, your video could go viral overnight and you cannot even imagine the limelight it will create about your business.
Your followers count would catch up the speed of a bullet train. You would start getting higher engagement. To put it simply, it will heavily endorse your brand without even a brand ambassador.
But it is not that easy. Creating such a video requires time, efforts and out-of-the-box thinking. If you want to capture people’s attention, you need to do something worth it.
5. Start Sending Christmas Specific Emails
Your subscribers may not pay much attention to your emails rest of the year but they will surely try not to miss any of the mail notifications during the holiday season because they know it is that time where they can expect some exciting offers from Brands.
Use this to your advantage. Start sending out emails to your customers at regular intervals but do not be too frequent. Develop the interest slowly inside the customer and avoid being promotional every time. You need to make your customers feel how they can get benefited from your Christmas offerings.
Find the perfect time when most of your subscribers are active to open the emails. Create a catchy subject line that triggers the user to browse the inside content. Do not shout just Sales, Sales and Sales!
6. Offer Gift Packages
People would spend huge bucks during the Christmas sale and offering gift packages would be an effective Christmas marketing idea.
Encourage people to spend more by offering them product bundles. Not only it increases your average order value but also helps in selling out those items which are otherwise purchased rarely by the customers.
For example- You can offer 3 pair of shoes with different colours at a slightly lesser combo price than their individual cost. Now even if the prospect is not much impressed with 1 colour, he would probably show the desire to purchase as he would be getting it in a bundle with 3 different colours. The prospect would have not purchased it, in particular.
7. Run a Christmas Themed User-Generated Content Campaign
How about asking people to share their Santa stories? Or asking them to share a picture wearing a Santa Claus dress or clicking a picture with the Christmas tree? And then gifting them something special for this effort. Sounds a great Christmas marketing idea?
Well, it is. User-generated content campaigns make a great way to spread the word about your brand. In fact, it is one of the best forms of word-of-mouth marketing.
Apart from this, you can also start a campaign where you ask your customers to post a picture of what they shopped from your store on the Christmas sale. Tell them to use a specific hashtag and tag your brand. In return, you could provide them with an exclusive offer or some gift vouchers to the winners.
8. Be Active on Your Social Media Pages
There is no marketing strategy today that does not involve social media, same goes for the Christmas marketing.
Social media has become a vital platform for Brands to boost their brand visibility, acquire new customers and drive more conversions. But it doesn’t occur by just uploading posts. You need to develop a friendliness with your audience and it would develop only by regularly interacting and engaging with them.
Try to create a fun-filled Christmas atmosphere around your audience. Persuade them to like, react or comment to your posts. Again, avoid posting promotional stuff every time. Reply to your followers’ comments, solve their queries. The more the engagement, the higher the reach.
Also, do not post the same set of posts on every platform. A few can be okay but copy-pasting every post would probably bore your customers. Have different posts for different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The Bottom Line
That’s it! I found these 8 Christmas marketing ideas to be most fruitful for online businesses, though not every point mentioned above would be suitable for all business types.
Christmas is going to arrive soon. Make the festival count and while you prepare for the Christmas marketing, do not forget to keep these ideas for New Year as well, which would take place right after a week.
If you have some other Christmas marketing ideas or strategies, feel free to add in the comment below.
