12 Tips for Planning Your Christmas Marketing

You might be feeling removed from festive however for a lot of retailers Christmas advertising planning is already in full swing. And with good cause — the UK spends 25% more over the Christmas interval than some other time of the 12 months, making it the important thing time to generate extra income over some other procuring days.

Planning forward permits manufacturers to maximise gross sales throughout this very important interval. However what’s one of the best ways to plan for an epic Christmas advertising marketing campaign? Learn on to find our prime twelve ideas for planning your Christmas advertising.

1. Revisit final 12 months’s marketing campaign efficiency

First up, evaluation final 12 months’s Christmas marketing campaign efficiency. When did conversions peak? Which emails resulted in probably the most gross sales? Asking and answering questions like this can assist inform this 12 months’s technique.

Christmas marketing campaign evaluation is finest accomplished early on within the 12 months when campaigns are recent in your thoughts. However should you haven’t analysed efficiency but, it’s not too late. Set a while apart and bounce into your reviews right this moment to find out what labored properly and why. The earlier the higher, so you may proceed with the next essential components to planning your Christmas advertising…

2. Create a timeline

The vacation season isn’t nearly Christmas. There are a selection of other dates you need to plan your campaign around. Making a timeline will inform the chronology of your marketing campaign.

Ideally, you’d create one thing like this round June however should you missed that boat, listed here are some key dates to get you began:

• Black Friday — Friday twenty eighth November 2025
• Cyber Monday — Monday 1st December 2025
• Winter Solstice — Sunday twenty first December 2025
• Christmas Eve — Wednesday twenty fourth December2025
• Christmas Day —Thursday twenty fifth December 2025
• Boxing Day —Friday twenty sixth December 2025
• New Yr’s Eve — Wednesday thirty first December 2025
• New Yr’s Day — Thursday 1st January 2026

And whereas these are occasions to hold your campaigns from, I’d advocate making a Gantt chart to plot out your entire marketing campaign deliverables. It will aid you keep on observe and provides you the chance to organise your messaging and provides properly prematurely. Don’t neglect to think about these essential dates equivalent to your final transport date!

3. Assessment audience

Your third process is to evaluation your audience. Undergo the demographic and behavioural knowledge you’ve got in your clients. Have any new behavioural tendencies emerged?

You will need to seize any adjustments in buyer behaviour and replace your personas accordingly. Correct personas aid you to hit the mark together with your messaging.

4. Take into account your channels

Subsequent up, evaluation which channels you’ll be utilizing to advertise your Christmas marketing campaign.

It’s essential to make sure that your marketing campaign is delivered persistently throughout all related channels. This lets you construct a seamless buyer expertise.

If every channel has a special proprietor, it’s important that the correct quantity of time is put apart so you will get your heads collectively and align your pondering. It will stop disjointed, siloed pondering in the case of crunch time in your campaigns.

5. Plan your Christmas advertising message

It’s time to plan your Christmas marketing campaign message. To craft your message, think about:

• the wants of your viewers
• your mission
• your model values
• the way you differ from opponents
• the way you ship worth to clients
• what you need to make clients suppose, really feel, and do

Your process is to search out an overarching narrative that communicates these components in a approach that drives clients to conversion.

6. Decide a theme

When you’ve deliberate your message, it’s time to contemplate your theme — the artistic car by which your message is delivered.

Discover one thing easy that works properly throughout a number of channels and that may resonate at a look. Keep away from getting too difficult — advanced themes can dilute your message.

We like this intelligent Christmas marketing campaign from Made.com which featured a spread of adverts utilizing the headline ‘Made You Look’.

7. Determine on provides

Which provides will you utilize to tempt clients to spend extra all through your marketing campaign? The provides you select must align together with your message and theme.

For instance, slashing costs dramatically received’t make sense with a marketing campaign that focuses on high quality. However a free present above a spend threshold would make extra sense.

8. Embody personalisation

Take into account how you should utilize personalisation all through your marketing campaign.

For instance, personalising homepage banners primarily based on every buyer’s browse historical past. Or together with product suggestions in emails primarily based on previous purchases.

Personalisation is an efficient method to improve engagement. Our personal personalisation analysis discovered that 45 p.c of customers would have interaction with a proposal that was attention-grabbing and related to them personally.

9. Create marketing campaign content material

Now you’ve laid the groundwork to your marketing campaign, it’s time to get began on content material creation.

Map out each marketing campaign touchpoint throughout every channel and resolve what belongings you want to create. Be sure that your copy and design replicate your theme and ship your message persistently throughout each asset.

That is prone to take a while and ideally, it’s best to purpose to have your belongings prepared by the tip of October.

10. Optimise supporting content material

Whenever you’re creating content material, think about whether or not there’s any supporting content material in your web site that wants optimising.

Take into consideration which pages your marketing campaign directs folks to for extra info. Ensure their expertise is constant all through their journey.

Failing to replace supporting content material might result in a disjointed expertise that blocks conversion.

11. Tweak your automations

Earlier than you launch your marketing campaign, think about whether or not any of your automated emails want tweaking.

May your basket abandonment emails be up to date to suit together with your festive theme? Or maybe your “thanks to your order” e-mail wants a seasonal makeover?

Small particulars like this improve the general buyer expertise your marketing campaign delivers and ensures your efforts are totally optimised to drive one of the best outcomes.

12. Launch and study

By the point November comes round, try to be able to launch. The run-up to Black Friday is a well-liked time to go reside.

Earlier than the launch date arrives, plan the way you’re going to answer any hiccups. Create a transparent course of to measure outcomes and make adjustments accordingly.

Be reactive and able to refine key components all through the marketing campaign. A check and study method will aid you to maximise your success.

Takeaway

The build-up to Christmas might be anxious for ecommerce entrepreneurs so having a methodical course of to comply with can assist you regain some headspace and keep in management. We hope that our twelve Christmas advertising planning ideas assist to deliver readability to your marketing campaign preparation.

In the event you’re late to the planning course of and are feeling the strain, our recommendation is to maintain issues easy. Give attention to persistently delivering clear messaging by a easy theme, throughout your key channels.

Together with personalised components in your marketing campaign can improve engagement. The concepts we’ve mentioned are simple to implement with the fitting personalisation platform in place. See it in action with a personal demo, right here.