10 creative holiday promotion ideas for online stores

Holiday is coming real close, and it’s the biggest chance for every business to grow revenue, especially for online retailers as people tend to spend 30 times higher for shopping than other times of the year.

With the fancy opportunities coming from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New year, all online stores seem to join the race by pushing out a lot of different marketing campaigns. While some campaigns result in extremely high return on investment, others might sink to the deep. So, how to grab this chance to skyrocket your revenue? Check out our 10 actionable and easy-to-apply ideas and get ready for a blooming sales season!

1. Create holiday-themed landing pages and holiday content for your online shop

In this aggressive retail market, acquiring a new customer is very difficult, especially in holiday season when hundred thousands of retail stores are joining the game every day. Question is: “How can we get shoppers’ attention?”. Making yourself special is a great way, such as decorating your online store with holiday themes or creating holiday content to boost engagement.

Most consumers start their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, having your own holiday theme needs to be planned ahead and kicked-off by early November. With a special landing page for festive offers, it’s your chance to introduce all holiday-hot-sales items with good deals, and delight customers.

This way, you additionally pick up SEO benefits when people search for hot-trend keywords these days: holiday, sales, deals, offers, discount, coupon, etc.

Moreover, creating valuable content around the products you’re selling is super effective. You can encourage your customers to share posts, articles, video, photos, etc. by sending them a small gift or discount.

Source: Sitekit

By doing so, you’ve also created curiosity from potential customers with your products before they actually order it, as 63% of shoppers trust their friend’s referrals when shopping online.

2. Be creative with your promotion campaigns

Holiday is the time when customers are ready and daring to spend, but it’s also when all online stores are rushing to send out discounts. What makes they choose you instead of others might simply be the creativity and effort you spend on your marketing campaigns, which helps you stand out from the crowd.

For example, you can create a holiday combo for your store, which is a win-win game for both you and your customers. You can increase your average order value, boost revenue, while customers can save a lot of money by buying things they need together.

Source: Boost Upsell

Or free shipping and free holiday gift wrapping can be a big boost to your conversion rate. Let’s see how Kiehl’s implements this idea with their gift set:

Everybody loves free shipping! If you have low-prices items, offer a coupon for free shipping that requires the purchase to be over a certain dollar amount so you don’t lose too much money on the deal.

More holiday campaign ideas for your online store? Take a look at our Holiday Marketing Guide: The Holiday Marketing 20-Point Checklist to Prepare Your Store for Your Online Store!

3. Film a fun & exciting holiday video.

Video is now the new trend for content marketing, which can bring you massive results thanks to organic reach or viral effect if it’s catchy enough.

Let’s create a themed video about your business – better if it’s holiday focused, but totally fine if it’s not (then you can use the video all year round). Share it using your social media channels, post it on your “About” page, use it in your signature, and show your customers how fun and trustable your business is.

By building trust from customers, you’ve opened the way to higher conversion rate and higher revenue naturally.

4. Give to get. Sharing is caring.

Offer a gift certificate or coupon for a dollar-off amount in all orders purchased during a certain period of time, which works best in Thanksgiving we suggest. That way buyers can buy a gift for their loved one, or get themselves a gift with the coupon after the holidays.

Or many brands choose a social charity campaign to contribute to community and give visitors a great cause to shop.

A successful charitable giving campaign is not only about raising donations (although that is important), it’s also about building relationships and community ties. It’s the premise for you and your customers to give and to get.

5. Run holiday email campaigns

Email marketing is changing itself and becoming one of the most powerful tools for online shops lately, especially since the evolution of marketing automation. It’s time to take the most advantage of your existing customer base and turn them into revenue by targeted email campaigns this holiday.

How targeted it can be? Segment your customers into groups based on their interests and buying behaviors to send targeted discounts and recommend the most relevant items. For example:

• Types of products they have purchased => so you can suggest items that they might be interested in.
• Their average order value => so you can send products with similar price range.
• Customers’ locations and timezones => so you can send emails at the right time.
• ….

By classifying customers based on their purchase behaviors, you can fire out the right content to the right customer, which increases conversion rate as a result. Long gone the day when shop owners should send the same massive sales emails to all customers, it’s time for you to change and to improve your sales!

In case you haven’t found out how to apply this trick or find it hard with your current resources, take a look at our instruction here.

6. Secret Santa Sales

Host a secret Christmas sale for only your email list, or only an e-commerce Facebook group you’re a member of, or only your Twitter followers.

Being exclusive creates curiosity, which may lead to higher impression than your normal promotion campaigns.

7. Build your own mobile shopping app with exclusive holiday treats

Have you ever thought of creating your own mobile app to send exclusive discounts directly to customers’ phones?

Mobile phone is a must-have item that sticks with you (and of course your customers) days and nights, there’s no better way of communication than a push notification to their phones. Better yet, a mobile app could keep your business top of mind with customers all year round.

8. Collection of Goodies on your store

Create a collection that has all of your sales items and put a link to it on the front page, post it on your blog so customers can easily find them. This can be done multiple times for each holiday, such as: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New year, Valentine’s, etc as there are so many different people and so many different chances we shop for this time of year.

9. Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Don’t forget the promos everyone will be on the lookout for. Be sure to use the tags Black Friday Etsy and Cyber Monday Etsy on social networks like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter during those mad rush days, and let your social media following know what to expect from you ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.

Source: SiteKit app

A banner or a header bar on your front page helps to attract visitors and makes them come back to your store on the deal day.

10. Giveaway

Giveaway is proven to be one of the most effective ways of promotion, in combination with the power of social media these days, it can be a burst to your store’s impression and traffic.

Give away useful items like good-quality phone cases or T-shirts. Put your business’s name on it and you’ve got a marketing tool, too.

Conclusion

Holiday is a great chance for you to 2X, 3X your sales, so take the most advantage of it. Plan your promotion campaigns right from today and don’t let yourself fall behind. We all hope these actionable tips and tricks can help bring the best sales season ever to your online store.