The holiday season is a critical time for eCommerce businesses. In 2022 shoppers spent $9.12 billion on Black Friday alone – That’s a lot of holiday shoppers buying from online stores!
As an eCom business owner, it’s never been more important to make sure your store is prepared for the holiday rush. After all, the holiday season is made or break time for many businesses.
But don’t fret. We’re giving you the 411 on all things eCommerce holiday prep. From getting your inventory in check to making sure your website can handle the traffic, we’ve got you covered. So grab yourself a cup of eggnog, put on some jingle bells, and let’s dive in!
What Holidays are the Most Important for Ecommerce Businesses?
There are a few key holidays that drive the majority of eCommerce sales. They are:
- Thanksgiving
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- Christmas Eve
- New Year’s Eve
If you’re selling products that would make good gifts, it’s important to have a solid game plan for these holidays if you want to hop on the big revenue wagon. However, for some brands, it’s harder.
Let’s say you sell winter clothing. Creating a holiday-themed marketing campaign around staying warm and cozy seems like a no-brainer, right?
But not every brand can easily do this. Suppose you sell software allowing a seamless PDF merger into one document. You may have to get a little more creative with your holiday marketing strategy. In this case, you could promote simplifying holiday gift-giving by creating personalized PDFs for loved ones.
No matter what you sell, there’s always an opportunity to drive sales during the holidays – you just have to get a little more creative.
Ecommerce Holiday Checklist for Success
Now that you know which holidays are most important for eCommerce businesses, it’s time to start preparing your store for the holiday rush. To help you get started, we’ve created a handy checklist of everything you need to do to prepare your store for a successful holiday season.
1. Check Your Inventory
This one is critical. There’s nothing worse than getting an influx of holiday orders only to realize you’re out of stock on a key item. To avoid this, do a thorough check of your inventory levels well in advance of the holidays. This will help you identify any products that may need to be reordered and give you plenty of time to do so.
Using a point-of-sale (POS) system with built-in inventory management can make it easier to keep track of your inventory levels. Some POS systems will even send you alerts when your inventory is running low, so you can reorder before you run out completely.
2. Make Sure Your Website Can Handle the Traffic
Picture this. You’ve just launched an amazing holiday marketing campaign, driving tons of traffic to your website. Maybe you’ve created software that provides an electronic waiver form to companies, and you’re giving away a free month of service for every new customer that signs up during the holiday season. Your offer is so good that everyone flocks to your website to take advantage of it. But then, disaster strikes. Your website crashes from all the traffic, and people cannot sign up.
To avoid this nightmare scenario, it’s important to ensure your website can handle a surge in traffic. If you’re unsure how much traffic your website can handle, now is a good time to find out.
There are a few ways to do this:
- Use a tool like Google Analytics to check your website’s traffic over the past year. This will give you an idea of how much traffic your website typically gets and help you plan accordingly.
- Talk to your web hosting provider. They should be able to give you an idea of how much traffic your website can handle and recommend upgrades if needed.
- Load-test your website. This is a more technical way to test how much traffic your website can handle, but it’s the most accurate. You can use a tool like LoadImpact to load-test your website.
3. Review Your Shipping and Delivery Options
The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year for shipping companies. Last year, the USPS accepted over 13.2 billion packages and mailpieces during the holiday season.
To ensure your order confirmations go out on time and you meet customer expectations, it’s important to review your shipping and delivery options well before the holidays. This will help you identify any potential issues and make necessary changes. For example, you may need to upgrade your shipping plan or switch to a different shipping company if your current one can’t handle the volume of orders you’re expecting.
Consider sending regular shipping notifications to your customers. This will help put them at ease that their purchase is on its way. If you use a tool such as that provided by Sender, you can automate these notifications, taking the pressure off your customer service team.
4. Create a Holiday Marketing Strategy
If you want your eCommerce business to be successful this holiday season, you need to create a comprehensive eCommerce marketing strategy. This should include everything from what promotions you’ll run to what channels you’ll use to reach your customers.
Some great tips for creating a holiday marketing strategy include:
- Offering free shipping. This is a great way to encourage people to shop with you instead of your competition. You can offer free shipping on all orders or set a minimum order amount that qualifies for free shipping.
- Running holiday promotions. Promotions or holiday sales are a great way to drive sales during the holiday season. You can offer discounts on specific products, bundle items together, or run a buy one, get one free holiday promotion.
- Creating holiday-themed content. From a Black Friday email campaign to a 12-day of Christmas social media giveaway, there are endless possibilities for holiday-themed content. This is a great way to engage your customers and get them excited about shopping with you.
- Create an eCommerce holiday newsletter. This is a great way to keep your customers up-to-date on everything happening with your company during the holiday season. In your newsletter, you should include information about new products, upcoming sales, and any special promotions you’ll be running.
A great example of a successful holiday marketing campaign is that launched by the chocolate brand Cadbury. They got people into the holiday spirit through Christmas-themed promotional content that gave people a chance to send free chocolate to a friend or family member.
5. Personalization is Key
The holiday shopping season is all about ecommerce personalization. Whether finding the perfect gift for a loved one or sending out holiday cards to friends and family, people want to feel like they’re being thought of on a personal level.
As an eCommerce business, you can leverage this by personalizing your marketing efforts. This could include sending personalized emails to your customers or creating targeted social media ads. You can also use data from previous orders to make product recommendations for people who have shopped with you in the past.
By personalizing your marketing, you’ll be able to create a more intimate customer experience and build loyalty that will last long after the holidays are over.
6. Get Social
Social media is a powerful tool that you can use to reach more customers and drive sales during the holiday season. In fact, 82.7% use social media to research brands, and 25.9% use it to find new products to buy.
Some ways you can really utilize social media this holiday season include:
- Running social media ads. Ads are a great way to reach more people and drive holiday traffic to your website or store. You can target your ads to people who live in certain areas, are of a certain age, or have interests related to your products.
- Fun holiday-themed content. This is a great way to engage your customers and get them excited about shopping with you. Suppose you’re selling an electronic waiver form. In that case, you could create fake elf medical waivers at Christmas to promote them in a funny and unique way.
- Hosting a social media contest. Contests are a great way to generate buzz and excitement around your brand. You can use social media to promote your contest and reach more potential customers.
- Collaborating with influencers. Influencers can help you reach a larger audience and promote your products more authentically. You can collaborate with influencers with a large social media following who align with your brand.
Flower delivery company Bloom and Wild collaborated with charity Tommy’s Midwives to launch an alternative Mother’s Day campaign that was aimed at supporting those who struggle during this holiday.
7. Get Creative with Your Packaging
Your packaging is the first thing that customers will see when they receive their order, so it’s important to make a good impression. Get creative with your packaging and make it stand out. You can use festive wrapping paper, include a holiday card, or add a special touch like a bow or ribbon.
Let’s say you’re sending flyers about your new software that can seamlessly Turn PNG into PDF format. You could include a holiday message on the flyer itself, or you could include a QR code that takes people to a holiday-themed, high-converting landing page.
Cosmetics brand Lush takes advantage of the holiday season to launch products with specifically designed packaging.
Key Takeaways: Holiday Marketing for Ecommerce
So there you have it. These are just a few things you can do to prepare and market your eCommerce store for the holiday season. By following these tips, you’ll be able to drive more sales and keep your customers happy:
- Ensure you have sufficient inventory
- Update your website
- Review your shipping process and introduce automated notifications
- Design specific campaigns for the holiday season
- Utilize personalization to engage with your customers
- Spread the word on social media
- Use packaging to create a great first impression
Good luck and happy holidays!
Also read:
- 14 Crucial Ecommerce Metrics You Need to Track in 2023
- 7 Best Email Marketing Software for Ecommerce
Author Bio
Yauhen Zaremba is the Director of Demand Generation at PandaDoc. He’s been a marketer for 10+ years, and for the last five years, he’s been entirely focused on the electronic signature, proposal, image to pdf converter, and document management markets.
