While Coca Cola’s “Holidays Are Coming” is still playing from every corner, the truth is that the holiday season is winding up. Your successful holiday marketing campaigns generated their maximum, and now it’s time to plan your next steps.
Here is some good news. With a few marketing hacks, you can inspire consumers to continue holiday shopping long after the New Year. The prices are still low and there are tons of products that will come in handy in any household. Having survived endless present-buying, holiday shoppers can finally relax and savor the moment of the purchase.
Make sure to launch a post-holiday campaign and recommend the products and services you think your customers will love. Inkit has collected several examples of successful post-holiday marketing campaigns to guide you.
The cases presented in this article show the possible combination of online and offline channels, including creative holiday mailers. Note that for maximum efficiency of your post-holiday campaigns, you will need marketing software. It helps to automate the marketing workflow, align all marketing channels, and provide ultimate personalization.
A Word on How to Make Post-Holiday Campaigns Work
Just a few days ago we published a detailed article with recommendations on post-holiday campaigns. Now, we will briefly go through its main takeaways to unlock the secrets of successful holiday marketing campaigns. To boost your post-Christmas sales and attract more customers, make sure to:
- Promote the products that are in the highest demand during the post-holiday season
- Link your post-holiday marketing to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas campaigns
- Remind post-holiday shoppers that now it’s the perfect time to buy a nice gift for themselves (after trying their best to please relatives and friends)
- Use trigger-based email marketing and direct mail for ultimate personalization
- Analyze the losses and achievements of your pre-holiday sales to use these findings in your post-holiday campaign
- Deliver creative holiday mailers with best deals to attract holiday shoppers
- Use cross-selling for successful holiday marketing campaigns to offer complementary products
- Stimulate sales through social media, encouraging likes, reposts, and comments
- Take care of your landing page usability to make the purchase process smoother
Want to know more about each of these tips? Inkit explains everything here. Learn some valuable holiday marketing statistics and practical recommendations, and use them to run successful holiday marketing campaigns.
3 Creative Ideas on Successful Holiday Marketing Campaigns After Christmas (Online & Offline)
Post-Holiday Campaign Example #1: Unique Hashtag to Use on Social Media
Social media is the best place to update your target audience on everything that happens with your company. Post-Christmas sales aren’t an exception. With thrilling content, exciting contests, and worthy information you get a chance to attract highly-targeted traffic. These people willingly subscribe to your page and follow all your publications. You just need to help them find the most useful information. In this respect, a unique hashtag is almost mandatory. Why so?
Hashtags create an internal structure across your social media profiles. They unite the publications related to the same topic and help users quickly find what they need. For example, many companies come up with a special hashtag for every marketing campaign. You can use a single hashtag for all your holiday campaigns or design a dedicated option for post-Christmas sales. This will create a buzz around what your company is doing now and attract the public. You can encourage people to include this hashtag on their pages when they post something related to the holiday theme or your company. Encourage them to tell about perfect gifts bought in your store, organize giveaways, and more. And never forget to reply to your customers when they mention your brand. The research shows that 77% of Twitter users like it when a brand responds to their tweets and start appreciating it more.
Note. There are some recommendations regarding the number of hashtags on different social media: Facebook or Pinterest – no hashtags, Twitter – 1-2, LinkedIn – 2-3, Instagram – up to 30. Don’t forget to track their performance and evaluate the effectiveness of different types and the number of hashtags.
Post-Holiday Campaign Example #2: Online Ad Campaign Backed Up With Direct Mail
Targeted holiday ads can remind customers what they were interested in (but didn’t buy for some reason) before Christmas. Although such ads are often based on specific characteristics of the audience (sex, age, education, etc.), the content tied to behavioral patterns yields better results. Moreover, since 76% of marketers don’t use behavioral data for ad targeting, you get a great chance to outpace your competitors with your post-holiday ad campaign.
Take into account the purchase and browser history of your customers to match their tastes. The classic of targeted advertising are ads featuring the products that users viewed in an online store. If your customers didn’t buy something before Christmas because they were too focused on gifts, they may change their minds after the holidays.
You can make your targeted ads even more convincing, complementing them with creative holiday mailers. Mail your customers a postcard with a discount or another offer by mail, so when they see an online ad, they will willingly convert. For such advanced holiday campaigns, you will need to integrate your CRM or marketing platform with Inkit’s mail automation tool. The CRM will record customer behavior and activate automated mail printing and delivery when necessary. As a result, the creative holiday mailers will reach customers just at the right moment. Apart from that, you can use the customer data from the CRM to understand why customers that showed interest in your product didn’t purchase. Expensive shipping? Inconvenient check-out? Anything else? Once you know the reason behind the poor conversion, you can pick the most suitable content and call-to-action for your creative holiday mailers.
Post-Holiday Campaign Example #3: Creative Holiday Mailers with Store Credit
Similarly to the previous example of successful holiday marketing campaigns, this one also combines online and offline marketing. Let’s suppose you run an online store and have a loyalty program in place. Holidays are a wonderful occasion to show appreciation to your repeat customers and give them some bonuses. Send a holiday email before Christmas, informing buyers that you doubled their store credit. Use a nice holiday theme, strong call-to-action, and a festive design. Many recipients will redeem your offer to purchase something, yet some of them may still ignore your email marketing.
Don’t get frustrated. The remaining bonuses can be used for your post-holiday campaign. Since a part of customers didn’t open your holiday emails, you need a marketing channel with higher response rates. Direct mail is one of such channels. Mail campaigns get at least 3 times more responses than emails. Besides, during the holiday season, people pay more attention to mail, expecting postcards, gift guides, and creative holiday mailers. So you can meet their expectations and nudge loyal customers into using their store credit. Send personalized mail pieces to remind them about the available bonuses right after the end of the holidays.
To customize the information in every postcard, use variable data printing supported by Inkit. You can either upload a ready-made mailing list or connect a CRM with customer data. Inkit will automatically include the relevant details on mail pieces to personalize the offer and print unique creative holiday mailers.
The post 3 Examples of Best Post-Holiday Campaigns (Online & Offline): Digital Marketing, Creative Holiday Mailers, and Other Strategies appeared first on Inkit.