Holiday Trend Predictions for 2023

And here we are, officially moving into the busiest marketing season of the year. Black Friday is just a few weeks away (!), which usually kicks everything off. However, in the past two years, businesses have been launching their holiday campaigns earlier and earlier — and customers have been wanting to shop earlier as well. For the average business, holiday sales can represent as much as 30% of total revenue for the year.

Get ready for the holiday season with these trend predictions for 2023. Understand why businesses will be focusing on promo-driven campaigns, how customers are turning to social media for gift ideas, and learn a few tips to optimize your emails for this time of year.

Holiday Marketing Tips & Trends for 2023

HOLIDAY TREND PREDICTIONS

• Most businesses are planning to run promo-driven holiday campaigns in light of current economics (Listrak), and only 9% of consumers plan to spend more this holiday season. (Gartner)

• Customers are purchasing earlier. 11% of the customers who were making their purchases in November 2021 shifted their purchase activity to October in 2022 and Forbes believes this behavior will carry over into 2023. There is an average pre-sale window of 41 days.

• While word of mouth still ranks number one, shoppers are shifting their search for the perfect gift to social media platforms and videos are taking the lead for converting to a purchase. (Wordstream)

• And as for decorating themes, Etsy released its Holiday Trend Report last month, and "Gingerbread Girl" is officially replacing Tomato Girl Summer!

IDEAS TO DRIVE REVENUE DURING THE HOLIDAYS

• Gamification
  Things like polls and quizzes, "12-days of Christmas" promotions, countdown timers, codes that are only available via SMS or through social media...

• Automations
  Get your messages ready! Revisit or create abandoned cart emails, pre-crafted DM responses to FAQs, and welcome series campaigns.

• Personalizations
  It is 6 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to sell to your existing ones! (Listrak) Create recommendations based on past purchase interests, a “if you liked this, then you’ll love…” email, or share category-based gift guides.

• Retention + Offers to Existing Customers
  25% of customers will make a repeat purchase in 2023 and in general, repeat customers are 9xs more likely to buy than new customers. You can start second purchase messages sooner (eg. suggest a gift card), or send emails based on their lifecycle/at risk for unsubscribing before loading up your holiday email campaigns.

HOLIDAY EMAIL MARKETING TIPS

• Avoid sending holiday emails at "peak times". Don’t send on the hour or half-hour, especially between 8 am-12 pm EST for Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Instead, send on some variation of plus/minus 10-15 minutes on the hour for better deliverability.

• Where you can, bring in personalization options. (Product recommendations, dynamic content, and personalization fields.)

• Reactivate your existing customer base well before you start sending holiday emails. (Something I'm doing with a few clients right now is sending 'reactivation' campaigns to their most unengaged subscribers to make sure our list is nice and tidy for the holidays.)

• Holiday-related subject lines have a 28.5% higher open rate (Listrak). Bring on the puns and emojis! 🎄🎅🏼🕎🪔❄️☃️

• Engaging visual content boosts your likelihood for people to read through. Great images, GIFs, and memes are proven to work when added to emails!

More Holiday Marketing & Content Ideas:

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