Holiday Marketing Strategies: The 2024 Ecommerce Playbook

Welcome to your ultimate playbook for holiday marketing strategies!

Each year, the festive season presents a unique opportunity for eCommerce businesses to boost sales, with consumers eager to splurge on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

To fully capture the shopping spirit of this 2024 holiday, make sure you’ve got all these in mind:

• There are several key retail moments you should prepare for, and they start as soon as October begins.
• Take advantage of the current shopping trends. Consumers tend to spend more as the holiday season approaches. Self-gifting and product-focusing are significant.
• Include and tailor your email, SEO, social media, and paid advertising as you craft your holiday marketing strategies.
• Delivering a successful festive campaign takes creativity and practicality. Also, don’t forget to get all the support you need during holiday sales.

Those highlights will be discussed in detail throughout our following content pieces. Keep scrolling and kick off a blooming holiday together!

What Are the Key Retail Moments During the 2024 Festive Season?

The 2024 final quarter is crucial for retailers, featuring several key shopping holidays. Like every other year, the prominent ones are BFCM and Christmas. For certain countries, especially the Commonwealth ones, Boxing Day marks another crucial sales moment.

Besides the highlights, eCommerce brands like yours should take note of several other holidays, including Halloween, Single’s Day, Green Monday, and Hanukkah. Now, keep scrolling and explore how you can embrace them in your holiday marketing strategies.

📌 What experts suggest: Run a data-driven holiday marketing campaign to meet the expectations and behaviors of each target audience. Recognizing these patterns can help you craft more effective promotions, enhancing both customer engagement and sales.

📆 Get Ahead This Holiday Season with Ecommerce Holiday Calendar 2025

Timing your promotions around these holidays can significantly amplify your store's visibility and sales volume. So, integrate the most updated eCommerce holiday calendar and prepare ahead to win the best holiday sales.

👉👉 Download your eCommerce Holiday Calendar by FoxEcom 👈👈

Holiday Shopping Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2024

The holiday season triggers distinct shopping behaviors compared to the rest of the year.

Various factors, including increased promotional activity, seasonal demands, and a festive mindset, contribute to these differences. Understanding these shifts can empower retailers to tailor your holiday marketing strategies effectively.

Increased spending

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau compiled by the National Retail Federation, holiday sales increased by 3.8% year over year to reach $964.4 billion in 2023.

In contrast, average monthly retail sales outside of these months typically show more conservative spending patterns, with necessities taking precedence over discretionary purchases.

For 2024, NRF also forecasts that US retail sales can increase from 2.5% to 3.5% compared to 2023.

Image source: JBResearch - Good to Know

📌 What are the reasons for increased spending?

• Promotions and discounts: The holidays are in sync with sales and promotions, which are rarely as aggressive as other times of the year.
• Gift-giving traditions: Cultural and social obligations to purchase gifts for friends and family drive a significant portion of the spending.
• End-of-year bonuses: Many consumers receive end-of-year bonuses, which they often use for holiday shopping.

Holiday Shopping Behaviors (Timing, Channels, Tendencies and Category-focus)

Early shopping trends

27% of shoppers start buying holiday gifts as early as October — before most brands and retailers kick off their seasonal promotions.

Shoppers want to avoid the stress of last-minute shopping, and early deals from retailers make it even more appealing to start early.

Self-gifting

Take this to your holiday marketing strategies: Modern shoppers shop early, they spend wisely — and 61% will add a little something to their cart to treat themselves.

Self-gifting has become a notable trend, with many shoppers using holiday sales to treat themselves. This behavior peaks during key sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where high-value items are often significantly discounted.

🔎 Learn more: Gift with Purchase: Free Holiday Gifts Guide on Shopify to Grow Revenue

Shopping Channels

Online shopping continues to dominate, especially during major holiday sales. Consumers appreciate the convenience and often find better deals online than in-store.

Image source: Ship Station

While online sales grow, many still prefer the in-store experience for certain purchases, especially those that require a “try before you buy” approach.

Impulse Purchase

The holiday season sees a spike in impulse purchases as consumers are more likely to buy on a whim when faced with holiday sales and promotions. Retailers can encourage such behavior by strategically placing impulse buy items near checkout areas both in-store and online.

Image source: Think with Google

Category Focus

Top holiday gift ideas, according to the Salsify report, include fashion and apparel, personal care and beauty, electronics, food and beverage, etc.

Image source: Salsify

Followed by other product categories that thrive during peak seasons, including Decoration, Grocery, and Cooking-related products.

• Festive decorations: Significant sales in home décor items that cater to the season.
• Luxury items: Increased spending on luxury goods as consumers enjoy high-end purchases for both gifting and self-use.
• Essentials: Grocery and cooking-related products see a rise as families prepare for holiday meals.

Consumer Sentiment and Expectations

During the holiday season, consumer sentiment and expectations shift toward optimism and urgency. Shoppers are looking for the perfect gifts and the best shopping experience. Understanding these emotional and practical needs can help retailers design more effective holiday strategies.

According to the Salsify survey, there are several types of shoppers:

• 36% of shoppers are Bargain Hunters
• 32% of shoppers are Research Mavens
• 13% of shoppers are Luxury Lovers
• 7% of shoppers are Impulse Buyers
• 4% of shoppers are Brand Loyalists
• 3% said they're Swayable Shoppers

Each shopper type has different important values that drive them to their shopping decisions:

• Bargain Hunters: Savings, discounts, and value
• Luxury Lovers: Prestige, exclusivity, product quality
• Research Mavens: Product information, ratings and reviews
• Impulse Buyers: Instant gratification, novelty, and convenience
• Brand Loyalists: Brand trust, brand identity, and product quality
• Swayable Shoppers: Product features, product variety, and ratings and reviews

In general, exceptional shopping experiences that include helpful product information and compelling brand stories are essential for meeting the diverse needs of different types of shoppers

4 Practical Holiday Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce Brands

1. Holiday Email Marketing Strategy

During the holiday season, email marketing sees a significant surge in performance, particularly for eCommerce businesses. To make the most of your holiday marketing plan, check out our recommendations for emails:

• Segmentation: Tailor your messages to different customer segments based on their previous interactions and buying behaviors. This personal touch ensures that your emails resonate more deeply with recipients, potentially increasing engagement and conversions.
• Holiday themes: Employ festive email templates that capture the holiday spirit. A visually appealing email that embodies the joy and excitement of the season can keep your audience engaged and looking forward to your offerings.
• Exclusive deals: Provide your loyal customers with special offers or early access to sales. This not only rewards them for their loyalty but also incentivizes them to make purchases during the holiday rush.

To help you visualize it clearly, here’s a compelling example from a retailer's holiday email campaign:

Holiday email. Image source: OptiMonk

📚 Read more about email marketing: 8 Marketing Automation Strategies to Leverage Shopify Success

🎁 Expert Tips and Gifts:

Apply automation in the email holiday marketing strategies to reduce workload during peak season and boost engagement with omnichannel marketing modules:

• AiT: Loyalty Program, Email: Enjoy 20% OFF for 1 Year!
• Omnisend Email Marketing & SMS: Get 10% OFF

2. Holiday SEO Strategy

Maximizing SEO efforts is a must while you run your holiday marketing. Ensure your website ranks high in search results and captures the attention of shoppers actively seeking gift ideas online.

According to the Holiday Consumer Behavior Report, 21.67% of shoppers said they would browse Google and the internet for gift ideas. Of those, 9.51% are likely to make purchases directly from individual brand websites. These metrics highlight the critical importance of getting your brand in front of your target audience.

When you start your holiday marketing strategies, ask: Where do you typically get your gift ideas? Image source: Justuno

Some fail-proof tips to boost your holiday SEO:

• Keyword optimization: Identify and integrate seasonal keywords that your target audience is searching for during the holidays. Terms like "best Black Friday deals" or "unique Christmas gifts" can attract highly motivated shoppers to your site.
• Seasonal content: Develop content that addresses specific holiday needs, such as gift guides, holiday preparation tips, and festive recipes. This content not only improves SEO but also adds value to your audience, keeping them engaged.
• Local SEO: For physical stores, optimizing for local search can drive significant foot traffic. Include geo-specific keywords and update your Google My Business listing to ensure you're visible to shoppers searching in your area.

👀 Read More: Best eCommerce SEO Audit Checklist: 12 Important Factors

🎁 Expert Tips and Gift

To convert your customers directly to your website, create materials on your storefront, like a holiday-special landing page, to make the deal more appealing. And if you are looking for a tool to help with store design, consider Foxify - the smart Shopify Visual builder. Its feature package includes:

• Ease of use: Free-form drag-and-drop editor that requires no coding skills.
• Design flexibility: Over 150+ professional templates to choose from.
• Conversion-focused: Optimized designs for sales and conversion enhancement.
• Efficiency: More than 50% built-in extensions to streamline your page-building process, saving time and resources.

More than that, if you're new to creating a sale landing page, Foxify has ready-to-use templates that help you build your page quickly and easily.

👀 You might also like: 4 Holiday Website Design Tips to Boost Customer Engagement

3. Social Media Engagement

Social media platforms are not just for sharing, but they have become essential for driving sales and engaging consumers, especially during the holiday season. The market size of social commerce is expected to reach 2.9 trillion US dollars by 2026. Additionally, digital buyers in Gen X, Gen Z, and Millennials are likely to increase their online shopping in the future.

Image source: Tidio

Platforms like TikTok have seen a 190% increase in holiday shopping videos from the week before to the week after Halloween. At the same time, Instagram continues to maintain high engagement rates, which are about 4 times higher than those on Facebook, highlighting its potential for reaching and engaging audiences effectively during the holiday season.

Image source: Sprout Social

To enhance your holiday marketing strategies and efforts through social media, consider:

• Holiday-themed posts: Create content that reflects the festive season with visually appealing graphics and engaging captions that resonate with the holiday spirit.
• Interactive features: Utilize Instagram polls, Facebook live sessions, and Twitter Q&As to engage directly with your audience. These interactions can increase your reach and deepen customer relationships.
• User-generated content (UGC): Encourage your followers to share their own holiday stories or photos featuring your products. This not only provides you with authentic content but also increases trust among your audience.

By focusing on these targeted strategies, you can effectively amplify your social media presence and engage more deeply with your audience during the holiday season.

4. Holiday Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is one of the proven holiday marketing strategies for increasing visibility and driving sales. Moreover, paid advertising will reach its full potential, with ad spend and consumer engagement peaking during these crucial shopping periods.

According to sources, there are increases in sales factors as the holiday approaches:

• Ad impressions typically rise 50%
• Click-through rates go up 100%
• Direct traffic increases by 150%
• Average order value grows by 30%

Effective paid advertising strategies include:

• Targeted campaigns: Using detailed audience segmentation to ensure ads are shown to users most likely to convert.
• Dynamic and retargeting ads: Leveraging user behavior to show relevant products, which can increase conversion rates by up to 60%.

This helps ensure that ads reach the right people at the right time, leading to a significant increase in holiday sales.

Use Shopify and Kick off Your Holiday Marketing Strategies

If you're planning to launch an online store and make a memorable entrance just in time to leverage holiday sales, you cannot go wrong with Shopify.

Why Shopify?

Shopify is the most efficient platform that powers online stores. In only one month, you can have everything up and running, from business operations to holiday marketing strategies that drive sales and a favorite customer base. Here's how Shopify can help you get there:

• No coding skills are required as you build your online storefront. To kick off your store design easily, you can choose from over 200 themes on the Shopify Theme store, including 13 free and 215 paid ones. Some popular Shopify themes are Dawn, Sleek, and Zest.
• Shopify App Store provides 10,000+ apps for sales, marketing, and business operations. Easily integrate them with other marketing channels and streamline any selling process right at your fingertip.
• Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that makes it easy to sell, market, fulfill orders, and handle shipping. It gives you full control over your business, so everything stays connected and runs smoothly.

Don’t miss out on the holiday rush! Get started today with Shopify, enjoy your sweet deals, and fully capture the holiday shopping spirit!

How to Craft A Successful Holiday Marketing Campaign?

It’s going to take efforts to turn holiday marketing campaign ideas into reality. But don’t worry - we’ve got you covered. When you run a holiday campaign, keep in mind:

• Deliver your holiday promotions with eye-catching content and visuals designed to convert.
• Appreciate loyal and returning customers with exclusive offers to maximize profits.
• Run your well-planned discounts and amplify them with the FOMO effect.
• Create a two-way communication for marketing to enhance its effect.

Let’s discuss them in depth!

Create engaging promotions

To capture the holiday spirit and drive traffic, create themed promotion materials like vibrant pop-ups, sales landing pages, and dynamic scrolling promotions.

A holiday-themed store. Image source: Foxify Demo

These visual elements can be themed with festive graphics and interactive components that resonate with the holiday cheer, making your store not only visually appealing but also functionally engaging.

If you need to create eye-catching pop-ups or scrolling promotions, consider FoxKit - All-in-one Shopify Sales Boost app. Check out how:

With FoxKit, you can also create:

• Sales notifications to announce browsers about your promotion
• Product bundles to cross-sell other products
• Free shipping goal to upsell by encouraging shoppers to buy more and get a free shipping code.

Loyalty Program

Enhance your loyalty program with VIP tiers, special rewards, and exclusive membership. It is also a good idea to boost holiday sales, parallel with retaining customers.

You can refer to these holiday marketing ideas:

• Holiday bonus points: During the festive season, offer double or triple reward points for purchases made within a certain time frame. This creates urgency while rewarding loyal customers for engaging with your brand.
• VIP segments: Introduce different membership levels (Silver, Gold, Platinum) that unlock as customers spend more during the holidays. Each tier can offer better rewards, such as exclusive products, faster shipping, or special discounts.
• Refer-a-friend campaigns: Launch a holiday-themed referral program where loyal customers receive extra points or rewards for bringing in new customers

🎁 Expert gifts:

• Growave: Boost Customer Loyalty and Repeat Purchases - 20% OFF forever
• BON Loyalty, Rewards & Referrals - 10% OFF
• Loloyal: Boost Customer Retention Rates & Increase Sales - 50% OFF for the first month

Limited Time Offers

Seasonal shoppers are much more willing to purchase LTOs (limited-time offers). Evidence shows that in the last holiday shopping spree, the conversion rate increased by 6.4% with LTOs. That’s a good reason to create urgency with limited-time offers when running your holiday marketing strategies. Flash sales, exclusive item releases, or limited-stock notifications can effectively drive quick conversions. From our experience and observations, you can consider running:

• Flash Sales: Giving exclusive deals that catch the attention of holiday shoppers

• Limited Stock Notifications: Placing an impression that you are offering all fast-selling items to encourage purchases.

Interactive Content

Engage your audience with interactive content such as quizzes, polls, lucky wheels, and interactive videos.

• Quizzes: Offer product recommendation quizzes like “Find Your Perfect Gift” to guide users toward purchases and boost conversions.
• Polls: Run quick polls to gather insights and involve your customers in decisions, like choosing the next product to discount.
• Interactive videos: Let customers click on featured products in videos for a more immersive experience.
• Lucky wheels: Add gamification with spin-to-win wheels, another way to bring your customers hot deals.

Do you know that Virtual Try-on is a kind of interactive content? Sephora has applied this method and boosted its conversion rate by 51% while lowering the basket drop rate by 20%. 

📚 Learn more about holiday marketing ideas:

• Halloween Marketing Ideas: Trick-or-Treat to Online Sales Success in 2024
• Top 5 BFCM Marketing Ideas to Drive Sales During the Holiday Season

More Holiday Marketing Tips for A Memorable Campaign

To maximize your success during the festive season, it’s crucial to implement well-planned holiday marketing campaigns that resonate with your target audience.

Create A Holiday Marketing Plan

Every marketing campaign needs a plan. A solid plan defines your goals, tracks progress, and keeps your campaign on schedule. You can later optimize your plan if it's not performing as expected.

• Set clear goals: Define what you want to achieve (e.g., increased sales, more customer engagement) and set measurable targets.
• Plan campaign timelines: Start your campaigns early to capture early shoppers and sustain momentum through Christmas and New Year’s.
• Use data and analytics: Analyze past holiday campaigns to see what worked and optimize based on performance metrics.

Include Catchy Holiday Marketing Slogans

Crafting the perfect holiday slogan can create an emotional connection with your audience, setting the tone for your entire marketing campaign. A catchy and festive tagline captures the holiday spirit, enhances brand recognition, and motivates customers to engage with your promotions.

Whether you're running a special offer, launching a holiday product line, or spreading festive cheer, a memorable slogan can help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Create festive and memorable taglines like these brands:

• McDonald’s: “Are you #ReindeerReady?”
• Starbucks: “Carry the merry”
• Macy's: "Believe in the Magic of Christmas"

One of the most popular holiday slogans for marketing by McDonald's. Image source: McDonald’s UK on X

How to make a holiday slogan that works?

When you deliver your campaign slogan, remember that it needs to evoke emotions, align with your brand’s core values, and embrace the brand positioning. It doesn’t have to be funny but focuses on the meaning it spreads. This applies to all slogans, including the holiday ones.

Some more examples of holiday slogans you can refer to:

• “Your Holiday Magic Starts Here!”
• “Sleigh Your Way to Savings”
• “Shop It. Gift It. Love It”

Leverage Holiday Puns

Puns are a staple in holiday marketing slogans because they make them fun, catchy, and easy to remember. Short, clever wordplay can turn an ordinary slogan into something shareable and memorable, helping your brand stand out and even go viral.

During the festive season, consumers are often in a joyful and upbeat mood, and incorporating clever wordplay can enhance engagement while keeping your content relevant and relatable. Some catchy holiday puns for marketing could be:

• “Have an Elfing Good Time Shopping!”
• “Yule Love Our Discounts!”
• “Let It Snow. Let It Snow. Let it Sold.”

📌 Puns and slogans can be mistaken for one another.

Puns capture attention and bring a sense of fun and creativity to your brand message, making it more memorable. However, it doesn’t represent your brand, campaign, or product. Slogans, on the other hand, will be embracing those. Slogans mean emotional evoking and brand aligning.

🤓 Tips for creating holiday marketing slogans and puns:

• AI tools can help a lot in generating puns and slogans. All you need to do is giving them your targets, contexts, and requirements. Just make sure to be as specific as possible.

Download Our Checklist and Prepare for Your Holiday Marketing Strategies

The holiday season marketing is crucial for boosting sales and customer engagement. To maximize your success, use a well-rounded strategy that includes personalized emails, SEO, social media engagement, and omnichannel integration. Speaking of which, Shopify makes it easy to implement these strategies and manage your entire business in one place.

To ensure you're fully prepared for the holiday rush, don’t leave your marketing to chance. Download your free holiday marketing checklist—packed with actionable tips and strategies to help you plan and maximize your holiday success. From social media campaigns to last-minute sales tactics, this checklist covers everything you need to seize the festive season.

Happy selling, and we wish you a blooming holiday sale!