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Our Top Holiday Tips for Small Businesses

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Pumpkin spice is back in stores, which means if you haven’t yet done so, it’s time to get cracking on your holiday marketing plan. When it comes to driving revenue, the holidays are often the most hectic—and most important—time of year.

There are tons of ways business owners can capitalize on the season, from setting up retargeting ads to acquire new customers, to giving your website a festive refresh, to adding product recommendations into your emails. All of these tactics have varying degrees of effort, so you can focus on what’s best for your business, depending on your time and resources.

Here’s a list of our top 10 tips for the holiday season, along with how much effort it will take you to execute them:

1. Develop a promotional schedule.

Map out your sales and promotions for the entire holiday shopping season, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Level of effort: MEDIUM

Find out why we love our content calendar.

2. Update your look for the holidays.

Give your email, website, and social media channels a festive refresh for the season.

Level of effort: LOW to HIGH, depending on the time investment you’d like to make. For example, you may want to schedule a holiday photoshoot and and switch up your social media header images, or you might decide to have a graphic designer update your email templates and tailor your site to the season.

We put together some ideas on social media strategies for people who sell stuff. Get started here.

3. Publicize your upcoming events.

Announce any upcoming holiday events, pop-up shops, and seasonal sales in advance.

Level of effort: LOW

4. Show appreciation to loyal customers.

Reward your best customers with special discounts, early access to sales, or a first look at new products.

Level of effort: MEDIUM

Reward your customers the Cheese Grotto way: Follow their advice for great automations.

5. Communicate your shipping policies.

Clearly communicate important order-by dates and shipping details so your customers will get their products in time for the holidays.

Level of effort: LOW

6. Recommend products your customers will love.

Personalize your email by including product recommendations driven by the purchase history of your customers.

Level of effort: LOW

Attention: Learn how to mix product recommendations and abandoned cart automations for the best results.

7. Re-engage lapsed customers.

Create a customer re-engagement series to win back people who haven’t made a purchase from your store in a while.

Level of effort: MEDIUM

Try our tips for designing successful automated emails.

8. Target your audience by demographic.

Use predicted demographics to create relevant, engaging emails that target your audience by gender or age.

Level of effort: LOW

Read a predicted demographics success story, starring online meat and seafood delivery service Greensbury.

9. Optimize your send time.

Schedule email campaigns with Timewarp to automatically deliver based on each subscriber’s time zone and use Send Time Optimization to identify the send time that will result in the highest engagement from your subscribers.

Level of effort: LOW

10. Test to see what drives engagement.

A/B test different copy, images and calls to action to learn what resonates best with customers. The winning combination can be chosen manually or determined automatically based on open rate, click rate, or total revenue.

Level of effort: HIGH

Graphic design products company RetroSupply Co. shared some of their A/B testing and list growth strategies with us. Check out their tips.

Bonus tip: Set up ads to get new customers.

Use your email list to send targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google to find new customers that have interests similar to those of customers who already love you.

Level of effort: MEDIUM

Learn how Brooklyn Slate uses Facebook ads to find new customers. (Hint: Segmentation is involved.)

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