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10 Cleaver Holiday Marketing Tips for 2021

It’s never too early to start thinking about your holiday campaigns. In fact, if you aren’t already thinking about them, you’re late! 

The holidays are the busiest time of year for most industries in the global market. Every year, the population starts to kick up their heels around Halloween and the fun doesn't stop until we all collapse into a deep post-holiday sleep after New Years'. But for the business world, holiday preparations start a little earlier. Naturally, you need your marketing campaign, tools, and assets lined up in time to share the cheer and get your audience excited for the deals to come.

How can you connect with your audience and use the holidays to boost revenue? We have a few clever ideas to spice up your holiday campaign and help you personalize your connection with every customer and lead.

 1) Personalize Messages with CRM Data

Your CRM is one of your best assets. Don't underestimate the insights you (and your AI) can find to personalize each lead or customer's holiday experience. Have your holiday assets speak to your audience by name and wish them the appropriate season's greetings. Share discounts that match their favorite items, and drive customers down customized journeys they will enjoy. 

While many believe that holiday marketing is strictly for B2C, B2B can take advantage of the season as well. For example, if you provide a solution, many companies use the end of the year to evaluate current strategies and tactics, and research solutions to help them reach their goals in the New Year. This is a great time to reach out with special promotions or deals on your service or solution.

You can use the promotion to attract leads with PPC, social media, or PR strategies. Once they are in your funnel, use the information they gave you on your form to deliver targeted and personalized information throughout the campaign. 

2) Build Holiday Promos Into Your Lead Nurturing

Everyone likes presents and seasons greetings, including your current leads and customers. The leads you are nurturing today are also experiencing the holidays so make your brand a part of their holiday chair. Integrate lead nurturing with a holiday theme to delight your leads and inspire them to convert.

Chances are, you already have a few emails you send to new leads. This is the time to update your emails and outreach to include some holiday friendly messaging. 

For example, starting in November, GreenRope offers users $200 off when they signup before the end of the year. We will build this messaging into the different lead nurturing campaigns we have running. When a person submits a booking request for a demo, we will send them the offer at some point during their journey. Over the years, this has helped convert more leads into paying customers during this time. 

3) Use Referral Marketing Strategies

'Tis the season for referrals. The holiday season is when people share their stories, recommendations, and give the gift of things they've enjoyed. The holiday season is a great time for referrals, so make them easy. If you haven’t already, develop a referral program for your current clients. How can you thank them for sending you new customers? 

At GreenRope, we have a referral program in place to encourage our users to give the gift of CRM. While it is a year-round strategy, we like to spice it up during the holiday season. 

To start, we built a landing page that we send to our customers. It gives them clear information about the referral program and how they can take advantage of the program. Every customer that refers a new client to us receives a $100 credit to their account or a $100 gift card. 

4) Use Past Purchase History to Encourage Conversions

If you are using a complete CRM, or even a CRM attached to your eCommerce website, you have a record of past purchases. This is incredibly useful data that you can use to follow up with your customers. Ask them how they like their product, and present them with a discount on a complementary product.

Purchasing history is an easy way to segment and target your customers and increase conversions during the holiday season. Plus, if they liked the product they bought, they might consider purchasing another one as a gift, if you present them with a good deal at the right time. 

Don’t forget to automate your shopping cart abandonment strategy. You can also use lead scoring to trigger automation as well. For example, if someone visits your website or clicks on an email, you can trigger an automated email to go out with a special holiday promotion. This is a great way to catch them while they are actively thinking about your product or service. 

5) Personalize Emails with Dynamic Data and Templates

It can be exhausting to create multiple emails for each of your segments for every campaign. Instead, see if your system has dynamic data. This is where you can create rules for content based on data in your CRM database. You don't have to write a custom email for each of your segments, instead, customize a template and use dynamic data to insert the name, interests, and personal deals for each of your individual customers. 

In GreenRope, you can easily pull up a template and then create Dynamic rules based on specific user-defined fields. For example, you can customize your message based on location. If someone lives in snowy Colorado, you might want to send a different message than someone in sunny Southern California. The beauty is that you just have to create one template and insert your Dynamic rules to automatically customize the template before it gets sent to the contact. 

6) A/B Test Your Best Holiday Promotions and Sales

Not sure which holiday messaging is the best? Use A/B testing to share both strategies with your audience and rate their performance. The campaign strategy, method, or design that does best can become your primary strategy.

You can A/B test in multiple ways. We suggest first testing your landing pages and email campaigns. 

For landing pages, you create two variations of the same page and see which performs better. If you are a GreenRope user, you can set this up in the Website management area of your account. 

If you want to test your email campaigns, we suggest creating at least two variations of the same email. Only test one to two elements max. Otherwise, you won’t have a good gauge on what actually was the more effective element. In GreenRope, use the Campaign Optimizer to test as many as five different emails. You first test your selected emails with a test audience. Then, after a specified time, the system will automatically send the best performing email to the rest of your list. Easy as pie! 

Click here for our A/B testing tips. 

7) Build a Holiday-Themed Landing Page

Don't just celebrate the holidays in private messages and gifts, celebrate publically where everyone can join the party. Create a holiday-themed landing page, or a whole network of holiday pages, for your customers to enjoy as they explore your page. This may seem like a small thing to do, but people enjoy the holiday spirit, so get into it. Add some holiday cheer to your website, emails, and landing pages. 

When we set up our holiday ads, we design a unique holiday webpage to use for our campaigns. If nothing else, it makes your lead or customer smile. 

8) Get Festive on Social Media

Mix that holiday cheer into your social media campaign. A great social campaign includes special posts and content for every holiday, and the holiday season can be packed with festive posts, ideas, and conversation starters as everyone gets into the spirit.

It’s important to be conscientious about your customers' holiday preferences. Most likely, your customers celebrate all different types of holidays, so be careful not to leave anyone out. At GreenRope, we opt for a neutral holiday tone to make sure we do not offend or leave anyone out. We want everyone to enjoy the holiday spirit, not necessarily associated with one specific holiday or another. 

9) Keep It Simple with Promotions and Campaigns

Don’t overwhelm your audience with overly complex promotions. People have enough going on during the holiday season. Present your promotion to them and make it easy to take advantage of it. Do not make anyone jump through the hoops to get the deal. 

Great ways to share your promotions are: 

  • Current Customers: One-off email campaigns
  • New Leads: Lead nurturing campaigns, PPC campaigns, landing pages 
  • Leads & Customers: Social Media

Best practices for holiday promotions:

  • Keep your messaging clear
  • Do not offer more than a few promotions
  • Make sure your entire team knows about your promotions
  • Test out your promotions and messaging 
  • Make it easy to take advantage of your promotions 
  • Convey clear instructions and requirements for your promotions 

10) Learn from Your Previous Holiday Campaigns.

Last but not least, check out what worked for you before. Your core audience and return customers still love what they love. If something worked well for you in a previous holiday season, bring back an old favorite. 

For example, if you spent a lot of time testing out specific imagery or content last year, you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Go with what was effective in the past. The same goes for landing pages, PPC campaigns, emails, and more. 

If you do want to change it up a bit, we suggest testing out your new strategy to make sure you are not doing yourself a sales and marketing disservice. Use A/B testing and campaign optimization to find your best performers. 

If you are going to test new elements of your campaigns, do so early on in the season. Do not wait until primetime. Primetime is for your most effective strategy. 

Holiday marketing is a lot of fun. The key is to start early and not overcomplicate  it. The holidays are about connection, so make sure you are adding more personal touches to your campaigns. Happy marketing my friends! 

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