30 Holiday Marketing Posts You Shouldn’t Miss

Holiday presents

We’re making a list, checking it twice… A list of holiday marketing posts that is.

In the spirit of giving, we’ve wrapped up 30 posts to make you an expert in holiday marketing. But don’t delay, read them quickly and get your campaigns ready in advance because you know your competition already has theirs all ready to go, and you want to do a good lead up campaign to avoid any last minute rush (for all the men out there, you know what I’m talking about – tsk tsk).

Conversion Christmas

1. How to Increase eCommerce Conversions During the 2012 Holiday Season

There is no doubt that online shopping is a huge deal. This post talks about some of the trends that cannot be ignored, touches on interaction with Facebook’s “want” botton and finishes up with some hearty holiday conversion tips.

2. Christmas E-commerce: 35 Tips to Increase Conversions

This meaty article is filled with great suggestions and tips from six ecommerce experts. Here is a teaser:

Create a main Christmas landing page that is themed and acts as a hub to all your Christmas products and content. This should be in addition to existing categories/landing pages and really sell your Christmas proposition.”

Elf Email Marketing

3. How to Create Share-Worthy Email Content this Holiday Season

Constant Contact has really outdone themselves with the abundance of quality holiday marketing posts. This post specifically gives us great Email tips and then backs it up with stats. How can you argue with stats?

4. Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season

This 48-page ebook is the motherload of holiday email marketing ebooks. Jackpot! The annual guide from Chad White and Responsys discusses the latest holiday trends, walks you through the 5 stages of the holiday season, and is based on the holiday email activity of more than 100 top U.S. online retailers. It is packed with tons of useful information and is in its 6th edition, which is a pretty clear indication that it been popular the previous 5 times. Highly recommended.

5. How To Handle Email Frequency During The Busy Holiday Season

Like the title indicates, this post is all about frequency: when and how often you should click send during the busy holiday season. Indiemark.com says it well: “Consumers will be strained as they look through their inboxes every day. The tendency will be to delete more emails than normal, but with a good strategy companies can still win the inbox war.”

6. 10 Tips for Better Email Marketing Campaings

Did you know that 75% of major retailers sent out one or more holiday promotional emails on Thanksgiving Day 2011, up from 60% in 2010 and 45% in 2009. Yep, that’s right, Christmas is coming to you earlier this year. Procrastination? I think not.

7. Holiday Email Marketing Infographic (2011 in Review)

The only way we can move forward, is to learn from the past. This infographic gives us a year in review and busts a handful of myths that will help you tackle your holiday emails.

8. 5 Holiday Email Marketing Tips

5 top quality tips in regards to holiday email marketing. This tip in particular stuck me as very interesting: “Not all ecommerce merchants offer products that are suitable for gift giving or have products that otherwise sell during the holidays. If you fall into this category, don’t try to capitalize on the holidays.” What do you think?

9. Free 2012 Holiday Email Marketing Guide!

This 20 page e-book includes great statistics and graphs from 2011, identifying missed opportunities and tactics to capitalize. For example, last year email marketers on average send mid-week and by association hit their list less often on weekends. Therefore, it makes sense to do some holiday email marketing on the weekend as there is less competition for the inbox. #smrt

10. 3 Key Crosschannel Email Strategies for the Holidays

This post is all about the smartphone. Are your email messages optimized for mobile? If not, get on it with this post.

O’Christmas Campaign

11. [How To] Boost Sales by Preparing Seasonal Campaigns in Advance

Shameless self promotion. If you haven’t already, read it.

12. 4 Questions for your Holiday Marketing Campaign

Do you have a special holiday deal for customers? Are your promotions focused? Have you updated everything to reflect your special deal? If you answered ‘no’ to any of the above questions, please continue on to the post. Side note: If I could rename this blog title, it would be: 4 Questions and answers for your Holiday Marketing Campaign.

13. 5 Examples of Awesome Holiday Marketing Campaigns

Here at Unbounce, we provide you with the freshest, most recent blog content on our Friday roundups. However, this one squeezed its way in here although it is one year old. This post is about awesome holiday campaigns, explaining what makes them so awesome. How awesome, right?

14. Kmart Halloween Campaign Combines Social Media, Mommy Bloggers, Live Video — and Breaks A World Record

Let’s break away from all the December holiday talk and focus on the holiday that is coming up in less than a week: Halloween. This campaign made it in the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of costume changes.

Seasonal Social Media

15. 60 Social Media Marketing Tips for the Holiday Season

60 tips! Yes 60 tips for your social media holiday strategy, including tips for specific holidays including Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas.

16. 8 Tips for Getting Customers Ready for the Holidays with Social Media and Email Marketing

“You may not have a million dollar TV budget or Grammy worthy holiday jingles to do it, but you do have the power of social media and email marketing.”

17. Entice Holiday Shoppers With Social Media Promotions

Let’s be honest, everyone loves a good sale whether its offline or online. Yet, it was surprising to discover only 8% of Facebook campaigns highlight money-saving deals when 34% of respondents purchased a product as a result of a promotion they saw on social media.

Mistletoe Marketing Strategies

18. How to Sell More during the 2012 Holiday Shopping Season – A Practical Crash Course for Online Retailers

This post covers everything and anything holiday marketing. And it has a long table of contents to prove it. Conversion optimization, Google Adwords, Social Media, Content, Re-marketing, Shipping & returns, customer support, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You name it, they’ve covered it.

19. Digital Marketing Strategies for the 2012 Holiday Season

Why is it important to have a digital media strategy? This will give you things to think about when you are carving out your holiday strategy.

20. Holiday Marketing: Plan Now to Sell More During the Holidays

This post is right. The holidays bring on the cheer. Your customers are more willing to spend if they are in a good mood. So plan great things to give them more to be happy about. Don’t give them a reason to turn into Uncle Scrooge.

21. Preparing Your Marketing Channels for the Holiday Rush

When it comes down to it, it’s all about preparation: “The sooner you start focusing on your holiday campaigns, the better chance you’ll have to be successful in converting customers and driving revenue in this crucial time of year.” Yep.

22. Holiday Marketing Checklist: Tips for Planning for the Holidays

I’m making a list, checking it twice.
Well, actually, this post already gives you the checklist. Just make sure you are on the ‘nice’ one.

23. 5 Ways to Make Your Holiday Promotion Great

Make it timely, easy, personal, engaging and shareable. For all the nitty, gritty detail as well as more examples see the post.

Presents, PPC & SEO

24. 5 Tactical Holiday SEO Tips You Can Act On Today

“In a Google study last Q4 2011, 77% of shoppers said online research impacts which type of gift they buy.” Um, hello holiday SEO tips.

25. Holiday Season Search Trends of Top U.S. Retail Brands

Macy’s vs. Kohl’s. Walmart vs. Target. Trader Joe’s vs. Whole Foods. This post is a head-to-head battle between retail giants in the arena of SEO and paid search. Game on.

26. Prepping for Holiday Paid Search Campaigns

Our pals at Trada hit the nail on the head with this one. To quote them exactly: “You’ll need landing pages that convert to support your ads. Highly SEO-optimized landing pages are not only good for search engines, but the language in your landing pages should match your ad copy for a complete, complimentary message. You’ll also want to make sure you landing pages can support the traffic from high-volume sellers.”

27. Holiday PPC Strategy & Prep in Just 7 Steps!

Cover all your keyword bases with this preparation step-by-step checklist.

Tis The Season Trends

28. Top 6 Marketing Trends this Holiday Season

Constant Contact at it again. This time with 6 trends.

29. 4 Out of 10 Consumers Will Start Holiday Shopping Before Halloween

That means they are starting to shop now. So you better get on your online holiday campaigns asap if you haven’t already. Good thing you have 30 of the most recent resources within a click of your mouse, all categorized and summarized.

30. Two Ecommerce Trends to Watch this Holiday Season

Wider Funnel narrows in on two trends to watch for. Can you guess which ones they are?

Do you have anymore must read holiday marketing posts? Please feel free to share any posts you think we may have missed in the comments section below!

— Oli Gardner


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About Oli Gardner
Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. He’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad marketing practices, and his disdain for marketers who send campaign traffic to their homepage is legendary, resulting in landing page rants that can peel paint off an unpainted wall. A prolific international keynote speaker, Oli is on a mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike. He was recently named the "The 2018 Marketer to Watch," in the under 46 category, by his mother.
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