The holiday season will soon be just around the corner. However, you can pretty easily spot it from a mile away. So, have you prepared for the holiday season sale? 

In 2020, we were all trying to stay afloat during the COVID wave by staying indoors. Some of us were fortunate enough to enjoy holidays with our loved ones. In contrast, some celebrated it by delivering holiday greetings and gifts online. 

We also saw a striking drop in in-store sales due to lockdown restrictions. As a result, the world has embraced e-commerce shopping. 

According to the ecommerce data by Adobe Analytics:

The holiday season sales in 2024 managed to soar by 6% more than in 2023. The massive flight earned the e-commerce industry $1.2 Trillion worth of revenue.

That said, start planning the ecommerce marketing strategy for the holiday season. 

So, from actionable marketing tips to the best conversion tricks, we have all the festivities you need. 

10 Actionable E-commerce Marketing Tips for Holiday Shopping

1. Personalize the Shopping Experience on Your Site

First, personalization wins your sales; you can’t ignore such a crucial factor. 

86% of shoppers say that personalization significantly impacts their buying decisions. 

So, you need to personalize the user experience this holiday season to capture sales. 

So how do you do it? 

Here are several actionable tips to help you personalize your holiday shopping: 

• Employ AI-based personalization tools for your site. These tools will analyze the consumers’ shopping behavior and their browsing history. Based on this data, the tool offers them personalized product recommendations. 

• Combine personalized product recommendations with special holiday season discounts. 

• Showcase a season’s greeting message with the customer’s name on it. This greeting will make your customer feel valued, translating into sales. 

• Address the customers with their names. And amaze them with a holiday season offer on a previously checked product.

• Replace the “sold out” messages with a message affirming that the stock will return soon. This allows them to add the stock to their Wishlist and buy it when available. 

• Personalize the ‘Thank You’ messages with their names to boost customer loyalty. 

2. Utilize Omnichannel Paid Advertising 

I am sure you have some PPC holiday ad ideas up your sleeve. But if you are still brainstorming about your holiday ad campaigns, start early!

Here are some PPC ad tips you must try this holiday season: 

• Prioritize Your Remarketing Campaigns

The CTR of remarketing ads in e-commerce is 180.6% higher than the display ads. 

The consumers who have shown interest in a product are probably waiting for the holiday season. They will most likely convert if you pitch them with apt remarketing campaigns. 

That said, you can expect good returns from your remarketing campaigns. 

• Use Product Listing Ads and Shopping Ads

Product Listing Ads with holiday season discounts can help you earn good CTR and sales. 

Moreover, you can try Google Showcase Ads, which are shown below. 

• Use Several Ad Extensions for Search Ads

Google Text Search Ads can help you create a buzz about your holiday season sale. You can showcase several ad link extensions to highlight the holiday shopping landing pages. 

Here is an example from the e-commerce brand SEPHORA: 

3. Summon Influencer Marketing to Boost Sales

Influencer marketing works surprisingly well for e-commerce businesses. 

And businesses can attract huge engagement and sales during the holiday shopping season. 

All they need to do is find the right influencer to promote their shopping event and 

products.

E-commerce businesses yield an average of $6.50 in revenue for every $1 spent on an influencer. The returns can range up to $20 for already popular e-commerce brands. 

Influencer marketing on Instagram even outperforms social media paid campaigns. 

Moreover, YouTube influencers can create good hype about your holiday season. 

Along with influencers, connect with bloggers and media agencies to create the right buzz.

Also, motivate your affiliate network to promote your holiday shopping event. It can get you impressive reach and a decent increase in sales. 

4. Upsell and Cross-sell To Grow Average Order Value 

Holiday shopping is about promoting the best discounts and amazing bundle offers and bringing smiles to your customers’ faces. 

An effective way to capitalize on holiday shopping is by upselling and cross-selling. 

According to Louise Palmer of Red Houston SEO, “Customers visit your site during the holiday shopping season with a surplus shopping intent. And you can easily translate it into significant revenue”, 

Discount deals on combo packs and upgraded product versions increase the average order value.   

Moreover, these offers increase the probability of conversions on your site. 

A good upsell and cross-sell deal improves customer loyalty and repeat ordering rate. 

Upsell deals work 60 to 70 percent better on existing customers.

You can promote your upsell deals on several occasions along the user journey:

• On the product page itself
• At the time of check-out or on the user’s cart page
• On the Thank You page
• In the “Thank You for Shopping” email
• In Push Notifications and Remarketing

By placing your personalized upselling offers at the right location and at the right time: 

• You can significantly boost the average order value
• You can reduce the rate of cart abandonment
• You can boost conversions by creating a sense of urgency
• You can attract repeat orders

5. Create A Rewarding Hype on Social Media Channels

Today, almost every e-commerce brand is drawing significant value from social media. 

Few e-commerce businesses are facilitating their entire operations through social media. 

That said, social media unveils a massive potential to boost your holiday shopping sales. 

Here are some tips: 

• Add Shopping Event Pages and Create a Hype

Facebook allows you to create shopping pages for your e-commerce business. In the same way, you can create pages dedicated to your ‘holiday shopping event.’ 

Meanwhile, good Instagram popularity helps you promote your holiday sales easily. You can create a buzz by starting 1-2 months before the main event. 

You can create posts dedicated to holiday shopping, add these two stories, ask followers to share them, etc. 

• Grow Sales with Social Media Ads

Social media PPC ads yield impressive engagement and CTR for e-commerce businesses. 

And you do not have to limit your holiday season ads to Facebook and Instagram. Instead, you must leverage other popular platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. 

• Run Contests and Sweepstakes

You can convert your followers into mini-influencers to promote your holiday shopping event. However, they might need some motivation. 

So, you can plan some viral social contests and sweepstakes to motivate them. The winners can enjoy great holiday season discounts and even giveaway products. 

Your goal is to cash upon huge sales in the holiday shopping season. 

6. Plan Targeted Push Notifications to Grow Engagement

Push notifications secure over seven times the clicks than emails. Moreover, the former has 50% higher opening rates than emails.  

So, you must plan catchy push notifications for your holiday shopping event. 

You can send the web push notifications to the users who accept your notification request. 

And these notifications help you get impressive reach and user engagement. 

You can plan personalized notifications and exclusive offers based on a customer’s browsing history. 

If your e-commerce business has a mobile app, utilize mobile push notifications. 

These notifications have a higher reach and CTR than web notifications. 

You can type of offers with push notifications:

• Remarketing offers with exclusive holiday discount
• Notifications to promote flash sales
• Upsell and cross-sell offers
• Notifications to boost repeat orders

7. Leverage Email Marketing to Keep Your Customers Engaged

Well, many consumers curiously wait for holiday season deals and discounts. 

A great way to find these curious consumers is through their email inboxes. Holiday shopping emails generally have a commendable opening rate and drive positive sales. 

You must plan with your holiday shopping emailers early, i.e., 15 days before the event. 

These emails can help keep consumers informed about the upcoming shopping event. It also creates the much-required buzz about the event among your target audience. 

Planning your emails early gives your customers enough time to prepare for the sale. 

You wouldn’t have to hit them aggressively 1 or 2 days before the event. 

Moreover, they will check your site early to add favorites to their carts if informed. And would place orders as soon as the holiday sale hits the shores. 

Emails can source customers who give you an initial boost in your holiday season sales. 

Here are some ideas to plan your holiday shopping emails:

• Plan early emails to build excitement around the upcoming holiday season sale
• Mention the event dates and the discount range, and highlight the flagship offers
• Keep the emails personalized, address the readers with their names, etc. 
• Use their browsing history to generate remarketing emails adorned with holiday discounts
• Build a sense of urgency using terms like “limited stock” or “2-hour flash sale,” etc. 

8. Optimize Your Site Speed Before the Holiday Sale

So, you have planned your holiday shopping marketing campaigns and emails. But have you optimized your e-commerce site speed, and can it handle these high load times? 

As per Dotcom-Monitor, 75% of visitors abandon a site that takes over 3 seconds to load. 

In a Google Search Console video, Maile Ohye says, 

“2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.”

Therefore, you must optimize your e-commerce site speed before the holiday shopping event. 

HubSpot reports that 80% of shoppers wouldn’t return to your site if disappointed by its low performance. 

Hence, you are most likely to lose potential customers to your competitors if your site speed is low. 

And you wouldn’t want to witness a huge bounce rate. That too, even after spending abounding efforts in holiday shopping campaigns. 

Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here are effective ways to optimize your e-commerce site speed: 

• Employ CDN (Content Delivery Network)

CDN helps you host your site data over a global network of servers and offers sufficient bandwidth. It alleviates the load on a single server and processes user requests from the server closest to their location. Thus increasing page load speed. 

• Minify and Combine Page Files: 

Multiplying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files helps reduce the number of HTTP requests. If you have a WordPress e-commerce site, use WP Minify Plugin or WP Rocket for this process.  

• Use Gzip Software to Compress Web Files: 

This process helps decrease the file sizes and can increase the loading speed by up to 70%.

• Load Page Asynchronously: 

Asynchronous loading enables multiple elements to load simultaneously. Thus eliminating any delay in the loading process. 

• Compress Images with the WP Smush plugin: 

You need abounding images for your e-commerce site. 66% of consumers wish to see at least three images before purchasing a product. 

However, too many images can slow your website load speed if not compressed. So, if you have a WordPress site, you can use the WP Smush plugin to compress images automatically. 

9. Decorate Your Site with Intriguing Holiday Season Offers 

As you welcome the holiday season, your site must look adorned in celebrations: confetti sprinkles, irresistible discounts, limited-time offers, and whatnot. 

Your visitors must join your celebrations by opting for the holiday shopping offers:

Here is what you need for commandeering this holiday shopping season:

• Adorn your site with the holiday shopping theme.
• Customize the Home Page with holiday shopping banners, exclusive deals, and trending products.
• Create dedicated landing pages for holiday shopping events. And promote them on several channels.
• Add holiday shopping banners, popups, and gif banners throughout your site. 
• Keep your site visitors informed about the holiday sale at least ten days before the event.
• Arrange site contests to reward visitors with exclusive discounts on holiday shopping. ‘Spin The Wheel,’ ‘Share with Friends,’ and ‘Post on Instagram’ are a few contests. These can help promote your holiday shopping event by increasing visitors and sales. 

I hope you already got the idea!

10.  Deliver Impressive Mobile Shopping Experience

Today, mobile devices source almost the same amount of traffic to an e-commerce site as desktops. 

In 2024, 63.3% of total website traffic came via mobile devices. 

Moreover, Google considers mobile-friendliness and page load speed crucial for e-commerce SEO. 

So, ensure that your e-commerce site works seamlessly for your mobile users.

Some areas you must scrutinize: 

• Ensure your site is mobile-compatible, from images, content, media, etc. 
• Optimize your e-commerce site speed on mobile devices to load in under 3 seconds.
• Ensure that the CTA buttons and other functionalities work seamlessly for mobile users.
• Utilize mobile push notifications smartly, as these can source stellar user engagement.