Should You Incorporate the Holidays Into Your Marketing?
It’s December 3rd and Thanksgiving has come and gone so quickly that I’m having trouble remembering all of the food I ate only a matter of days ago.
One thing that is obviously clear in my mind though are the increased number of holiday emails, tweets, ads, posts, promotions, blog posts etc. that I have seen spreading throughout my various channels.
Frankly, it started to make me wonder if integrating holiday elements into my marketing campaigns would be worth it.
I’m not Scrooge, in fact, I’m quite the opposite; however, as a B2B marketer I’m wondering if adding holiday cheer to emails, blog posts, social media content etc. would be valuable to my audience.
Should You Incorporate the Holidays Into Your Marketing?
Here’s what I’ve dug up through TrackMaven:
It seems the holiday season is in full swing with retailers and other B2C companies. The most engaging posts I found were from…
This Youtube Video from Target received over 77.7K total views and was 4.57x more views than their average. Yes, Target you can do a victory dance over this holiday video.
Nordstrom, a rockstar on Instagram, posted a holiday photo that was 2.19 times better than their average with 16K likes and 129 comments. They also used the Normal filter, which gets on average about 18.09 interactions.
On the non-retailer or B2B side there were also touches of the holidays…
Marketo posted on Facebook spreading Thanksgiving wishes with a branded turkey graphic. This Facebook post was 2.81 times better than their average with 666 likes and 3 comments.
And Hubspot did a lot of content marketing around Thanksgiving and this post on 6 Ways to Explain Inbound Marketing to Your Family this Thanksgiving received over 459 social shares.
The other facts
The NRF is forecasting “marginal gains this year, predicting a growth in retail sales to $602.1 billion this holiday”, but it is the highest it’s been in the last ten years. It makes sense that the holidays are on every marketers minds to try and optimize for the potential opportunities.
Did you know that this past Thanksgiving and last year’s Thanksgiving were the busiest days in the two years for Instagram? Instagram reported that with the combination of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah it was a record setting day for traffic for the social discovery platform.
Check out this Thanksgiving Instagram post from Macy’s that got over 157K total interactions. It was 84.90 times better than their average.
Also, a study done by Eloqua involved using the word “Thanks” in an email subject line. Using the word increases the open rate by 14.4% as opposed to not using it all. Maybe it’s a good time to send out your gratitude to your customers, subscribers, fans, prospects, leads….
Should you do it?
1. Who are you reaching out to?
At the end of the day, with any type of marketing it’s entirely dependent on who your audience is and who you are trying to reach. What would be most valuable to them? Would they be interested in turkey clipart or an infographic about elves? Both sound a little silly and marketing should always have its fun touches, but if it’s not resonating with your audience your content will be in one of those miserable food comas. If your audience is (unfortunately) is filled with Ebenezer Scrooges, before his Christmas cheer transformation, Santa riding in on his sleigh will not help you.
Following the basic principles of marketing during the holidays is still necessary and adding holiday touches can help bring the joy still as long as it works with your audience.
2. Unique?
I received hundreds of emails about Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday that I couldn’t count them all and I know it’s only the beginning of it all. Ranging from retailers that I love to the marketing tools that I use daily, my inbox almost exploded into a holiday mess.
Would your campaign really be that different from the other holiday campaigns out there? What’s something that could stand apart from all of your competition? Are you using the most effective strategies throughout your entire landscape?
Eloqua does a nice example of incorporating the holiday spirit into their marketing without going full out Griswold on the holidays. They targeted marketers who want to make their email subject lines better, picked the right time and frame and bam — instant gratitude. The original post went up last year; however, it received a total of 431 social interactions, which is about 15 times better than their average number of social actions on a blog post.
Maybe you can add another Santa into the mix, but what will make your campaign more unique or impactful over your competitors?
3. Are you doing it because everyone else is?
Hundreds of emails, holiday content lighting up like lights on a Christmas Tree.
Don’t let FOMO get to you just because everyone else is doing it. Bottom line, will it add opportunity to your pipeline and value to your customers because everyone else is? Maybe, but that’s why you compare benchmarks to determine how effective another holiday driven post will be.
Granted, it’s not all about the “soul-less” data or revenue gain, so adding the emotion, passion and/or joy into your campaigns isn’t harmful — if anything we’re advocates for adding some corg-tastic cheer in there. But, you still need to make sure your marketing priorities are aligned appropriately.
On either side, B2B or B2C, there are advantages and disadvantages with holiday campaigns, yet answering the questions above can help you determine if you should incorporate the holidays into your marketing. Maybe it’s just a small touch in saying “Thank You” to your customers or it’s a full out Black Friday campaign, find what works with your audience before doing it. Q4 is critical and it just so happens that the holidays fall around the same time, so don’t let the cost of something gobble up the value.
There are some clear pros and some cons as well, but marketing is no longer this guessing game of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. It’s about knowing where to aim and then shooting — if you’re audience isn’t interested in your holiday cheer why feed them something they don’t want.
Are you integrating the holidays into some of your marketing? If so what are you doing? Give me shout (@sabelharris) or Maven at (@TrackMaven).
