All You Need To Kick Off Your Christmas Promotion + FREE Templates

December is the gift-giving month of the year, so you need to think about your upcoming holiday campaigns. 

I’m pretty sure you can already feel the spirit of magic in the air: the sparkling ornaments in the window stores, the colored city lights, and the quiet before the shopping frenzy.

For business owners, Christmas is an opportunity to increase sales and gain new customers by promoting your best deals and offers. 

Considering this is the year’s most profitable period for retailers, you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd so that your deals are seen. You need to ensure that the creatives are going to help you drive traffic to your website, so you can then convert a good portion of your visitors.

In that sense, we’ve put together some ideas you can use for your Christmas marketing strategy, so you can craft an outstanding sales campaign.

Moreover, we’re offering a comprehensive collection of ready-made, customizable marketing templates – free of charge so that you won’t spend too much time on actual banner creation. 

Christmas Marketing Offerings 

Just click on the gift you want to open 👇.

1. Christmas marketing ideas: sales promotion strategies & tactics
2. How to find a creative concept for your Christmas campaign
3. Style your content with a touch of Christmas flair
4. Time for decorations: design guidelines
5. Christmas cheer: color palettes
6. Festive fonts
7. Get the FREE marketing kit: customizable Christmas templates

1. A. Choose a Christmas sales promotion strategy

First things first: decide what type of marketing strategy you will use.

Here are six Christmas sales promotion strategies to choose from:

Christmas discounts

This sales tactic goes without saying.

You don’t want to be the Scrooge of online retailers at Christmas time. Calculate your spendings and try to determine what attractive discount you can give during the Christmas sales season.

Offer your customers a great experience all-year-round. Give them reasons to love buying from you and to come back.

Free Gifts

Christmas is all about gift-giving. And your business is not exempt from offering free gifts this winter season.

Celebrate the holidays by giving away free gifts when customers place an order and strengthen your bond with them. Loyalty is the result of successive positive experiences with a brand.

Gift Cards

We all have that special someone that we never know what to get.

Help your customers surprise their family and friends with a generous gift card. You can either create printed gift cards or digital cards that can easily be sent to a person’s email address.

Gift Packs & Gift Ideas

Most of the time, people are browsing the internet looking for inspiring gifts. So, when the Christmas shopping time arrives, be ready to welcome your visitors with some ready-made gift bundles or at least with a batch of fantastic gift ideas.

Help your visitors find presents for their family and friends and increase your sales.

Free Shipping

Whatever sales technique you pick this Christmas, add Free Shipping on top of it.

Offer your customers a Merry Christmas and a few savings left in their pockets. They might tell their friends about you. And come back next year as well.

Sales are significantly impacted by the lack of free shipping, so try to provide this option, especially when an order exceeds a certain amount.

Christmas Contest

Engage your customers with a Christmas contest. Offer a prize for the ugliest Christmas jumper, or for the most beautiful Christmas tree. Or you could ask people to craft some Christmas decorations and send you a photo of them.

If you sell children’s products, you could invite your audience to send Santa a letter (to your address) and ask for a present. Ask people to enroll in the contest by submitting a photo or a video to your Facebook page.

Offline Event

If you have a brick and mortar store, aside from your online shop, you can organize an offline event to celebrate the launch of your special Christmas collection. And even if you’re not launching new products, you can still invite people for something sweet and some hot cocoa.

In case you don’t have an offline store, then you can consider setting up a pop-up shop for the holidays.

Don’t forget to create invitations for the event, print them, and give them to those who pass by the location of the physical store.

1. B. Christmas marketing tactics

Integrate one or several of these marketing tactics to make your campaign even more appealing to potential customers.

Set up a PPC campaign

If you own an online retail store, you probably know about the importance of PPC ads by now. During the winter holiday season, online campaigns are mandatory. 

You can set up a search PPC campaign, a display campaign, or you can advertise your sales promotion through videos. Ideally, you want to use all three media types to make your voice heard.

The best time to start a PPC campaign is one month before Christmas, which is the end of November. This will give you plenty of time to prepare your materials before launching your campaign.

Speaking about promotional materials, try to avoid ad fatigue by creating several versions of your search ads, images, and videos. Rotate them throughout December to keep people interested in your brand and increase your chances to sell.

Create stand-alone landing pages

When running a PPC campaign, it is better to have independent landing pages that will walk the visitor through your product’s story.

Create a series of landing pages for your deals and build each page as a journey through the sales funnel until the moment of the purchase.  

Send Christmas sales emails

Craft some jolly emails and send them out to your customers to let them know about your December deals and discounts. Make sure you find a catchy subject line and include festive product pictures.

Subject line inspiration:

• ‘Tis the season to give and receive! (suited for general online stores, clothing stores)
• Make magic happen with 50% OFF! (suited for general online stores, clothing stores)
• Joyful presents for family & friends! (clothing stores)
• Get home for Christmas with 50% OFF! (suited for travel agencies, airplane companies)
• Spread the love with these bundle gifts! (suited for general online stores, clothing stores)

Send a print/digital catalog

Entice people to buy your products with a beautifully crafted Christmas sales catalog. You can either create a print catalog or a digital version. Insert discount vouchers or free gift codes.

Offer free gift wrapping as an option

Christmas shopping is all about the wrapping. Make it easier for your customers to deal with gifts giving by offering complimentary gift wrapping as an option.

Hide cost details for presents

When people order a gift for someone, they’ll want to hide the cost details. Make this an option at check-out, so that people can tick the box if they want to hide the price tag of the product.

Send a printed Christmas card

In a world of digital cards, surprise your customers by sending them some good old printed Christmas cards to their mailbox. Include a small gift, like a discount code, to make the experience even more delightful.

Update your Social Media pages

Decorate all your social media profiles with Christmas branded images. Make sure you get your profile picture and cover photo Christmas-ready.

Include donations

Christmas is a time for giving. Team up with a charity and organize a fundraising campaign. Inform your customers that you’re supporting a local/global social cause and that you will donate a percentage of all holiday season sales to this organization.

2. Wrap up your sales promotion in a creative concept

Enough about marketing strategies, it’s time to wrap up your Christmas sale campaign into a beautiful creative concept.

It’s time to find a name, a headline, a visual image, and a story.

The most important thing you need to take into account is originality. Since everyone runs some kind of advertising campaign during Christmas, you need to pack your offer in a brilliant way that stands out and appeals to potential customers.  

For example, the Christmas reindeer may be obsolete. Still, if you manage to cast them in an unusual scenario, you could make people engage with your campaign and convert them into customers.

Find a surprising creative concept that has never been done before and grab people’s attention. Schedule a brainstorming session with your marketing team, select the most original ideas, and wrap up your sales promotion.

Follow these simple steps to come up with a creative concept:

1. Identify your objective
2. Define your target audience
3. Offer a benefit
4. Organize a brainstorm session, select the best idea, and build your campaign around it
5. Translate the creative idea into a real advertising campaign: list down the communications channels and marketing materials you want to execute and start producing them

3. Hand-pick your words for a magical Christmas atmosphere

Style your content with a touch of festive flair. From your campaign headline to emails subject lines, make sure you sprinkle some Christmas magic over each phrase. Hand-pick your words to create that magical Christmas atmosphere.

Content goes hand in hand with images. That’s why it is essential to craft your campaign, focusing on both graphics and text. Words can touch hearts if you string your words skillfully.

Here’s a list of the texts you’ll need for your Christmas sales promotion:

• A campaign headline, which can either take the form of a call to action as in “Make the most of Christmas!” or a slogan “Because Christmas is about family.”
• Body copies for all your marketing materials: posters, brochures, catalogs, flyers, etc.
• A Christmassy email text.
• A blog post.
• Website call to action. Style your CTA buttons for Christmas. For example, instead of “Order Now,” you could say, “Buy a gift now.”
• A body copy for gift cards and discount vouchers.

4. Time for decorations: design guidelines

Offer your customers a beautiful Christmas shopping experience. Create a joyful atmosphere with the help of design, colors, photography, and fonts.

Decide whether you want to go for a traditional Christmas design theme or for a unique Christmas atmosphere.

Then, choose a color palette(you can see some suggestions below). Pick the design elements that you want to use for decorations. Think of snowflakes, ribbons, bells, Christmas trees, and colored globes.

Replicate your design on all your online and offline outlets and marketing materials:

• Decorate your e-commerce website. Give it a festive touch. Craft a new set of Christmas visuals, like a website header, visuals for the homepage slider, and banners. See our free collection of visual templates.
• Decorate your shop (if you have one) in a similar manner.
• Change your profile picture and cover photos on all your social media profiles.
• Use the Christmas design for all your marketing materials: emails, display ads, brochures, shopping bags, and even packaging.

5. Christmas cheer: color palettes

Christmas is usually associated with the colors red and green. That’s because Santa’s costume is red, and the Christmas tree is green. But then, there’s also gold and silver because there’s no Christmas without some glitter and sparkle.

Depending on a person’s individual preference, Christmas decorations may be classy (red is the primary color), unconventional (where gold, blue, or other color is the main color) or eccentric (violet, neon green, etc.).

Choosing a color palette is a significant step in building your Christmas campaign. And that’s because it lays the foundation for your design and campaign atmosphere. Colors have a massive influence when it comes to purchasing decisions as they can create a positive or negative user experience.

We’ve created four color palettes suggestions that you can use for a Christmas sales campaigns. See which one suits your brand and grab the codes.

• Floral Christmas

Choose this color combination if you want to go for a floral Christmas palette. Use this vivid red for your decorations and light green for the background.

This color scheme is perfect for women’s brands, from makeup to clothing. It will also help you successfully promote flower shops, beauty products, or bookstores.

• Scandinavian Christmas

If you’d like to try something different this year, go for this Scandinavian Christmas palette. The dark blue and red pair will surely get your brand noticed.

This type of blue is a Scandinavian trademark, inspired by the frozen lakes and northern sky, so you’ll be using a color that originates in Santa’s homeland.

The color combination is bold, playful, and jolly. A great match, overall, when you want to stand out.

• Golden Christmas

Stand out and shine bright like a star with this golden palette. Use this color combination if you have a premium brand/product like watches, haute couture, jewelry, and even chocolate.

Build your design using gold as the primary color, and you’ll have yourself an elegant, classy theme. Utilize this palette to craft all your marketing materials and play with the proportions, shapes, and other elements.

• Sunny Christmas

Why go with the flow and use a traditional Christmas palette, when everything is possible? Use this sunny palette to create a positive Christmas atmosphere.

Although it is sunny and bright, this palette still employs the classic Christmas tree green.  However, we dropped the red and instead used two derivates: orange and peach pink. Use dark violet to tone down your designs and add a touch of mystery.

6. Christmas fonts

Fonts bring extra personality to a visual. Each font has its own character and can add meaning to a word. Use a harsh font, and people may feel attacked. Use hand lettering typography, and people will want to befriend you.

Christmas is a particular jolly holiday time. So, choose a font (or two at most) for your campaign that conveys happiness and joy.

Here is a selection of 6 Christmas fonts that you can grab right now to craft your campaign message.

Miraculous Christmas

This neat and cursive handwriting-like font reminds us of the printed Christmas cards we used to send and receive back in the golden days of stationery cards.

It’s friendly and festive at the same time, and it can successfully be used for Christmas marketing materials. 

Download the Miraculous Christmas font at 1001 fonts.

Candy Cane

This playful font is inspired by, you guessed it, candy canes. It can be used to add a touch of joy and fun to a Christmas message, and it is especially suited for children’s brands. 

Get Candy Cane at 1001 fonts. 

First Christmas

Use this snowy font for your headlines to make your message pop. The large lettering reminds us of the piled snowbanks that spread across the streets around Christmas. It’s perfect for Christmas, and it will get noticed anywhere you’d place it. 

Get this font at 1001 fonts.

Countryside

Hand lettering can help you convey a warm and jolly feeling. After all, that’s what we all what for Christmas. With a multitude of playful swirls, this font is suited for children and women’s brands.

Get it at Fontspace.

Quincho script

Here is another hand-lettering font, only this one is about elegance and style. Use this font to create a friendly atmosphere for your ad. 

Get Quincho script at Fontspace.

Harrington

If you’ve got a premium brand, use this stylish font to wish your customers a Merry Christmas. It can be used in either black or white for a classy look.

Get it at Fontspace.

7. Get the FREE set of fully customizable marketing templates

Here at Bannersnack, we’ve put together an entire collection of beautiful Christmas ad templates to help you out with your holiday sales campaign.

By using one of our professional templates, you can cut the time you spend on banner ad design in half. This means that you’ll have more time to either hunt for your own deals or find the perfect gift for your loved ones.

Click on the banner below to get free access to the Christmas banner templates and start customizing them right now. Once you get access to Bannersnack’s editor, you can add your brand details, logo, change the colors, and add images of your products.

Have yourself a gainful Christmas!

Now you’re all set to launch your Christmas sale promotion.

Find a sales strategy, integrate some badass marketing tactics, come up with an original creative concept, write down a magical copy, and customize one or more of these free Christmassy templates.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year to increase your revenue!