Marketing Checklist for Holiday Campaigns

Fall is coming up fast! As a marketer, you know that this is the time of year to get started crafting your holiday marketing campaigns. The last few months of the year are packed with major holidays, making it the best time to get your message in front of customers and dazzle them with your best offers!

We've prepared a solid holiday marketing checklist for direct mail and digital advertising campaigns to prepare you for the busiest time of the year. Make sure you check these points off your marketing checklist to ensure you make a meaningful impression on your customers this holiday season.

The importance of holiday marketing campaigns

The holiday season offers a perfect opportunity to reach out to consumers with limited-time holiday products, discounts, holiday-centered announcements, and more. It's undoubtedly one of the most profitable retail periods of the year, and shoppers looking for gift ideas are eager to take advantage of enticing offers.

All forms of marketing tend to perform well during the holiday season. But using direct mail in your holiday marketing campaign is especially effective for increasing response rates, boosting conversions, and improving overall ROI.

According to Lob's 2023 State of Direct Mail Consumer Insights Report:

• 64% of consumers say that getting a piece of direct mail from a business has inspired them to take action, such as visiting a website or physical location to make a purchase
• 80% of consumers share direct mail with their friends and family, which helps to extend your brand's reach and visibility

To get the most out of your holiday direct mail campaign, it's essential to have a plan in place. That's where our holiday marketing checklist comes in.

Holiday marketing checklist

Keep these points top of mind when embarking on your holiday marketing direct mail campaigns this year.

Clean up your data

Successful direct mail marketing campaigns depend on the quality of your contact list. So, cleaning up your contacts should be the first thing on your marketing checklist.

• Your mailing list of physical addresses is your most important resource.
• A clean and up-to-date mailing list will improve your chances of having a successful campaign.
• If you don't double-check your physical address list, you could risk missing out on potential sales -- or seeing a decline in customer retention because your customers haven't heard from you in so long.

Lob's real-time address validation helps ensure that your addresses are deliverable and everything you send arrives at the right place at the right time.

Pull the right data sets

Make sure you have the right audience for your direct mail campaigns. The better you segment your audience, the higher your customer acquisition and ROI. Segmentation breaks down your contact list by a variety of filters, such as:

• Age
• Buyers of specific products
• Paying customers
• Subscription date
• Gender
• Location

Personalization goes a long way in getting a customer's attention. We found that 68% of consumers are more likely to engage with a brand's message when it's personalized to them. We also found that 67% of consumers age 55+ prefer to receive direct mail from brick-and-mortar retailers.

With this in mind, you could set up an email list filtered by age to make sure that you target this segment with a high-quality, personalized direct mail campaign.

Run timing analytics to induce "FOMO"

In marketing, timing is everything. This is no exception when it comes to holiday campaigns. Determine where in the funnel your customers or prospects are to ensure you have holiday marketing campaigns running to increase awareness and retain current customers.

• Analyze data on past sales to determine which items sold most during specific periods.
• Send triggered direct mail campaigns so that mail reaches users at exactly the right time.
• Plan to send a mailing that announces: "These were the hot items that sold last year. Make sure you get them this time around!" This is a great way to induce FOMO in your customers.
• Determine which factors will play into your ideal send time, such as whether your subscribers are businesses or consumers, geographical location, etc.

What works for one customer might completely miss the next. So the more you can segment your lists and send specific offerings to small groups of customers, the better.

Recommended reading: 21 Festive Holiday Marketing Ideas That Drive Revenue

Reward loyal customers

Another point to keep in mind is to make sure that you target your loyal customers with special offers. Here are some examples:

• Send specific emails to loyalty program members with exclusive rewards.
• Send a different email to customers who are not yet members of the loyalty program, encouraging them to sign up.
• Use loyalty program data to effectively segment VIP program members.
• Offer additional benefits to loyal customers with things like exclusive gift card offers or holiday guides.

Automate campaigns

Streamline your campaign by putting the right triggers in place to automatically send abandoned cart emails or direct mail postcards, or post-purchase communications. By automating the process, the marketing messages will already feel more personalized and relevant by happening as customers or prospects take certain actions and indicate interest in specific products, instead of being blasted with generic sales messages.

Test marketing assets and workflows

Lastly, while consumers are entering the season of good tidings and goodwill, you still need to make a great impression with your marketing materials. Allow time for testing of your holiday campaign-specific landing pages, form fills, and automated emails and direct mail campaigns to gift your customers with the ideal shopping experience with your brand.

Set up social media and retargeting ads

Consumers get bombarded with information from countless channels, so it's crucial to use every tool in your toolbox to get their attention.

Upping your direct mail frequency is not a viable solution to attention deficits, as consumers will toss your marketing material if they feel deluged with mail. The best way to ramp up a direct mail strategy is to supplement it with another form of targeted ads, such as personalized email or programmatic marketing. Marketing across multiple channels tends to be more effective than trying to reach customers with only one format.

Get your holiday marketing campaign up and running

You don't have to start from scratch if you're interested in a new holiday direct mail campaign this year. Talk to one of our direct mail experts to learn how easy it is to get a successful holiday campaign up and running with Lob's direct mail automation software.