37 Holidays to Add to Your Promotional Calendar in 2021-2022
This is the time when brands compete like never before, trying to conquer the heart of a buyer. And the biggest weapon in this war is marketing.
More shoppers make decisions based on emotions, and companies tend to provide cultural value to their brands. It means that holidays are expanding their meanings regarding marketing issues. Now they are not only opportunities to sell out your products, but chances to create your image expressing a specific view. For example, you can perform some environmental protective activities on Earth Day. It will help you to engage new buyers from those who care about ecology and green initiatives. Over 65% of typical marketing budgets are allocated for promotions that have become popular these days.
So, here is a list of opportunities you could use to launch a marketing campaign.
Holidays in January 2022
There are many countries where the first day of the New Year (January 1) is celebrated as well as Christmas. For example, it is so in Eastern Europe. The first week of the New Year is a great time to offer your customers discounts, especially if you sell globally. Decorate your website with Christmas trees, ornaments, snowflakes, etc. Put a noticeable banner with the offers at the top of a website, and don’t forget to send emails to your subscribers to keep them aware of your sales.
Make Your Dreams Come True Day (January 13). You can organize contests or sweepstakes on social networks. For instance, you can ask your audience what kind of dream they want to achieve this year to involve them in your brand community by including a #dreamcometrue hashtag.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 18)is celebrated in the US, but the person is well known worldwide these days. King was a leader of the civil rights movement in the 50-60s in the USA, so it would be a great idea if you add some motivational content to your online store or change the design in a way linked to the date.
How to implement
Christmas Snowfall Effects Magento 2. This extension will help you to decorate your website with ready-made snowflakes, snowmen, Santa Clause, and Christmas ornaments. Admin can customize the display and layout of decorations.
Snowfall Effect. The extension made by Hidden Techies implements a snowfall too. In addition to it, you’ll get clear documentation that explains how to install the module.
Holidays in February 2022
This year, on the 1 of February, Asian countries celebrate the Chinese New Year (February 1). This day begins a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The country has a broad overseas community, so the festival is celebrated in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, North America, and Europe. When considering how to style your store to the date, keep in mind that the holiday’s primary color is red. Also, you can use animals of the Chinese zodiac in the design of your store. For example, 2022 is dedicated to the Tiger.
Valentine’s Day (February 14) is celebrated all around the world. The holiday originated in early modern England, but it spread worldwide by the 21st century. On this day, heart-shaped greeting cards, gift boxes, chocolates, bouquets of roses, and literally just about anything else become very popular. Everybody looks for what to buy to present to their partners every year, and this is an excellent opportunity to offer buyers something unusual. Crown your web store with some holiday decoration, provide discounts for pairs – or, vice versa, for those who are single – provide free wrapping, etc.
Kindness Week (February 17-23). A random act of kindness is an unofficial holiday in February for doing good deeds. It is an excellent opportunity to say thank you to your customers or make a pleasant surprise. For example, you can send out discount codes via email or social media to express your gratitude and care. For customers with high-volume orders, you can also offer free shipping to make them fall in love with your brand.
Love Your Pet Day (February 20). It is a nice opportunity for those who are crazy about their little pets and love them—an excellent opportunity for pet stores because you can please your customers with discounts and sales.
How to implement
Seasonal Decorations Valentine – Magento 2. With this extension, you can customize the look of your store on Valentine’s Day. It allows you to add falling heart-shaped confetti, a moving cupid, heartbeat palpitation graphics, tulips, etc.
Special Promotions Pro for Magento 2. This advanced extension will avail you to create more than 20 types of promotions based on different conditions. You can create product sets with special discounts, offer ‘Buy X Get Y’ action, and give discounts for a certain amount of money spent.
Holidays in March 2022
Women’s Day (March 8) is celebrated in different countries, and each has its meaning. In Western Europe, this is a day of women’s emancipation while people in Eastern Europe celebrate womanhood. But despite different purposes, there is something familiar. Demand for products from the health & beauty category increases on the 8th of March, so it would be great if you congratulate your clients and provide them with special discounts.
International Pi Day (March 14) is an unofficial holiday celebrated by math addicts as the date 03/14 looks exactly like the number π (3.14). This day, math enthusiasts praise the number π, eat pies or cakes with this symbol, play games, and solve puzzles.
An excellent idea for the email newsletter would be to make a small excursion into the history of this holiday and the mathematical constant, create a contest in honor of this, or offer a discount for a promotional code containing the word ‘pi’. If your business is related to science or education, you can select interesting science books, perfect for gifts, podcasts, or valuable information resources.
St. Patrick Day (March 17) is widely celebrated worldwide, but mainly in Ireland, the UK, Canada, the US, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. The holiday’s primary color is green and includes a three-leaf clover/shamrock for good luck. People wear funny hats, t-shirts, pants, and many of them go to bars, and some Christians even attend mass on this day. Add green colors to the website, offer some Irish-themed things for free for those who purchased, or even promote those hilarious holiday hats if you sell them.
How to implement
Magento 2 Gift Card. You can offer your customers gift cards to motivate them to buy more on holidays. The extension created by Mageplaza is full of features you’ll need while running such a promotion. It allows designing gift cards, personalizing them by buyers, and sending them via SMS, emails, and mail.
Magento 2 Reward Points. Reward points help turn buyers into loyal customers by crediting them with scores they can spend on new purchases. This extension has a broad functionality which allows customizing points’ icons, adding a scale which shows how many scores have been earned, and setting specific conditions which define rules whereby the system works.
Holidays in April 2022
April Fools’ Day (April 1) is an excellent opportunity to set up pranks against your users. It can be some funny feature or a game added to a website. It would only increase customer loyalty if made carefully because everybody loves to feel something positive and playful.
Catholic and Orthodox Easters (April 17 & April 24) are not heavily commercialized holidays as some others, but if you sell unique goods like Easter bread or eggs, it’s a great time to run a promotion. Even if your category of products is far away from the holiday, you may decorate your website in the stylistics of Easter or offer your customers special discounts.
The first Earth Day (April 22) was celebrated in 1970 in the US. Since then, the holiday has been spreading, and now it is celebrated in more than 200 countries. Ecologists and activists organize various events referred to and related to all forms of environmental protection. Enthusiasts come together to promote ideas about taking care of the planet on this day, so don’t skip it! Explain to customers what you do to save the earth and leave a positive mark. Replace environmentally harmful components with natural ones in your products. Organize an activity such as planting trees with your employees. Share your thoughts on how to improve environmental protection in your country.
How to implement
Landing Pages for Magento 2. If you decide to make a prank on Fool’s Day, it’s better to locate it on a landing page for several reasons. First, a landing page will grab you more visitors from search engines. Second, if it turns out to be really funny, users will share it with their friends. Lastly, a landing page is more likely to encourage people to purchase a simple social media post. Amasty’s created an excellent extension for this purpose.
Promo Banners for Magento 2. Banners are crucial when running a marketing campaign. They are used to keep visitors aware of sales, show them specific products you want to sell, and can even be used simply for decoration. On Earth Day, you can place a banner on a homepage explaining your environmental protection activity. People will click on the banner and find out that you, for example, have planted a hundred trees.
Holidays in May 2022
Labour Day (May 1) is celebrated worldwide, which is usually a public holiday, and since the weather this season is good, people frequently go outdoors with their family and friends. That’s why Labour Day is a brilliant time to launch a big sale on outdoor equipment such as tents, sleeping bags, and grills.
Notice that in the US and Canada, Labour Day is celebrated on the 2nd of September. In these countries, people honor workers and say goodbye to summer on the date. They also go out on picnics, barbecues, etc., so it’s still a great time to advertise the same kinds of equipment.
Mother’s Day (May 9) is a time to write a touching message and share it with your customers. The holiday is made for honoring mothers for their 24/7 hard work of parenting and caretaking. Congratulate mothers, provide discounts, and write a list of what would be a great present on this day.
How to implement
Daily Deal for Magento 2. Daily deal is a great way to perform a sale confined to a particular holiday. This extension allows creating as many daily deals as you want, subscribing to offers’ notifications, displaying expired, upcoming, and current ones.
Daily Deal M2 by Mageplaza. This extension will also help you create daily deals, place blocks anywhere you want, and add a countdown timer to show users when an offer ends.
Holidays in June 2022
Global Running Day (June 1). For the first time, this holiday was celebrated in 2009 in the USA, after which it gained worldwide fame. It is not just a celebration of athletes. It aims to popularize running and involve as many people as possible in this activity. Since the main idea is health care, it is on this topic that you can arrange an email newsletter.
Make a selection of products for outdoor activities (sports shoes, bandages, water bottles, sportswear, other sports equipment), vitamins and supplements, headphones, smartwatches and trackers, cosmetics for those actively involved in sports. If your business is related to fitness, you can offer a discount on a gym membership in honor of this date.
International Blogger Day (June 14). If earlier a person telling something on the phone screen caused bewildered glances and made passers-by turn around, now no one is surprised at people with selfie sticks who are enthusiastically saying something, gesturing like professional presenters. The idea for this holiday appeared in 2004. Today, bloggers step out of the digital space to meet everyone at festivals and chat with fans.
As in the case with other email campaigns dedicated to other kinds of holidays, here you can offer thematic products (equipment for filming, editing videos, creating effects, camera holders, lighting, sound equipment), make a selection of applications popular among bloggers, make a list of exciting influencers (depending on what field you work in), provide a list of good literature on the topic of blogging. For business, this is also an excellent opportunity to launch a collaboration with an influencer who fully aligns with the brand’s values and audience.
A month after Mother’s day comes Father’s Day (June 20). This holiday isn’t as widespread as Mother’s Day, but still, it’s an excellent opportunity to run a marketing campaign, especially if you sell something that would appeal to this category of buyers. Send your customers congratulations and offer them to buy presents for their fathers with a special discount. Also, you can launch a social media promotion with catchy pictures and calls to action.
How to implement
Special Promotions for Magento 2. This advanced promotional extension allows creating up to 20 different offers. With this tool, you’ll be able to create fixed and percent discounts and suggest that users get them based on various conditions.
Holidays in July 2022
UFO Day (July 2). Fans of all the weird get together to chat about conspiracy theories and discuss the places of aliens landing.
This date is an excellent occasion for a thematic email newsletter decorated in the style of the TV show ‘The X-Files’. Add mystery, dark tones, and green men to your email, and users will love it if it matches your brand identity, of course 🙂
Americans celebrate Independence Day (July 4) that is one of the biggest holidays in the US, and usually, it comes with massive sales offered everywhere. To not miss out on this time, you have to provide discounts as well. You’re free to do it in the way you want. You can either provide a promo code or just decrease costs on some categories of goods. Remember that the US flag colors are also the holiday colors, so you can add them to your website or tie a promotion to red, white, and blue-colored products.
How to implement
Magento 2 Product Feed. If you sell products not only on your website, this extension is definitely for you. Product feeds allow you to add a product’s data to popular shopping platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook. The module automatically generates and updates product feed files to cut down the time you would waste doing it manually.
Holidays in August 2022
August is the month before kiddos and students of all ages go back to school, and that’s why the demand for stationery, bags, and laptops is rapidly increasing in this period. This time is excellent for marketing activities related to selling everything that would be useful in a school. Run a marketing campaign, tell prospects what you offer, and propose attractive discounts to them.
Singles Day (August 7). The idea of the holiday initially appeared in the 90s in China due to population restriction policies. There was a bias in the gender structure, and now there are a lot of single people, who also want to have fun and enjoy their loneliness. Now, this holiday is celebrated all over the world.
On this occasion, in the email newsletter, you can offer products for active leisure, interests, and car accessories, computer games, and related products (equipment, set-top box, headphones, etc.), hall passes, discounts on tickets to cinemas, restaurants and other types of entertainment.
How to implement
Magento 2 Automatic Related Products. When selling stuff for school, don’t forget to recommend other products your buyers may need. Such blocks as ‘Featured Products’ or ‘Bestsellers’ displaying on a product page increase sales by notifying users to find what they look for on the same site. In August, you can show the most frequently bought books and bags on a homepage as well as suggest that users buy pencils in addition to notebooks. This extension enables managing blocks of products, placing them in 30 positions, and even offering daily deals.
Holidays in September 2022
Oktoberfest (September 17) is an annual beer festival that is carried out in Munich, Germany. It starts at the end of September and lasts for 18 days. From the inaugural event in 1810, it has become viral all around the world. Every year the festival is attended by more than 6 million participants. Should you stay away while the world celebrates the biggest folk festival? Create funny content to share positive emotions with your users, gift Octoberfest’s tickets to the most active buyers, or offer a bottle of beer for free to everybody who buys something on a particular day.
World Car-Free Day (September 22). This holiday aims to promote a healthy lifestyle, ecological balance in the environment by avoiding cars and using public transport, walking, or cycling.
It means that email campaigns can be devoted to outdoor activities (products for running and other sports rollers, scooters, skateboards, etc.), bicycles and accessories, sportswear, and footwear for the cold season.
You can also focus on the environmental idea of the day and tell your followers what your brand is doing to improve the ecological situation (for example, you sell recyclable or recyclable products or donate to special funds).
How to implement
Magento 2 Affiliate Program / Refer a Friend. To make better marketing campaigns, consider installing the extension, which enables you to run affiliate programs. This tool helps add your banners to partners’ websites, earn on clicks, increase traffic, and improve SEO rankings.
Holidays in October 2022
Instagram Birthday (October 6). What you can easily and quickly do to engage your audience is to organize a competition among Instagram followers for the best photo with a product. User-generated content is our everything!
Halloween (October 31) is celebrated in both Europe and the US. This is a spooky holiday with pumpkins, candles, trick-or-treating, frightful costumes, etc. You definitely should wish your customers a happy Halloween and add some appropriate things to the website’s design. Also, offer your buyers to get some Halloween-themed freebies they would be able to present to their colleagues, friends, or family members. To get more traffic from Google, write a blog post about Halloween gifts before the holiday “Halloween gift ideas” query is extra popular.
How to implement
Banner Manager for Magento 2. This extension will help you to create different banners and locate them in various places on a website. Banners are crucial when running marketing campaigns, informing customers about sales, and decorating web pages for holidays.
Popup Manager for Magento 2. This tool enables you to create and manage popups that will show up on any page. The feature can be used on Halloween, for example, to offer discounts on a particular product. The extension also allows creating popups that call to subscribe, accept cookie compliance, log in, etc.
Holidays in November 2022
Guy Fawkes Day (November 5) is an annual commemoration of the occurrence on the 5th of November, 1605, when Guy Fawkes was arrested trying to blow up the House of Lords. From then on, people in the UK celebrate King’s James I surviving by lighting bonfires and shooting off fireworks every year. Children sometimes still ask “Penny for the Guy” and buy crackers to enjoy. If your business covers the UK and New Zealand markets, you can’t ignore this kind of celebration. Offer your prospects gift cards, special discounts, etc. And don’t forget to notify them about the offers. Send them emails.
Who still doesn’t know what Black Friday (November 25) is? The day of the most massive sales everywhere. Black Friday is an excellent opportunity to clear warehouses and earn much more. To keep your customers aware of sales, run an email marketing campaign. Boost sales via social media, promoting a post with a special message. Add a countdown feature to product pages on your website to show people that the 50% discount will end.
You’d better also take care of preparing the technical aspect of your online store before Black Friday. Website speed, uptime, mobile compatibility, and your website infrastructure’s capacity is a non-exhaustive list of things you should think about beforehand. For instance, we’ve recently published the case study with the story of the French online store that approached us to build a scalable that could carry high traffic during the Black Friday season.
Thanksgiving (November 26) is celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday in November. The USA isn’t the only country that observes the holiday, but it’s actually considered the holiday that garners the most travel from its people. People also celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada, Liberia, and the Norfolk Islands, but the celebration dates differ. If you work with the aforementioned countries, you will be able to benefit from a marketing campaign coinciding with the holiday. On this day, Americans hold parades across the country, share food with poor people, and eat holiday-specific kinds of food, most notably turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet corn, pumpkin pie, and so on.
Decorate your website with leaves and autumn colors, offer discounts, and promote products relevant to the holiday. For example, if you sell clothes, promote an iconic Thanksgiving outfit in earth tone colors. If you sell candles, tell your prospects that it would be a perfect decision to gift them to a hostess.
Cyber Monday (November 28) is usually coupled with Black Friday to encourage shoppers to buy online. On this day, online stores offer even bigger discounts than they do on Black Friday. The event has been becoming more popular, and now 26 countries observe it. As the November holidays follow each other, we recommend providing coverage of discounts and informing your customers about them as much as possible. Try cross-promotion strategies or publish gift guides around the holidays.
How to implement
Flash Sales With Countdown Timer For Magento 2. This extension allows creating limited-time discounts, setting a countdown timer, showing upcoming sales, etc. Add the feature to your holiday marketing campaign, and it will encourage visitors to make purchases.
Advanced Daily Deals Magento 2 Extension. One more extension with really great functionality, which includes features like creating daily deals, adding a countdown, and customizing banners with your offers.
Holidays in December 2022
Hanukkah (December 10-18) is a significant Jewish festival, which often lasts for 8 days in a row. If you sell our products at this market, we highly recommend you congratulate your customers by attaching greeting cards to their parcels or publish a post on social networks.
Green Monday (December 14) is an online shopping day that significantly increases sales on this day because people realize that there are about two weeks to spare to buy presents for Christmas. Such well-known stores as Walmart, Target, and Amazon popularize Green Monday. Since it is the second biggest shopping day in December, you definitely should participate in it. Offer discounts and notify your customers about it via email.
Canada and the UK will hold Free Shipping Day (December 14) on the 14th of December in 2020. This event was originated by the founders of Coupon Sherpa and FreeShipping.org ten years ago. From then on, the media has paid great attention to the event, and this made Free Shipping Day extremely popular. Now thousands of online stores offer free shipping on a certain day each year. To join them, send an email to [email protected]. Having done this you will be able to add your store to the list on the website that is browsed by consumers who love the free delivery. And don’t forget to make a special banner on your website, notifying users about your offer.
Super Saturday (December 19) is a day when the revenue of US retailers hits the maximum. This is the last Saturday before Christmas, and a lot of people start buying out everything on the shelves in a panic since they suddenly realize how little time is left. Another group of people intentionally wait for this day to buy products with the biggest discounts. Anyway, merchants significantly decrease prices on this day to conquer the heart of a buyer. You do the same and don’t forget to prepare a mailout, add a banner, and, even cooler, run a social media marketing campaign.
And finally, we’ve reached the main holiday of the month, Christmas (December 25). Start your marketing campaign with seasonal keyword exploration. Using Google AdWords, you will be able to define the most popular queries at that time. Knowing them allows you to create content that will attract loads of new customers. For instance, keywords ‘buy Christmas decorations’ or ‘Christmas gift ideas’ become popular before the holiday. Additionally, create a picture that you will place on your company’s Facebook page and website. Try to inform people about your sales via the picture and several posts relating to it.
Boxing Day (December 26) comes the next day after Christmas and is celebrated in the UK, Canada, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, and New Zealand as a shopping holiday. It is very similar to Black Friday in the US. Traditionally, stores offer generous discounts on this day, and people buy gifts for each other. But in Atlantic Canada and somewhere in Northern Ontario, retailers are not allowed to open on Boxing Day by law to provide citizens with a day of rest after Christmas. If you sell in the mentioned markets, you will benefit from Boxing Day, so get prepared. This holiday isn’t recognized as a specific day for e-commerce businesses, so that you can make a smaller campaign than on previous days.
After Christmas, many people cut down on spending money, but it isn’t the reason for you to stop trying to increase revenue. All the more so as New Year’s Eve (December 31) is the main holiday instead of Christmas for Eastern Europe. If you have buyers there, you should run a huge promotion for them. Actually, the celebration in Eastern Europe is similar to Western Europe’s Christmas, and you can just adapt your ideas to the Eastern market. Use Christmas trees, ornaments, and Santa Claus on pictures and wish your customers a happy new year. Your store will become more attractive if you offer good discounts.
How to implement
Magento 2 Free Shipping Bar. This extension reminds your customers about the benefit they’ll get if they make a purchase. Using this tool, you can inform visitors that you offer free shipping on a particular day or depend on the number of dollars they spent.
Advanced Wishlist for Magento 2. The module allows customers to save products on the list to buy them in the future. It includes such features as notifying users they have forgotten goods in the wishlist, sharing desired products to social networks, grouping selected items, etc.
Holiday Season Effects – Magento 2. This extension provides you with more than 10 snowfall designs, header and footer decorations, animated Santa, snow mountains, Christmas trees, etc. Having installed it, you’ll be able to prepare your store’s design for the holiday season easily.
3 Tips to Run a Holiday Marketing Campaign
Now that you’ve learned the list of holidays, it’s time to talk about how actually to run a promotion. There are a lot of details, and you’d better puzzle out the topic before starting any kind of marketing activity. As the first step in this investigation, we’ll give you a few hints that will help you prepare a perfect holiday marketing campaign.
1. Determine your seasonal product demand
There is seasonal demand for some categories of products. For instance, in autumn and spring, tires are sold out two times per year, school clothes and supplies sales skyrocket in July and August to be prepared for back to school days; sales for party clothes tend to hit their peak just before the holiday.
Taking this into account, thoroughly investigate what is your seasonal product demand. You may already have paid attention to the peaks in sales, but Google Trends could also help you. It is a free tool created to aggregate the most popular trends and tendencies. With this data gathered, you will find out which months are the most important for your marketing activities.
2. Start preparing beforehand
To prepare for a perfect marketing campaign, you have to start working on it long before the holiday comes. And the thing is that nobody keeps the whole calendar in their mind.
To take advantage of every chance you have, make a list of upcoming holidays and review it regularly, and add them to your marketing plan. Sometimes planning a promotion may take up to half a year, especially if it involves omnichannel strategy implementation when you have to prepare posts for Facebook and videos for YouTube and banners for appropriate websites. Or sometimes even website web development [any other longtail keyword] when you have to add a new particular feature to the site to run a promotion.
3. Use an оmni-channel marketing approach
Omni-Channel Marketing means that prospects are engaged via a variety of channels. For example, you want to spread the idea that your restaurant is the best for celebrating Valentine’s Day. For this purpose, you run a promotion on social media as well as on websites and mobile apps. In other words, everywhere where you can reach your customers.
To run a good holiday marketing campaign, be sure you use all of the following platforms:
- Emails – Notify your subscribers that a sale starts, send them special discounts, etc.
- Social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) – Prepare catchy pictures and text with an explanation of your offer and sponsor posts to reach your target audience.
- YouTube – If your target audience watches product overviews on YouTube, you should use the platform for your marketing goals. Shoot a great video, promote it, and even try to collaborate with influencers to add your message to their vlogs.
- Blogs – Write articles and posts and publish them on Medium or popular standalone blogs in your category.
Everything we’ve mentioned here should help you identify the channels you should use when running a holiday marketing campaign. Don’t forget that a message you want to convey to people has to be relevant to your target audience. Before launching a promotion, check the idea on a small group of people. To do this, marketers frequently gather focus-groups.
Come up with several options for a marketing message and canvass people who fit your buyer persona. This is the best way to ensure you’ll get the most relevant message to your customers.
Conclusion
So, we wish you a merry promotion and a happy sales year! In case the extensions above don’t fulfill your needs and design vision, feel free to contact us. We’d love to help you create and implement any custom feature that will best serve you and your customers.
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