Top 08 Christmas Marketing Ideas For Your Shopify Store - 2023 Updated

Not like Black Friday, which is pure promotion, Christmas is somewhat more meaningful. It's all about sharing, caring and giving. That's why it would be better that you give your store some Christmas spirit, which may encourage online shoppers to engage more. Christmas sales events are not just promotion but more than that - emotion. In this article, we will introduce you to the definitive Christmas marketing ideas that may inspire you with some ideas to bring Christmas spirit to your Shopify store. 

Outline

• Gift set and combo that any Shopify store can apply.
• Secret promotion for your current Shopify customers
• Discount for the second item - a good idea to upsell
• Gift card for any purchasing on your Shopify store
• Free shipping is not a bad idea
• Referral - no advertising is better than user to user
• Don’t under-estimate traditional percentage discount
• Refine your Shopify store design with festive Christmas templates

Christmas Marketing Idea #1: Gift set and combo that any Shopify store can apply.

In nature, humans on a very basic instinctive level are a little bit, let's say, greedy. The more they have, the better! That's the reason why gift sets and combos are always good Christmas marketing ideas that any Shopify store can use.

On the other hand, let's consider the shopping behavior of women: they are willing to buy accessories or shoes simply because they just bought a set of clothing and they see another item that goes well with it! Thus, gift set and combo sales promotion ideas can be best applied to Fashion Shopify stores.

The idea of gift sets and sales promotion is that you put two or more items that go well together into one set - aptly named Christmas gift set. If the customer buys one gift set, they will be discounted on the total price. Make sure you tell them it is not applied if they buy an individual single item.

Christmas Marketing Idea #2: Secret promotion for your current Shopify customers

Christmas is not only a battle for sellers but also for buyers, which is even worse than Black Friday. They are not only afraid of all eCommerce stores running out of stock, but they also have to spend time looking for quality products from quality brands.

So why not come up with a Christmas marketing idea that focuses on people who already know you? They have purchased something from your store and deserved to be treated better in this promotion event.

You can prepare a secret promotion code for your current customers, who have already purchased from your eCommerce store, send the code to them via email, and tell them that this code is exclusive! When someone knows that something is made for them only, they are more likely to respond.

Christmas Marketing Idea #3: Discount for the second item - a good idea to upsell

Getting new customers is not the only way that you can sell more product - You can sell to the old customer, in a better way.

Let's imagine, after you buy a product at a discounted price and you are offered another discount when buying a second one. Now that's what I call smart marketing. This is the concept of successful upsell and cross-sell.

The idea is, for example, when a customer buys a pair of shoes from your site for 20% discount, a pop-up appears and offers them special shoelaces at 50% discount. In reality its actually not much value, but it makes the customers feel that they will get more benefit, and so they are more likely to buy. There is something we should keep in mind about this Christmas marketing idea: First, the second item must be relevant, or a part of the first item (for example, shoelaces for shoes). Secondly, it should be much cheaper than the first item.

There are some apps that help you to do it, for example, Upsales Popup by Beeketing team or Discounted upsales app by the Booster team. It helps you quickly and easily set up different discount upsells and start making more sales.

Christmas Marketing Idea #4: Gift card for any purchasing on your Shopify store

Sometimes, percentage promotion of holiday sales is not really interesting. People love receiving money and gifts. Here I mean, real money for the next purchase, or you can give them a gift in physical form.

I really recommend that you help your customer, who buys from your Shopify store, have a chance to give a special gift to their family during the holiday. It's more meaningful to send a gift to your customers, rather than a discount, in some special events. The gift is not necessarily from your Shopify store, but from other ones also.

I really love the idea of co-operating with other eCommerce stores that share the same targeted audience but don't compete with products in terms of partnership. You can send your customer a gift card that they can exchange to receive a gift from your partner or buy them at a lower price.

On the other hand, you may also give them a gift card equal to an amount of money that can be used for their next purchase. To make this Christmas marketing idea successful, keep in mind that it is not a coupon, it is cash. People may not respond to coupons, which are generally considered “sales and advertising". But money and gift cards - that's a different story. You can search on Pinterest for more idea about gift card design.

The next element is deciding on the value of the gift certificate. Make it something significant, something worth driving or taking action for. If you’re a restaurant, consider $25; if you’re a gift shop, consider $50. Don’t forget to add a deadline on it so people may not delay and forget that your gift cards ever exist. That's really a lost sales opportunity.

Christmas Marketing Idea #5: Free shipping is not a bad idea

Normally, additional shipping costs are a real turn off for the customer when shopping at any eCommerce store. If your customer accepts additional costs for shipping, that’s great. It can be greater if you include a freeship policy during holiday sales events.

But keep in mind that free shipping should only be added value to your existing customer. I mean, you should still have a small promotion, then add free shipping. Otherwise, you really cannot compete with other eCommerce stores in this holiday sales battle. Let's have a look at Balsam Hill as an example, they really make this Christmas marketing idea work.

Christmas Marketing Idea #6: Referral - no advertising is better than user to user

Humans are social creatures, that’s the reason why people are so defensive about advertising but will be moved by the opinion of someone they know.

Nothing can help you gain a new customer better than your customers themselves. It’s not that you display your eCommerce store in front of your targeted audience one by one, but multiply your visitors when one refers to one. Christmas is a joyous and meaningful time, so helping a customer to refer a friend with a personalized written gift card is a beautiful marketing idea

However, the customers also need some incentive to recommend your product to someone who is close to them. The idea is that when a customer buys an item from your Shopify store, he gets the first discount percentage. But when he refers to one friend, he gets a gift card or a second discount for the next purchase. The friend he refers also gets a special discount.

There are some apps that help you set up that Christmas marketing idea. Swell Reward, for example, helps you to create rewards and promotions for people who refer your product to a friend.

Besides, Swell not only cares about the referral but also the customers themselves. When they buy a product or refer a friend, they get points. These points can turn into discounts or rewards for the customers. As a marketing principle, 20% of your old customers can make 80% of your profit. Swell helps you keep that 20% of loyal customers.

Christmas Marketing Idea #7: Don’t under-estimate traditional percentage discount

Percentage discount is the core of all promotion ideas. Even when you send a gift to the customer instead of a direct discount, what you are doing is reducing the amount of profit and transferring it to the customer. It is the customer’s common perception that high price goes together with high quality.

Offering discounts on price make them believe that they will receive a high-quality product at a lower price. This Christmas marketing idea is always effective. But keep in mind that your promotion message must be clear with the percentage number of discount, and also be relevant to your ad copy, content and landing page.

One more thing to consider is the number of discounts. Let’s consider the common components of an item’s price on online’s store: There will be 40% for making the product or keep the store running (for the retailer), another 30% for marketing cost, the last 30% for the profit. Discounted promotion is transferring a part of the profit to your customer, so 30% may be a perfect amount of discount.

Further reading: 

• Holiday Preparation: How To Optimize and Customize Your Shopify Product Pages 
• Holiday Preparation: Set Up The Right Tracking 

Christmas Marketing Idea #8: Refine your Shopify store design with festive Christmas templates

01. eMax - Multipurpose Christmas landing page template (Shopify version)

eMax template was created for any Shopify store in any niche. For the design, the theme was created with a lot of graphics and patterns that are suitable for Christmas sales events, such as white brush-style text on red background, snowflake patterns or snowmen, gifts, and candy figures.

The social icons are also decorated with Santa Claus hats that encourages people to engage. All of the above bring a Christmas spirit to your Shopify store.

eMax is suitable to design a sales page with a lot of elements that help you boost your sales, for example, a big banner with an attractive headline to lure shoppers in and a countdown clock that may create a sense of urgency.

Below there is a featured product with a description and buy button that may help online shopper focus on the product that has the highest conversion rate and take action right away. There is also a “deal of the day" section that offers the shoppers more options.

2. Javis - best landing page template for Shopify Fashion store’s holiday sales

Javis template is best optimized to create a Fashion collection page with Christmas spirit. First of all, regarding the design, Javis brings a Holiday look with white brush-style text on red background, which always refers to Christmas.

Besides, the social icons are decorated with Santa Claus's hat and may add a little excitement and encourage people to engage. Javis was simply designed with a minimalist pattern in order to drive peoples attention to images. That's why it would most suitable for the fashion store.

About the design structure, Javis was designed with a top banner which contains a big headline and an attractive call to action button. This can help online shoppers focus more on the most important headline, and also take action right away.

Under that banner comes a top category section, which helps the customer to skim over all collections that are on sale. After that, there is a best seller item with a customized “Buy button" that encourages people the take action once again.

3. Milo - Christmas landing page template for Shopify beauty store

Differing from the 2 above templates, Milo is created to be the most suitable for Shopify beauty sales pages which have multiple sales collections. This template is created with a red background and some small Christmas patterns (Santa Claus's hat for example), that bring Christmas spirit and encourage people to engage more.

As simple as it is, Milo has many sales-boosting elements, for example, countdown clock and best features section. Milo supports a lot of category sections with a customizable number of rows, which is most suitable for you to create a sales page with multiple sales categories.

4. Noah - Product focus sale page template

As part of my research, I found that almost all Shopify owners focus their traffic on the product page.

The product page, which is the last sales point, is the most important page. Noah focuses on sales optimization for your Shopify landing pages. Noah template contains all of the elements that help you optimize your Shopify product page and sell more, for example, countdown clock, which creates a sense of urgency, product feature or rich media (video and images…) and guarantees badge. At the end of the pages, there is a “product in the same category" section that offers the shoppers with more options

About the design, Noah brings a simple Christmas spirit with red, white and green color, snow and Santa Claus figures.

5. Raphael - multiple purpose product page template for Christmas sales

Raphael also helps you to build a single product sales page for Christmas, just like the Noah template that is mentioned above but is supported by several sales boosting elements, such as countdown clock, video review, testimonial section, and trust badge. Product image and buy button are repeated twice so it is easier for the customer to take action and click add to cart button.

The design and structure of Raphael template are quite simple, which is suitable for any kind of product.

02 easy steps to quickly use these templates

These templates above help you to start creating your landing page faster, at any time, for any niche. Above all, we created these themes based on our eCommerce experience, deep analysis, and continuous testing, that guarantees your sales rate when using these templates. Start using them in 2 quick steps:

1. Install PageFly Page Builder for free

These templates are an inbuilt feature of the PageFly page builder. You would need to install PageFly Page Builder. It's free, don't worry

2. Create a new landing page with Christmas template

Choose any template you want and get started.

Conclusion

In fact, there are a lot of creative Christmas marketing ideas for Shopify stores. The mentioned above are just a few. You better keep researching and testing to find the most suitable type of promotion and marketing ideas for each targeted market and targeted customers.

It’s also a good idea that you create a landing page with PageFly Page Builder and combine 2 - 3 Christmas marketing ideas together. The more surprise and value they receive, the more likely they will engage and buy on your eCommerce store.