2023 is coming to an end, making way for the all-new 2024! Wrap up your Christmas festivities and prepare for all the countdowns, confetti, and ball drops!
New Year is approaching and business owners everywhere are hustling for their New Year marketing campaigns that are sure to give their loyal customers that one comforting holiday vibe and give them those sweet start-of-year sales.
These campaigns are seasonal, and usually limited in time yet wield the power of getting your customers intrigued with all the activities, discounts, and giveaways your brand offers. Holidays don’t last long, so good business owners know how to use these times of the year to push their marketing game to the max and get as many sales as possible.
If you are one of those business owners, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, you will get to know about 10 amazing ideas for your business’ New Year marketing campaigns that drive traffic to your store, gain more traction, have your products easily sold, and your brand widely recognized - a great jumpstart to your 2024!
Outline
- Why are New Year Ad Campaigns important?
- 10 New Year Marketing Ideas for Your 2024 Campaigns
- 1. New Year special discounts
- 2. Freshen up your store using New Year templates!
- 3. New Year giveaways on social media
- 4. Interactive challenges on social media
- 5. New Year hashtags
- 6. Send customized/personalized New Year emails
- 7. Promote limited-edition products for the holiday season
- 8. New Year wrapping at checkout
- 9. Special countdown live streams on social media
- 10. Conduct a poll
- 3 Best New Year Campaigns that Made It Work
- 1. GemRay Jewelry’s New Year Gift Card Giveaway (2022)
- 2. Holiday Inn Amritsar’s online contest (2021)
- 3. Imperial Patisserie’s New Year marketing campaign, with limited edition products (2023)
- Conclusion
Why are New Year Ad Campaigns important?
Customers are almost always excited for the holidays and changing seasons as they get more time to spend with their friends and family. Times like these are when they are most likely to buy and give presents to their closest, most beloved ones.
That is why more and more businesses are hopping on a wagon called Seasonal Marketing - Marketing campaigns that are planned and executed during holiday seasons.
Businesses can cash in on customer enthusiasm and interest by providing limited-time seasonal sales, and in return, customers are more compelled to purchase if they are feeling the urge to take advantage of those limited-time offers.
Image Credits: Water for L.A.
In addition, running New Year ad campaigns can also increase your brand awareness: the more special your brand’s seasonal offers are, the more customers your brand will obtain, especially through word of mouth which is thriving most these days.
As your brand recognition has been significantly improved, attracting both new customers and returning buyers is drastically easier, and over time, it generates more revenue than in off-season periods. And since seasonal marketing happens at a set time period, you will have lots of room to plan ahead of time!
10 New Year Marketing Ideas for Your 2024 Campaigns
1. New Year special discounts
Everyone loves discounts! In fact, more than 64% of online consumers wait to buy things until they go for sale, whereas more than 59% search for promo codes before buying anything online, according to this research by Invesp.
This psychological behavior is almost always present among customers and, therefore serves as a driving force to push every business to lay out their discount offers on the table.
What better occasion to reward your buyers with vouchers and coupons than New Year’s Day? Celebrate either the past year or the year to come, by implementing discounted promotions in your next campaigns that are sure to make your customers’ day (or even year!).
Case in point: Honma - a Shopify-powered store specializing in golf clubs and other gold accessories - launched a 21% sale during the New Year period of 2021.
Image Credits: Honma
2. Freshen up your store using New Year templates!
Don’t settle down on that one lame, old, boring template that your online store has been using throughout the previous year. Change it up to the New Year template to celebrate this important occasion! This will help your customers feel festive every time they enter your store.
Image Credits: PageFly templates
Like what you’re seeing? Use this festive New Year template of ours…
…or this one!
Configure customization in your store’s settings to set it to any New Year layout you’d like. Remember to change the fonts, and your store’s logo, and slightly change the color scheme to match your branding, too!
And to say generally, your store’s layout should be changed seasonally according to upcoming holidays and not just for New Year only.
3. New Year giveaways on social media
Giving is receiving. Giveaway is one of the most popular methods to engage with your audience on social media.
Your business can host a giveaway either in the form of random selection based on social media post engagement (reactions, comments, shares, reposts, etc.), purchases (orders placed by customers both offline and online), or in the form of online competition.
Whichever way you choose, in the end, the winner of the giveaway should receive a prize worthy enough to be exclusive (huge discount on the next order, limited-edition items, cash prize, etc.) so that they have the incentive to participate in your brand’s future activities. Even better, they can be so excited to tell their friends about it!
Just make sure to keep your giveaways and prizes New Year-themed so that we stay aligned with the holiday seasons.
What your business receives might not be direct sales, but rather a higher extent of brand awareness that drives your audience back to your social outlets for more and ultimately creates potential leads.
💡 Quick read: How to Grow Your eCommerce Brand With Social Media
Case in point: A subscription-based crate curator and distributor Loot Crate - also owning a store on Shopify - hosted a New Year's promotion and giveaway on Facebook in the form of a live stream.
Image Credits: Loot Crate4. Interactive challenges on social media
Much like giveaways, challenges are highly interactive, and in some cases, they can even be viral. Ask any Social Media Manager and they will tell you how much they crave for their posts and social media ads to go viral and be known by millions. Thus, hosting online challenges on social media platforms is another way to get your brand quickly and widely recognized.
TikTok is an excellent platform to start with, as a gigantic amount of video content is consumed per day as shown by the total of 2.3B visits in the month of August 2023.
@movewithusapp What's your next step? Our New Year Challenge sign-ups open December 12th! 🗓️ #challenge #fitnessjourney ♬ Epic Emotional - AShamaluevMusic
Move With Us is a women’s health and fitness program. In the above example, they utilize their TikTok channel to announce their New Year challenge to their followers. Depending on your brand’s characteristics and products, you can take some of these New Year challenge ideas into consideration:
- Dance challenge (best fit if your brand is a clothing brand).
- Photo/video challenge (best fit if your brand provides daily items: food, appliances,...).
- Fill in the blank challenge (one-size-fits-all).
- “Caption this” challenge (one-size-fits-all).
5. New Year hashtags
Almost every #NewYear hashtag has garnered at least 1 million Instagram posts, some even going over 50 million.
Image Credits: Instagram
Using popular hashtags that stay consistent throughout your marketing campaigns will definitely enhance your posts’ visibility. It also doubles as a tracker that you can use for your online giveaway/challenge submissions and even your internal end-of-campaign reports!
Alternatively, if you need that brand exclusivity, you can start your own branded hashtag, too. It should include your brand name (or your brand name’s initials), New Year elements, and optionally your campaigns’ title. Who knows, your hashtag might even join the leaderboard!
Case in point: A coffee brewer manufacturer and distributor Bruvi with their globally known Shopify store created seasonal Instagram posts, one of which includes the 2023 New Year post with a #newyears hashtag.
Image Credits: Bruvi
6. Send customized/personalized New Year emails
Email marketing has been around for years. And your brand should have too by now.
But when it comes to festive seasons when people have more time to open up their email inbox relaxedly, you definitely don’t want to miss this golden opportunity to send them words of your utmost care for their experience, either pre-purchase or post-purchase.
Personalized emails must never be generic, but rather fun, engaging, enticing and action-driving. They have proven their worth according to this study, as they generally have a 2.5x higher CTR (click-through rate) than normal, season-greeting emails.
Show your loyal customers that your New Year emails deserve a read-through and give them actual value, by implementing these steps below for your next New Year email marketing campaign:
- Use your customer’s first name.
- Don’t be a robot; define their insights and intent, and write about what they can get from your New Year offerings. Use jokes and humor whenever appropriate to radiate that sense of humanness.
- Create an effective subject line.
- Highlight your store’s biggest start-of-year discounts possible.
- Send your New Year emails at least a day before New Year’s Eve, as their inboxes might get flooded on New Year’s Day.
- Decorate your email layout and button by making them New Year-themed.
💡 Quick read: 7 Mobile Marketing Strategies For Valentine’s Day This Year
If you don’t want to sit through all day and create customized emails from scratch, Shopify’s got you covered with their smart apps like Shopify Email Marketing and Avada Email Marketing & SMS as these Shopify-integrable apps let you create and send stunning, open-worthy emails to your customers’ inbox from their myriad of beautiful email templates.
7. Promote limited-edition products for the holiday season
As we mentioned before, customers are more compelled to purchase if they are feeling the urge to take advantage of those limited-time offers. The same can be said for products.
Image Credits: Hummer USE fitness
When New Year arrives, your brand should promote exclusive products that are both limited in quantity and purchase time window (can be equal to, or even less than, the campaign’s duration), and have them as the top priority for advertising.
Case in point: Paul’s Liquor provides highly addictive spirits (in a good way) on their Shopify-powered store. And during New Year 2022, they dropped a special, limited edition John Walker & Sons King George V with eye-catching packaging that brings the festive vibe.
8. New Year wrapping at checkout
A small change that makes a big difference. At first glance, this might look like another feature implementation for your store that your business has done all year round. But from customers’ perspective, this is an incentive for them to get that holiday vibe for their every purchase, allowing them to feel like their New Year purchase is so New Year, so special.
Simply include the option of New Year wrapping at your customer’s checkout page with a small, additional charge and let those New Year gifts fly out. Your wrappings should be New Year-themed and can come with your brand logo as well.
That way, your business can earn extra revenue from this service, your customers can give that shiny, glossy box as a gift for their friends and family, and the wrapping should play a part in your branding efforts as well! It’s a win-win-win, if you will.
Try out this Built-for-Shopify app Wrapped: Add Gift Wrap that allows you to have gift option add-ons on your product pages, checkout page, and more!
Case in point: Lindsey Brown is a resort wear brand that has found success when opening their shop on Shopify, where they are also able to offer gift wrapping at checkout for special occasions, too, including New Year!
9. Special countdown live streams on social media
Countdowns, confetti, and ball drops, such cliché. But they work!
What might not work is the comfort of your audience when they attend New Year events in real life. That’s where your brand’s social media comes in.
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,... all provide their users with live streaming built-in services that your business can use to host special countdown live streams. During your live streams, make sure to have a proper program agenda, a team of staff for moderating live chat, and your brand’s promo plugs wherever appropriate.
💡 Quick read: Boost Sales with Countdown Timers: 6 Effective Strategies
Your New Year live streams will help your audience have a great, relaxing time when they can also engage with your brand and get to know your brand better, all while sitting in the comfort of their own home.
10. Conduct a poll
You can never go wrong with a poll that ties your community together. Polling is a great way to engage your audience while getting to know their valuable insights.
Polls can also help your brand know your directions for the upcoming year. For example, your business conducts a poll to survey what flavors of your cupcakes were most and least delicious in the last year. Your audiences’ input after the poll ends can significantly influence your flavor adjustments for the new year so that they can appeal to as many people as possible.
You should be able to find a poll creation option in every posting function on almost any social media, namely X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, etc.
3 Best New Year Campaigns that Made It Work
A lot of brands have had quite some success after executing their New Year marketing campaigns. Below are 3 noble examples of businesses that utilized seasonal marketing to the fullest.
1. GemRay Jewelry’s New Year Gift Card Giveaway (2022)
On December 31st, 2021, GemRay Jewelry understood their customers' New Year's resolutions and hosted an online giveaway which they promoted through almost every channel. They were giving away $90 worth of gift cards to 6 lucky recipients who subscribed to their email newsletter within the required timeframe.
This campaign serves 2 purposes: to increase brand awareness and to get a new influx of customers’ emails which would be helpful for future marketing campaigns.
2. Holiday Inn Amritsar’s online contest (2021)
We all know that online contests encourage contestants to be creative and offer a desirable reward for their efforts. They build interaction between brand and customer and create different content than normal.
Understanding such, Holiday Inn Amritsar hosted an online contest on their Instagram on December 29th, 2020 where customers define their year through a song to promote interaction on their social media accounts. The brand offers a mystery prize to engage customers and entice them to participate, increasing their social media engagement.
3. Imperial Patisserie’s New Year marketing campaign, with limited edition products (2023)
A Hong Kong-based bakery dedicated to delivering great Chinese pastries for the world, Imperial Patisserie, dropped their whole limited-time collection for New Year 2023, which was also promoted on their social media.
The fever was real, as the product quickly sold out, mainly for the great product itself customers know and love, as well as the beautiful, festive, in-season packaging that urges them to buy ASAP.
Conclusion
A good business knows how to perform seasonal marketing right - that is, to utilize holiday seasons to get their products and services advertised, so that they receive more awareness, recognition, conversions and ultimately sales. As this article has showcased 10 ideas for your next New Year marketing campaigns, we hope that you have had the right direction to hop on the trends and make the most out of this holiday season.
In reality, tons of businesses have already embarked on seasonal marketing. Try to stand out from the rest by making stunning storefronts, scroll-stopping social media posts, and mesmerizing New Year emails that deserve a good read-through. These 10 ideas are the base, your innovation is the key!
