A holiday is the best way to get marketers’ creative juices flowing. Many holiday marketing campaigns fail to succeed when they are correctly executed.
It’s because they need to maintain the audience in the shuffle. Marketers get so caught up in finding the right images for social media or giving a holiday spin to a long-awaited blog post that they neglect the most important thing: creating content that helps the audience.
Here’s a list of 9-holiday marketing campaigns I found to be successful. It’s also worth noting that these campaigns aren’t all about Christmas. Yes! Yes!
HubSpot Holiday Stock Photos
You might already be a member of HubSpot’s email mailing list for some time. You’re in for a treat if you haven’t.
HubSpot offers a time-saving gift to its audience every year around Christmas. This gift of free stock photos comes when holiday marketing demands can be high, but family time is the priority. It is a welcome relief from all the hours spent looking for images for the last blog post.
Starbucks: Frappula Frappucino Campaign
Many marketers overlook Halloween in favor of the more lucrative Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. But the marketing geniuses at Starbucks saw this as an opportunity. This was an incredibly effective marketing campaign, even with a dash of scarcity (the drink was only available for five days).
Uberflip – A Content Marketing Christmas Carol
This hilarious video by Uberflip is a humorous adaptation of the Christmas story of a content marketer who wanted to change. The journey of Mr. Schmitty takes him through the past, present, and future of content marketing to finally discover its true meaning.
What did you get? It was a great lesson in content marketing.
Melanie Duncan: Holiday Blog Blast
Melanie Duncan is one of the savviest marketers around. She maintains momentum throughout the holiday by posting well-planned blog posts and marketing emails.
She started it in the fall with a post about how to set yourself up for success in the coming year. Next, she posted a post highlighting the lessons marketers can learn from Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. She then moved on to posts about Christmas holiday promotions.
What is so unique about this campaign? These posts were all published before Halloween. This means her audience of entrepreneurs was ready to use her content for holiday marketing. Talk about being one step ahead.
Publishing earlier in holiday marketing campaigns can lead to better results.
Marketo: 4 Spooky Errors That KILL Email Campaigns
Marketo sent me a scary email the day before Halloween. It arrived just in time to help me start thinking about holiday marketing plans. It invited me to imagine the horror of working on an email campaign only to find that my edits weren’t saved before hitting “send.” Marketo also allowed me to download their Top Email Management Blunders ebook.