With Christmas fast approach you need to be planning your marketing and operational strategies for the peaks and troughs that the season brings. We have prepared a 48-page white paper packed full of all the key dates, tricks and tips to get the most sales from an ecommerce site before Christmas or for other sectors like holidays, health and fitness for the peak that follows Christmas. You can have a sneak preview of some of the content from the article or download it below.
Index of the content from the whitepaper
1 Introduction
1.1 Christmas Boom
1.2 Christmas Bust
1.3 Other peaks and troughs
2 Calendar of important ecommerce dates for 2014
2.1 Data from Google on what to expect this holiday season
2.2 UK data from other sources
3 Changes in business volumes over the Christmas and New Year holiday period by sector
4 Key strategies and issues by sector
4.1 Retail and ecommerce
4.2 Travel
4.3 Property
4.4 Diet/fitness/health
4.5 B2B
5 Key strategies for the holiday season by digital marketing channel
5.1 PR
5.2 SEO
5.3 Marketplaces (Amazon/eBay)
5.4 Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE)
5.5 AdWords and pay-per-click
5.5.1 Shopping ads
5.5.2 Text ads
5.5.3 Dynamic ads
5.5.2 Remarketing strategies
5.5.5 Gift vouchers
5.5.6 Mobile search
5.5.7 Other channels e.g. Bing
5.6 Affiliate marketing
5.7 Email
5.8 Social media
5.8.1 Social posting
5.8.2 Social advertising
5.8.3 Social shopping
5.8.4 Customer service
5.9 Mobile
6 Key internal and marketing tactics
6.1 Budgets
6.2 Staff
6.3 Creative/promotions/collateral
6.4 Agency
6.5 Content ideas
6.6 Clicks and mortar
6.7 Click and collect
6.8 Gift cards and vouchers
7 Top Tips and checklist for ecommerce retailers
October
November
December
8 Resources and citations
DOWNLOAD HERE OR HAVE A SNEAK PREVIEW>>>>>>>
Key dates for e-commerce retailers in 2014 – Black Friday, Cyber Monday, last postage day etc…
The table below shows the key dates for this year:
| UK – 2014 | International | ||
| October | Pay day | Mon 27th – Fri 31st | |
| Halloween (31st) | Fri 31st | ||
| November | Bonfire night (5th) | Wed 5th | |
| Singles day (China) | Tues 11th | ||
| Click frenzy (Australia) | Tues 18th | ||
| Pay day | Tues 25th – Sun 30th | ||
| Thanks Giving (USA) | Thursday 27th | ||
| Black Friday (used to be predominantly USA) | Friday 28th | ||
| December | Cyber Monday | Monday 1st | |
| Free shipping day (USA) | Sunday 7th | ||
| Green Monday (Germany/Nordics/Japan) | Monday 8th | ||
| First Day of Hanukkah (Jewish Holiday) | Wed 17th | ||
| Last delivery day (varies by carrier and store) | Wed 17th – Tues 23rd | ||
| Christmas day | Thursday 25th | ||
| Boxing day | Friday 26th | ||
| January | New Year’s day | Thursday 1st | |
Google predictions for retail search traffic
Google provides Anicca and their other partner agencies some useful slides. With their permission you can see their prediction for retail search traffic in the UK:
A big increase in Google retail traffic will be driven by an increase in Shopping ads (previously called Product Listing ads or PLA’s):
Why mobile will drive sales this Christmas?
The increase in mobile through SmartPhones and Tablets is expected t0 jump again at Christmas as more people receive these as presents or update their phone contracts.
Mobile is also driving growth in online advertising spend
Results form the IAB-PWC for online advertising spend in the UK show the significant increase in mobile advertising driven mainly by a growth in search and display: 
Need any help with your digital marketing?
We hope you find this guide helpful? If you would like to talk to the author (Ann Stanley our MD) or one of the technical team, then please email on [email protected] or call the office on 0116 298 7482.
