The year-end campaign: a four-week plan

The best time to plan your year-end campaign is now, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, while you still remember what worked and what didn't. Ten months from now the details will be gone. Below is a list to write down today and a plan built around four key weeks that you can put in the calendar for next fall.

Today: five lines about this year

Grab a sheet of paper and write, without overthinking it:

1. What sold best in November and December, and what stayed on the shelf.
2. Which channel brought orders or bookings: email, Instagram, your Google Business Profile, word of mouth.
3. What arrived too late: stock, photos, copy, packaging.
4. What customers asked most often (hours, delivery, returns, gift cards).
5. What you wouldn't do again next year.

Put the sheet in the folder for fall. The plan starts from it.

Week 1 (a month before Black Friday): the offer and materials

Everything gets decided in the first week, not the last:

• the offer: which products or services you push, which bundles you make, whether you sell gift cards;
• stock and supplier lead times for everything you need to order;
• photos and copy for the whole campaign, done in one go;
• a four-week posting calendar (we explained how to build one in an hour in our content calendar article).

Week 2 (Black Friday, late November): honest discounts

If you run discounts, watch the struck-through price. Since May 28, 2022, the EU rule is clear: when you announce a price reduction, the prior price you show has to be the lowest price you charged in at least the 30 days before the reduction. Inflating a price a week early so the discount looks bigger is no longer allowed.

In practice, write down your prices a month ahead. If you change them in between, you'll know exactly what you can show as the former price.

Not everyone has to do Black Friday. A salon, a restaurant or a service business can skip discounts and focus on gift cards, which sell right up to the last day.

Week 3 (early December): gifts and deadlines

This is when people buy gifts. What to communicate:

• the last day to order for delivery before the holidays, stated clearly on the site and in posts;
• gift cards for the latecomers: sent by email the same day;
• holiday hours, posted early.

Add the hours to your Google Business Profile too, under "Special hours." Google recommends confirming your hours for official holidays even when they're the same as usual. If you'll be closed for seven days or more, use the temporarily closed option instead.

Week 4 (before Christmas): last orders and a thank-you

Skip new offers in the last week. Use it for:

• a short message to customers who bought, with a thank you and your holiday hours;
• last-minute gift cards for people who remember on December 23;
• a post with the team, with nothing to sell.

Email: the rules change next year

If you send a newsletter, your 2024 campaign will be the first under the new Gmail and Yahoo rules. From February 2024, Google requires every sender to have SPF or DKIM on their domain and a spam rate below 0.3%, and anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day also needs DMARC and one-click unsubscribe. Set these up in January, not November. We walked through the steps in our article on SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

If you'd like to run the campaign together, from the offer to the posts and emails, see our marketing services.