The 2021 Holiday Readiness Checklist for Retailers

Want to have a successful 2021 holiday season? Start prepping your business for the holiday rush during the late summer months (read: right now).

Retailers shouldn’t wait for November to kickstart their holiday campaigns. In fact, the earlier you begin planning and strategizing, the more effective your holiday marketing campaign will be—and the more in control your team will feel when the first influx of shoppers hits your stores.

If you haven’t started preparing, don’t worry! We have your 2021 Holiday Readiness Checklist right here, so you can confidently launch bangin’ holiday campaigns your customers will love.

1. Mark your calendars
2. Craft your deals and discounts
3. Plan your email marketing campaigns
4. Optimize your holiday mobile experience
5. Test all facets of your website
6. Don’t forget about shipping
7. Bolster your customer support

1. Mark your calendars

Imagine only realizing Black Friday is on Friday the 26th and not Friday the 25th a few days before your big campaign launch? *Facepalm*

Jotting down key dates in your calendar will help you plan ahead of time and ensure you print the correct dates on promotional materials—especially those that need to go to print a few months ahead of key holiday drops.

Mark your calendars with these important 2021 holiday dates:

Canadian Thanksgiving – October 11, 2021
US Thanksgiving – November 23, 2021
Black Friday – November 26, 2021
Hanukkah Begins – November 28, 2021
Cyber Monday – November 29, 2021
Christmas – December 25, 2021
Boxing Day – December 26, 2021
New Year’s Eve – December 31, 2021

2. Craft your deals and discounts

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: holiday competition between retailers is fierce. That’s why creating enticing promotions and discounts is crucial if you hope to stand out among competitors.

Statista reports that for 49% of Canadian consumers, holiday sales, promotions and free shipping are what influence them the most when it comes to choosing holiday shopping retailers.

Planning your discounts ahead of time gives your team the chance to develop a creative and effective holiday campaign strategy designed to attract customers away from your competitors.

Start by:

Auditing your previous holiday marketing campaign to see what worked and what didn’t work so well
Researching 2021 competitive trends
Planning your budgets
Creating promotions
Conducting tests

Once you’ve established the above, here are a few other things to consider:

Pick the best items for discounts based on your audit & trend research
Spread out your deals and promotions
Be strategic and diversify your discounts
Make your messaging consistent across all touchpoints

Don’t forget! Your promotions and discounts need to be worthwhile. Instead of coming in with a bang, start with your smaller offers and save your most wow-worthy promos for the main event.

3. Plan your email marketing campaigns

Swarms of holiday emails and festive deals land in your customers’ inboxes every single year. And they can often start as early as October. But just because the competition is stiff, doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get your holiday offers in front of your subscribers’ eyes. It just means you need to be creative about it.

When developing your email marketing campaign, make sure you:

Craft strong, catchy subject lines that stand out and spark interest to increase open-rates
Create emails that add value (this will help boost your click-through rate)
Use segmentation and personalization to create messaging that resonates and makes your subscribers feel special
Determine how many emails you want to send, as well as the cadence (careful not to overdo it!)

PRO TIP: Struggling with crafting headlines that cut through the clutter? Comb through the many promotional emails sitting in your inbox and ask yourself which email captured your attention. What is it about the subject line that caught your eye? Answer that question and see if you can apply the same technique to your holiday subject lines.

4. Optimize your holiday mobile experience

61% of online retail traffic comes from mobile traffic.

Optimizing your website for mobile use is a must for any retailer running an online store. And if you’re not in the e-commerce game yet, you should definitely hop on the bandwagon to expand your reach and increase overall sales.

Consumers want to shop on devices that are most convenient to them. For many, that means shopping on their smartphones.

Dynamic Yield research reports that 76% of consumers shop on mobile devices because “it saves them time.”

This means you need to be sure your website is mobile-friendly, especially as you expect an increase in holiday traffic.

Optimizing for mobile goes beyond compatibility. Your website should be responsive and provide a dynamic serving, so browsing customers get a seamless brand experience as they move from their laptop to their smartphone.

One of the worst things you can do as a retailer is to not test your website before launching your holiday campaigns.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the busiest shopping days of the year. The stakes are high, and a site crash or a broken coupon code is all you need to send your customer into the arms of your competitor.

That’s why it’s imperative to optimize your website from top to bottom. We recommend conducting these three tests before launching:

Optimize for heavy loads and high traffic

For US retailers and Canadian brands serving the North American market, expect to see your first big spike in traffic during American Thanksgiving weekend, particularly if you’re promoting pre-Black Friday deals.

To prep for the first wave, verify that you have a solid site infrastructure that can meet the increased demand coming from gifting-scouting shoppers. This includes things like bolstering your servers, storage and network capacity.

Put your website’s speed to the test

Less than 3 seconds.

That’s how long it should take for your website to load. Anything slower than that and you’ll start to see an increase in bounce rate and a decrease in time consumers spend on your site.

After the months of lost sales caused by the pandemic lockdowns, many retailers are hoping to get back in the black this 2021 holiday season. To help you reduce bounce rate and improve sales, simply increasing your site speed by 0.1 seconds can make all the difference.

Consumers don’t have the time nor the patience to wait for your site to load. So test your website speed and optimize if necessary. Skip this part, and you could end up losing more than just time

Make sure all promo codes & discounts work

Many retail brands include promo codes and discounts in their holiday marketing strategies as a way to boost conversions, sales and customer loyalty.

Customers love it when they snag a sweet holiday discount online. What they don’t love so much? When they arrive at site checkout only to have the promo code they’ve been given, denied.

Not only do you lose that customer’s business, but you also lose your reputation as a trustworthy retailer.

Test promo codes and discounts to see if they work before advertising your deals to the masses.

6. Don’t forget about shipping

Not everyone wants to shop in-store during Black Friday madness or Boxing Day palooza. So providing fast and efficient shipping options are a must.

Plan your shipping strategies ahead of time since they directly impact customer satisfaction and whether or not they’ll purchase from you again in the future.

Here are few smart shipping tactics to consider:

Offer free shipping

Yep, you read that right. FREE. It’s a small but mighty word and, according to Buffer, one of the most persuasive words you can use in your sales copy.

Free shipping is a common practice during the holidays to help boost the performance of your holiday emails and drive online sales. And if other brands in your niche are offering it, then you should jump right on that train to remain competitive.

But what if you can’t afford to offer shipping that’s completely free?

Just because you use the word “free” doesn’t mean you have to offer shipping with no minimum. Savvy retailers understand exactly how to make the most of the free shipping promo by employing effective free holiday shipping strategies such as:

Give free shipping on certain products only (e.g. Free shipping for all kitchen appliances)
Add a minimum order value threshold to qualify for free shipping (e.g. Free shipping on orders over $30)
Provide short-term free shipping (e.g. Limited time! Free shipping until 12PM EST)
Offer free shipping during a specific promotion or sale (e.g. Black Friday or Cyber Monday)
Increase your average order value by having an upsell (e.g. Free shipping when you mix & match tea accessories)
Include free shipping as a perk for members of a loyalty program (e.g. Amazon Prime, Sephora VIB Rouge, etc.)

Set a shipping cut-off date

Two of the most vital pieces of information you need to provide gift-goers with are your holiday shipping cut-off dates and times. These are specific dates and times that tell customers when orders need to be shipped to make it to their destination on time.

Shipping cut-off dates do more than help customers plan their holiday shopping accordingly. They also increase the chances their orders will be delivered to their doorstep on time, resulting in a positive customer experience guaranteed to keep them coming back to your brand again and again.

Check your shipping provider’s website to determine holiday shipping cut-off dates and times for your brand.

Offer curbside pick-up as an alternative

There’s nothing more frustrating (or panic-inducing) for a customer than missing the shipping cut-off date during the craziest month of the year.

If Holiday 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that curbside pick-up is a total godsend. This is practical for stressed shoppers who blew past your shipping cut-off dates, but don’t necessarily want or have the time to shop in-store.

Providing shoppers with the option to order online for pick-up in-store also allows them to avoid shipping delays during the festive season.

7. Bolster your customer support

Working during the holiday rush gives new meaning to the turn of phrase “so much to do, so little time.” Not only will you have a lot of your regulars shopping with you during this period, but you’ll also likely experience a surge in new customers that you need to win over.

And we all know the best way to make a great first impression is by providing stellar customer service.
Here’s how to give your customers the best shopping experience this holiday season:

Know the answers to customers’ most common questions

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are always incredibly busy days for retailers, which means you need to get your customer support team aligned and ready to answer some of the season’s most frequently asked questions about:

Offers
Shipping
Store hours
Return policies
Inventory

Provide immediate service

According to recent Kustomer research, 77% of customers expect their problem to be solved immediately upon contacting customer service.

Excellent customer service is achieved by catering to the needs of your customers through immediate assistance. Customers expect you to respect their time, even more during the holiday rush when time is of the essence.

Be available across all channels

Gone are the days when customer service teams could only be reached by phone. Today’s consumers expect to reach your brand on their preferred platforms, meaning you should be offering your customers support on every channel—email, phone, social media, chat and even SMS.

No one wants to wait 38 minutes on the phone for their turn. Make it easy and give customers other options to reach you.

Prep automated messages for high-volume inquiries

Whatever you do, don’t leave your customers hanging.

Before the spike hits, make sure you prep an automated message for your email, social media and phone. This message should reassure customers you’ve received their request and let them know that you’re currently experiencing a high volume of messages. Don’t forget to apologize for the delay.

If you know you can get back to them within a delay of 24-48 hours, then include that in your message, as well.