8 ways to maximize your Christmas online sales 2023

The holiday season is just around the corner and it’s truly the best time of the year for both consumers and online retailers globally. Since the recession in 2008, Christmas holiday retail sales have grown steadily: According to Cision, across the 2022 holiday season, consumers spent a total of $1.14 trillion online globally and $270 billion in the U.S. In this article we bring you 8 ways to maximize Christmas online sales 2023, with Christmas strategy tips and network stats to help you generate better conversions using ExoClick’s traffic sources this holiday season. As you will see, video is the key format, so you will also learn how to increase Christmas sales with video!

#1 49% of all consumers favor online shopping for Christmas

This year, overall global retail spending is expected to rise 4.5% for the 2023 holiday season. Onlinedasher has made the following predictions for Christmas 2023:

• In 2023, global online holiday sales will be around $1.3 trillion.
• US holiday sales will grow 1% YoY to $273 billion.
• AI will drive $194 billion in online holiday sales.
• Holiday shopping can account for up to 30 percent of a retailer’s annual sales.

Also, 49% of holiday shoppers will prioritize online shopping, which is great news if you are looking to maximize your Christmas online sales 2023 for verticals such as Gaming, eCommerce, VoD, Casino and Nutra.

#2 What are the most important dates for online sales during Christmas?

According to Forbes, shoppers were out early last year, so much so that holiday retail sales increased by 7.6% from the beginning of November all the way to Christmas Eve. And most likely they will be early again this year! So make sure that you plan your campaigns early to target all of these early consumers. Also, what are the most important dates for online sales? Make sure that you keep in mind these 4 key shopping days in December:

• Green Monday: It is the second Monday of December, when shoppers realize they have less than 10 shipping days left before Christmas! This year, Green Monday falls on the 11th – Peak shopping day for eCommerce products.
• Free Shipping Day: It is a mega Christmas online sales event also focused around eCommerce traffic: It falls on Thursday the 14th this year, and it guarantees free shipping with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. Your consumers will expect special delivery deals if they make purchases on this day.
• Last Pay Day before Christmas: Many people get paid earlier in December, usually the week in the run up to Christmas between the 20th and the 24th December, so they have money to spend.
• Boxing Day: 26th of December is when the first post-vacational sales start. Generally this day is a public holiday in most parts of the world, so this is a huge day for online shopping.

As part of your Christmas online sales strategy, make sure that your campaign budgets are not capped on these 4 key days, because in order to drive sales volumes you want to make sure you are winning all the available traffic on those days. It’s a good idea to plan for spikes in your December budgets. Also, revisit the daily caps across your advertising accounts, either before or on the day, to check they are not restrictive. Otherwise your competitors will be there to snap up the traffic!

#3 Plan your ideal Christmas online sales strategy

Your strategy will be strongly informed by your vertical and the product that you offer – Is it a physical item to be delivered to a consumer? Is it a subscription to a website? What sort of experience does it offer? It is also important to consider what your potential customers will be doing during the Christmas holidays, which can basically be broken down into two time sections:

Sprint towards Christmas: 1 – 24 December, where everyone is rushing around doing their Christmas shopping.

Post christmas sales: 25 – 31 December, where the Christmas sales kick in and people are looking for online entertainment during the holidays.

The ideal strategy is to drive sales throughout the Christmas shopping period and then double down on potential customers who are looking for bargains in the Christmas sales period and maximize your Christmas online sales in 2023.

#4 In-Stream and FPIs get the highest CTRs: How to increase Christmas 2023 sales with video

How to increase Christmas 2023 sales with video? Consider FullPage Interstitials (FPI) and In-Stream video ads as part of your Christmas online sales strategy. We looked at network global CTRs from last year’s Christmas season, comparing Pre-Christmas 1-24 December to Post-Christmas sale time 25-31 December for popular Christmas verticals eCommerce, Games, VoD, Nutra and Casino.

How to convert eCommerce offers Christmas 2023:

The eCommerce vertical amasses the highest CTRs for the Video formats FPI, In-Stream & Slider- Use these formats to drive traffic to your eCommerce site! Video is a great way to showcase product details and features in an in-depth and entertaining way. This is key because the majority of people will always check out influencer product reviews on video-based sites such as YouTube, TikTok and IG Reels.

How to convert VoD offers Christmas using ExoClick’s traffic sources:

VoD is the perfect fit for video Formats including FPIs, because VoD platforms offer video content to the end users. The Native editorial flow also works well because you are offering entertainment to your potential audiences. Show them the best gags of their favorite series, YouTubers, useful Christmas cooking content, etc!

How to convert Nutra offers Christmas 2023 with ExoClick:

Once again, the video formats, FPI and Native are king when it comes to this vertical, so keep on reading to find out how to increase Christmas sales with video. A lot of people focus on purchasing health, well-being and relaxation products for their loved ones for Christmas, and video is a great way to display how much good these products are going to do for the overall lifestyle and wellbeing of the end user!

How to convert Casino offers during the 2023 holiday season:

The best formats for the Casino vertical are In-stream, FPIs, Push Notifications and Slider. End users are looking for entertainment as they take time off for the Holidays!

How to convert Games offers Christmas 2023 with video

The Games vertical showcases high CTRs for the 3 video formats and FPIs. This is because all these formats can show gameplay videos to entice end users to play. Once again, consumers are looking for entertainment between Christmas and New Year, as they are off work and spending quiet time with their families.

#5 Video as your main strategy this Christmas to maximize your Christmas online sales 2023

As seen above, video advertising tends to bring the highest CTRs, making it an ideal format for your Christmas strategy if you are looking to maximize your Christmas online sales 2023. As consumers research products and services to make the ideal Christmas presents, tutorial and product feature based content is your best bet. And here are a few tips on how to increase Christmas 2023 sales with video:

TIP! Product demo: Showcase your product and remember: your ideal customer is looking for an experience, so make sure to reflect how useful, or how much enjoyment they will get out of your product. Remember that it is the Holiday season, so, if for instance you are promoting VoD sites, showcase films, series or content that reflects that topic – Christmas stories, Seasonal favorites, etc.

TIP! TikTok style: Create the video ad to look like a #Christmas tips. For instance, you could feature content that gives advice on how to decorate your house for a Christmas party, bake gingerbread cookies, win an online game where the rewards are Christmas presents, etc.

TIP! Reaction videos: Thanks to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, reaction videos have become very popular! You could show a video of your customers reacting to receiving your product for Christmas or using your service for the first time after a family member or friend bought it for them.

TIP! Adapt the video’s language: Everybody is experiencing the Christmas hype! You could use Christmas based puns such as ‘The Christmas alphabet has noel.’, ‘All the jingle ladies, all the jingle ladies’, ‘Love at frost sight!’, ‘But wait—there’s myrrh!’, etc.

TIP! Sound advice: Remember to include Christmas music and jingles, and make it sound jolly! – Be careful with the Copyright, though! Also, keep in mind that your video ad should be able to connect with the viewer without the aid of sound. Many people browse in silent mode and Outstream Video automatically plays on mute. So incorporate subtitles and call to action texts into your video creative to get your message across.

TIP! Test out attribution of campaigns: What if an end user saw your video ad and didn’t click on it, but later remembered your product and did a type in search in Google – wouldn’t it be good to know that this type in came because he had previously seen your video? What if a user saw your video but didn’t click but later saw your banner ad for the same offer then clicked on the banner – wouldn’t it be useful for you to know that he had previously also watched your video.

If you are using VAST video ads, these metrics can be found out by using custom attribution, and the reason why it’s useful is that you can see how video ads work as a support to your overall sales funnel, and from what we have seen, we estimate that this could be contributing to about 30% of your sales. Speak to our Customer Success team here or your Account Manager for more information on how to increase your video revenues with ExoClick on Christmas with VAST.

#6 Make your marketing materials Christmas themed

An obvious tip for your Christmas strategy perhaps, but well designed Christmas touches on your landing page and ad creatives can amplify the festive spirit, pushing end users to purchase. For example, you can create special Christmas banners featuring snow, Santa, reindeers, Christmas trees, etc. You could change the colors of your logo to red and green. For video ads, you can quickly add a short Christmas themed intro and outro to an existing video ad. Add Christmas themed ‘how-to-videos’ or product walkthroughs on your landing pages. A/B test Christmas landing pages and creatives against non-Christmas themes using ExoClick’s automated Landing Page and Variations optimization tools. More on that on point #8!

#7 Maximize Christmas Games offers with Social Media traffic

A great strategy to maximize your Christmas online sales 2023 is using Social Media: Social Media offers you an audience of over 4.8 billion people worldwide, representing 59.9% of the global population and 92.7% of all internet users! This audience is also changing and renewing constantly. And the best of it is that they use their preferred Social Media platforms for around 2.5 hours a day! Especially around Christmas time, when people are going to be taking time off and will be posting stories and videos about their family time, presents and delicious holiday meals in their idle hours, it is a good idea to target the Social Media ExoClick traffic source. Social Media platforms are especially great if you are promoting Games offers, because there is loads of user generated content about specific games, whether we are talking about gameplay, tutorials, reviews, or anything of the sort. So end users will be expecting to find Game related content and happy to click on offers for interesting games that match their tastes!

#8 Test and optimize your landing page

Especially when applying new creatives (seasonal or not), it is always a good idea to test out your landing pages and marketing materials. To save time and resources, you could automate the testing out of your creative and landing pages using ExoClick’s algorithms:

Even: Traffic is spread out evenly between different landing pages, so if you use 4 different landing pages, 25% will be sent to each page.

Fixed: Enables you to define the exact percentage of traffic each landing page will receive, for example, landing page A 10%, landing page B 15%, landing page C 35% and landing page D 40%.

Automatic optimization: Based on the multi-armed bandit algorithm, optimizes traffic distribution based on conversion tracking results. So the landing page that is performing the best will automatically receive the most of the traffic, while continuously testing against existing landing pages and any new page that is introduced.

Here’s a more extensive tutorial on how to use these algorithms, or if not you can check out our documentation pages. Also, make sure your landings look good on both desktop and mobile. Shoppers do a lot of research on mobile before they buy, especially while they are killing time on their daily commute, so your Christmas strategy should ensure a great mobile shopping experience.

Do you have any more questions about making the most of Christmas online sales this year using ExoClick’s traffic sources or how to increase Christmas 2023 sales with video? Contact our Customer Success team here!