Plan an Easter marketing campaign

Contributors

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Business Benefits

Increase sales and brand recognition during the Easter shopping season.


Review past Easter marketing campaign metrics to identify messaging, tactics, or offers worth replicating.

Example metrics to review include:

  • Total campaign spend
  • Leads generated
  • Leads converted
  • Total sales
  • ROI66

Positive metrics help identify the types of content or promotions that did well in the past, and can inspire your next Easter marketing campaign. Blacklist any campaign ideas that had poor ROI in the past.

Define one offer that’s thematically or emotionally tied to the Easter holiday or the spring season.

Seasonal marketing campaigns perform best when they incorporate either time urgency or the emotions of the specific season. In this case, the weeks surrounding Easter and springtime tend to evoke ideas of new life, growth, playfulness, and joy.

Tie your time-sensitive theme to your overarching annual marketing goals to create a specific seasonal campaign goal.

For example:

  • Increase brand awareness or share brand messaging: Furniture company IKEA introduced the Vårkänsla, a flat-packed Easter bunny that needed to be assembled. The campaign called to mind the furniture chain’s method of selling furniture in flat packs that require extensive assembly.
  • Increase brand engagement or website traffic: Boost pre-purchase customer touchpoints and overall engagement to encourage your audience to interact with your brand more. For example, clothing retailers Banana Republic, Old Navy, and J. Crew often conduct online Easter egg hunts. Some of the discounts are as high as 40% to 60% off a purchase, ensuring the audience is engaged.
  • Convert online traffic into in-store traffic: Convenience store chain Nisa partnered with the Cadbury chocolate company. The two brands used online social media clues to engage their social media following and get people to search for real-life limited-edition chocolate Easter eggs in-store.
  • Convert brick-and-mortar foot traffic into online traffic: Hide egg-shaped cards around your store, each with a special gift code or coupon code for your online store. Or, offer customers a bowl of plastic eggs when they’re checking out. Each egg has a different discount code hidden inside that they can redeem online.
  • Collect newsletter sign-ups or generate leads: If you’re a content-driven brand, create new content or re-package pre-existing content that’s hidden behind an offer gate. For example, culinary website AllRecipes.com regularly releases Easter-themed menus and recipes that you can only receive if you sign up for their newsletter.

Build a landing page or design an above-the-fold website banner that highlights your Easter marketing message and offer.

Whether you’re driving your future marketing emails and social media posts to a customer landing page or a website callout or banner, make sure it includes:

  • A bold, attention-grabbing headline that quickly and succinctly explains your Easter message.
  • An explanatory line or paragraph with additional information or details about your Easter offer.
  • A call-to-action that’s seasonally themed.

For the best results, consider:

  • Using adjectives that evoke strong sensory or emotional reactions.
  • Phrasing the offers to highlight limited time - for example, Ends at midnight Eastern on Easter Monday!
  • Triggering a sense that visitors will be missing out if they’re not converted.
  • Using visuals or words that playfully tie into the season, such as egg-celent deal or the hunt is on.

Write a series of promotional emails that include a pre-Easter teaser and a last-chance, high-urgency final reminder.

Unlike Black Friday and other major seasonal shopping days, people are not conditioned to view the Easter season as a time for shopping. To make it more challenging, the actual date that Easter takes place varies considerably each year. For example, it was April 21st in 2019, April 12th in 2020, and April 4th in 2021.

Get ahead of both of these problems by ensuring your Easter campaign’s email schedule hits each of the following milestones:

  • Announce that you’ll be running an Easter promotion: Easter is approaching! Here are the dates you need to remember.
  • Announce that your Easter promotion is live at the start of the Easter weekend.
  • Remind your audience of your Easter promotion halfway through the Easter weekend.
  • Warn your audience at the end of the Easter weekend that your limited-time promotion is ending soon.

Improve your chances of achieving a high email engagement rate by polishing the design, subject, and readability.

  • Include design elements and identical messaging that mirrors what they’ll see when they click your CTA and arrive at your Easter landing page or store pop-up.
  • Add an interesting and engaging subject line that mentions the time urgency of Easter.
  • Test your email on a variety of devices to ensure readability across mobile platforms.
  • Review your email platform’s analytics to see what days and what times your users are most active. For example, if you notice that your list is far more active on Thursdays than on Fridays, it may make sense to send your Easter sale is coming email on Thursday.

Set up a retargeting campaign to take advantage of the Easter buying cycle.

The Easter season often demonstrates unusual buying patterns depending on the type of products or services you’re marketing. Analytics company Criteo has found that sales of some items, such as home goods, peak four days before the Easter weekend, while the sales of flowers and chocolates are still climbing on Easter itself.

Turn on retargeting on your website if you haven’t done so before, and run a retargeting campaign using a platform like Facebook or Google AdWords. If someone opens an Easter email or visits your Easter landing page, they’re making it clear they’re interested in your offer.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T15:40:36Z