Holiday marketing calendar 2024: Dates, ideas, and planning tips

The holidays are just around the corner, and before you know it, it'll be Christmas time! 

For a normal person, this might feel like an overstatement, but marketers know they may already be late in making their holiday marketing plans.

You'll need to account for planning, content, design, approvals, setup, testing, and going live—all of which means there's nearly not enough time for holiday campaigns. 

Fret not, though! We're here to help you get started with your holiday marketing calendar for the upcoming holiday season.

What is a holiday marketing calendar?  

A holiday marketing calendar is a tool that helps you plan your marketing efforts to maximize reach and engagement. Create a curated list of the holidays your business wants to target, and plan campaigns for these holidays in your holiday marketing calendar.

Since holidays are when businesses run their most important campaigns of the year, having a calendar helps streamline their efforts and run successful campaigns.

Why holiday marketing calendar? 

You may be wondering why you need a calendar when you can just send one-off emails or posts to mark major occasions and consider the job done. 

But a holiday marketing calendar can help you achieve much more:

Plan your campaigns in advance

Planning is half the work. When you set out to plan your campaigns in advance, you can refine your targeting, craft better designs and content, get all the necessary approvals, conduct test runs, set up automations, and, most importantly, enjoy your holidays in peace.

Connect with a diverse audience

When you have time to plan your campaigns, you can also make room for campaigns that speak to a diverse audience. Whether it's appealing to multi-cultural audiences within your local community or taking your brand global, you can create campaigns that increase your reach, improve brand reputation and skyrocket sales. 

Capitalize on the moment

Holidays are when most industries experience higher sales volumes and consumers are on the lookout for better discounts. Armed with a calendar, you'll know what campaign is going out and when, and you'll have plenty of time to create stunning marketing collateral that captivates your audience. You won't be the only business doing holiday marketing, but having a plan will certainly help you effectively seize the moment (and your audience's attention) and stand out from the crowd. 

Build your brand

Even if you're from an industry that doesn't make significant sales during the holiday season, a holiday marketing calendar can still help you:

• Avoid low-effort boilerplate campaigns.

• Create culturally sensitive and inclusive holiday campaigns.

• Send tailored messages that will appeal to your different audience segments.

• Reinforce your brand values and messaging.

Key dates to focus on in the 2024 holiday season

Events in September

• September 2 - Labor Day

• September 21 - Oktoberfest

The long holiday season starts in September. World Tourism Day on September 27 and International Podcast Day on September 30 are other fun and interesting holidays you can include in your September campaign calendar. 

Events in October

• October 14 - Thanksgiving Day in Canada 

• October 31 - Halloween

• October 31 - Diwali

World Teachers' Day on October 5, World Mental Health Day on October 10, and World Food Day on October 16 are some other days you can consider including in your October marketing plans.

Events in November

• November 11 - Veteran's Day in the US

• November 19 - International Men's Day 

• November 28 - Thanksgiving Day in the US

• November 29 - Black Friday

• November 30 - Small Business Saturday

Shopping season truly begins in November, so buckle up and prepare your offers. World Vegan Day on November 1 and World Kindness Day on November 13 are some other events you can add to your November calendar. 

Events in December

• December 2, 2024 - Cyber Monday

• December 21, 2024 - Super Saturday

• December 24, 2024 - Christmas Eve

• December 25, 2024 - Christmas 

• December 25, 2024 - Hanukkah 

• December 26, 2024 - Boxing Day

• December 31, 2024 - New Year's Eve

There's no dearth of holidays in December. With most people buying gifts for their families, your well-designed campaigns can help you tap into a large market and increase sales effectively.

Effortlessly plan holiday marketing activities with Zoho Marketing Automation

With Zoho Marketing Automation, you're not just creating a calendar to curate holiday dates. You get to manage contact lists, create various digital and offline activities for each campaign, track campaign progress on a Kanban board, allocate budgets for different activities, monitor performance through detailed reports, and basically plan and run entire multichannel campaigns.

What's more? You can also bring in all your stakeholders and collaborate with them right where your campaign plans are.

How to run successful marketing campaigns during the holiday season

Running successful holiday marketing campaigns is akin to planning a big wedding. It needs a lot of preparation, involves many stakeholders, and sometimes exceeds your planned budget. But you'll work ad-hoc with the resources available at your disposal, and when you finally pull it off, it creates a truly magical experience for everyone involved. Here's how it's done:

1. Send out save the dates: Curate a list of holidays you want to target and choose the ones you want to run campaigns for. 

2. Put down the deposits: Determine which channels your campaigns are going to run on and what the goal of each campaign will be. Also, decide on the theme your campaigns will be based on. For instance, you could do a "Super Saver Halloween Sale," and make sure the messaging across channels reflects this theme so you can reinforce the message in your audience's minds.

3. Get the outfits ready: Create content, update the website catalog with offers, and plan social posts and email campaigns. If you're doing physical campaigns, such as offline events, postal mailers, print ads, billboards, and others, talk to the vendors and get your campaigns in place.

4. Contact guests via multiple channels: Run multichannel campaigns to reinforce your messaging. Plan your campaigns to maximize reach based on the channels your audience is most likely to engage in. 

5. Don't double-book: Map out the days that every post or email pertaining to a campaign will go live. If you're emailing the same audience for multiple holidays, this exercise will help you avoid overwhelming them with emails. While it's important to stay on top of your audience's minds, it's equally important not to annoy them into ignoring you. Find a balance between both.

6. Time for your big day: Once everything is set in place, it's time to ring the campaign bells. Monitor your campaign progress, analyze the results, and pivot as necessary. 

Closing thoughts

Holiday marketing, when done well, can be a great boost to your sales engine. If you plan in advance and execute your campaigns using the right tools, you can turn the holiday season into the best time of the year for your organization. 

Plan ahead and run great campaigns, but don't forget to have fun! After all, it's the holiday season.

And oh—if you're planning to run omnichannel campaigns for the holiday season and want to track all of them from one place, give Zoho Marketing Automation a try.

Happy holidays!

Try Zoho Marketing Automation for free