The end-of-year holiday season is a goldmine for business owners, offering a prime opportunity to boost revenue and grow your subscriber base.
However, navigating this bustling period can be overwhelming.
That’s why we’ve analyzed the most successful holiday campaigns from our community of creators to craft you a blueprint for holiday marketing success.
One membership owner who implemented these strategies last year reported her best month of sign-ups since launching.
The key to her success? Recognizing that holiday promotions aren’t a one-and-done affair. In fact, the end-of-year shopping season is split into two distinct phases:
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- The December Holiday Hype
Let’s dive into strategies for each phase to help you maximize success without burning out.
Phase 1: Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Ideally, you should start preparing for this phase in October. Begin by considering your pricing strategy and whether you’ll offer a discount.
When it comes to discounts, bigger isn’t always better.
Huge markdowns often attract price-sensitive customers who are more interested in deals than the value of your membership. These customers are more likely to churn once promotions end, resulting in a low lifetime value and less stable long-term revenue.
That quick spike of income might feel good in the short term, but in return you lose out on long-term revenue that’s more stable and adds up to a higher amount over time.
Guide: Why retention beats growth
Instead, aim for people already interested in your content who just need a little nudge to become long-term members. These are the folks who will stick around – and pay you – for months or even years.
This starts with the framing of your discounts and understanding how your audience will respond to them in different ways.
Framing Your Membership Discount
The way you present your discount can significantly impact how your audience responds.
Common options include:
- A flat dollar amount off – $X off
- A percentage discount – X% off
I recommend writing out a few ways to present your discount and using the framing that seems most valuable. For instance, I’ve seen folks frame their discounts as “get X months off”, which works too!
Whatever you do, avoid the “big, ugly sale signs” vibe that can make your offer feel cheap and questionable.
| Caution: Discounting too much (over 30-40% on yearly plans) or too frequently can devalue your brand. Remember, you’re targeting people who need a nudge, not deal-hunters who will churn quickly. |
Adding Value Without Discounting
Most creators I speak to don’t realize that discounts aren’t the only way to create a compelling offer.
An alternative and just as effective approach is to add extra value for the same price. Consider:
- Bundle deals combining your annual plan with extra content
- Offering an exclusive live stream
- Including a 1:1 coaching call
These are just some ideas to get you started–what kind of add-ons would your target audience enjoy getting for free?
Promotion Timeline
If you start promoting your offer at least one week before Black Friday, you can get ahead of the usual peak sale days. Extending your promotion until midnight on Cyber Monday allows you to make the most of the online shopping frenzy.
Once you have a defined promotion window, build out a calendar of marketing emails. While you can start teasing your promotion on social media earlier, hold off on the email announcement until your promotion is live.
Here’s an example timeline:
- One week before Black Friday: Announce that your holiday deal is live now – no need to wait for Black Friday
- Day before Thanksgiving: Send a friendly reminder
- On Thanksgiving: Consider sending a gratitude-focused email that subtly mentions the ongoing promotion
- Black Friday: Send a “don’t miss out” email
- Weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Send a reminder that the deal is still active
- Cyber Monday: Send an “last day” email
You could jot all this down, but I’ll do you one better! Download our free Holiday Resource Pack, where you’ll find everything you need from full email and social media calendar to swipe copy and more! This resource will take the guesswork out of your holiday marketing strategy and set you up for success!
Customizable email templates, expert tips, a step-by-step calendar and more!
Uscreen’s automated subscription upsell tool
Before I move on to the next stage of holiday promotions, there’s one critically important tool you NEED to use during your promotions, or you’ll be leaving money on the table: Uscreen’s automated subscription upsell tool.
This feature offers your members a one-time discount on annual plans when they’re about to sign up for a monthly subscription. It’s a powerful way to convert more customers to longer-term commitments.
XO Now upsold 293 members from monthly to annual in 3 months
XO Now, a marriage coaching video membership, activated the upsell tool and saw impressive results. In just three months, they converted 293 people from monthly to annual memberships.
This is a huge win for two reasons:
- Annual members typically have a higher retention rate.
- It provides a significant bump in immediate revenue.
Membership upsells: How to 6x your revenue with this one small change
While upsells continue to work their magic in the background during Black Friday and beyond, let’s shift our focus to the next phase of holiday marketing.
Phase 2: Holiday Hype (December 1st – 25th)
This phase is when holiday shopping reaches its peak. Your potential customers are actively seeking gifts, and existing members are looking to share their favorite content with loved ones.
If you’re running both Black Friday and Holiday Hype campaigns, it’s crucial to differentiate your offers.
Make your early Black Friday buyers feel good about their choice while still attracting new customers during the holiday season.
Let’s cover your two main strategies for the Holiday Hype (you could chose to do either or both):
1. Offer a holiday promo
Similar to the Black Friday promo logic we discussed earlier, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll:
- offer a discount, or
- offer added value for the same price
Whatever you decide, make sure it’s a smaller promo (discount or perceived value) than your Black Friday promo discount (if you offered one).
Personally, I would only do a discount for one of them and find another approach for the second campaign (like adding value without discounting).
2. Sell your membership as the perfect gift
You can differentiate by framing your membership as the perfect holiday gift and selling gift cards. If you haven’t already, now’s the time to create a gift card landing page using Uscreen’s builder.
How to Use Gift Cards to Boost Your Holiday Sales
Take inspiration from the yoga membership Namastrip Online – their gift card page shows potential customers exactly how their loved ones will benefit. It includes suggested gift amounts, explains the gifting process, and even has an FAQ section to address common questions.
Gift card sales tend to spike on December 24th. So make sure those last-minute shoppers can easily find your gift cards by adding the new landing pages to your site navigation and linking to them from your social media accounts.
Social Media Strategy for the holiday hype
For your social media timeline, I recommend starting your campaign no later than December 10th. Starting your holiday social media campaign 15-20 days before Christmas day gives people enough time to buy gifts early.
But here’s the key: Your social media strategy doesn’t have to be nonstop sales pitches. The winners here are the ones who engage their followers often, and sharing the promotion just feels like an extension of what you’re already talking about with them.
As an example, I often see fitness creators do Q&As on their Instagram stories.
They always end up answering questions about their diet, routines, movements, favorite foods, family, or whatever else. And inevitably, every time at some point in the Q&A they’ll answer a question and tie it to their membership or their offer and provide a link to it. It works like a charm.
Customizable email templates, expert tips, a step-by-step calendar and more!
Email Marketing for Holiday Hype
For email, the timeline is similar, but looks a little different than the Black Friday campaign because that was a short window with a limited time offer. The Holiday Hype period is longer and more value-driven, so the timeline is adjusted to suit that.
Ultimately, sending a promotion announcement, a “one week to go” email before your promotion ends, and a “last minute” reminder on the 24th are a good minimum.
Tips for Both Phases
Before you go and start building your own holiday promotion calendar, there are a few things you should know that will help you in both phases – and into the new year.
1. Use price anchoring:
Remember how we discussed framing and its impact on how your audience perceives discounts?
Let’s take that a step further with price anchoring. This strategy makes one price look attractive compared to another. You know how at restaurants, a large drink often costs just a liiiiittle more than a medium?
Suddenly, the large seems like a great deal!
You can apply this same principle to your membership pricing. One popular method is pricing annual plans at the same price as 10 or 11 months of monthly access, so your potential customers see it as getting two free months.
That’s the strategy used by Crochet With Tiffany to make signing up for an annual membership even more appealing.
5 signs your membership pricing is too low
2. Tracking Your Success
Last but certainly not least, tracking your metrics closely over these two holiday phases is the key to determining if your promotions are a success, and where you can improve next time.
It’s easy to go down a data rabbit hole, so if you want a top-level overview these are the two most important metrics:
- New Subscriber Growth: This is your north star metric for acquisition efforts. It directly shows how effective your holiday promotions are at bringing in new members.
- Revenue Increase: Look at the breakdown by plan type, not just total revenue. Are your annual plans selling as well as you’d hoped? And how much is coming from gift card sales? This granular view can help you fine-tune your offerings for next year.
The Secret to Holiday Success for Your Membership
The secret to holiday success is not about offering the biggest discounts.
It’s about strategic planning, leveraging your platform’s tools, and focusing on providing value to both new and existing members.
Here’s to your membership success!
