How to Create a Holiday Gift Guide Your Customers Will Love (2024)

Source: https://getsitecontrol.com/blog/how-to-make-and-promote-holiday-gift-guides/

Charlene Boutin Feb 17, 2023 — 9 min read

Over thelast 10 years, holiday sales in theretail industry have increased by 4.9%. Andholiday gifts are an important part of thecustomer experience.

One of thebest ways to drive sales forthe holidays is by creating a gift guide foryour retail brand. But while holiday gift guides can become a powerful asset, they can also fall flat when done wrong.

Let’s dive into how to create theperfect holiday gift guide to boost sales andre-engage your customers at every major holiday of theyear.

What is a holiday gift guide?

A holiday gift guide is a curated list of products to guide customers through their purchasing decisions fora specific holiday. Many people instantly think of theNovember andDecember holiday season, but gift guides can be useful formany other holidays, such as:

• Valentine’s day
• Mother’s day
• Father’s day
• St. Patrick’s day
• Easter
• Earth day
• Halloween

There are many more holidays to create gift guides for, depending on thecountry where you sell your products.

A holiday gift guide can be a simple landing page on your website or a PDF available as a lead magnet in exchange foran email:

6 Reasons to create a holiday gift guide

Wondering whether it’s worth theeffort to create a holiday gift guide foryour brand? Let’s look at thesix most significant benefits you andyour customers can get from it.

1. Inspire your customers with thoughtful curation

Choosing theperfect gift can be tricky foryour customers — especially when they’re bombarded with an endless list of choices.

Themore choices you make available to customers, thelonger it can take forthem to make a decision. This principle is known as Hick’s Law.

Too many choices can overwhelm customers who are already under enough pressure of gift-hunting. On theother hand, a thoughtfully curated list of gifts can guide andinspire them to find theperfect item.

Forexample, Urban Barn has gone beyond traditional “forhim”/“forher” categories, andalso curated lists of gift suggestions “forhosts”, “fortrendsetters”, andso on:

2. Promote products that deserve attention

A gift guide can highlight products that customers would rarely see otherwise — or that they would never have thought of looking forin thefirst place.

You can also use this principle to increase sales forproducts that you want to clear out quickly.

3. Remind customers about your brand

Do you have several past customers who haven’t opened an email or purchased from you in a while? Holiday gift guides can generate interest andremind existing customers of why they fell in love with your products in thefirst place.

You can use a gift guide to re-engage a segment of your email list that has gone cold.

That’s because thegift guide can incentivize them to open your emails again.

Andanyone who doesn’t open a single email from your gift guide promotion sequence can go straight to a list scrub sequence. This will help you improve your deliverability andmake sure your emails don’t end up in spam.

4. Boost lifetime customer value

Your gift guide won’t just bring back disengaged customers — it can encourage your entire customer list to make additional purchases. This, in turn, can help you boost your lifetime customer value.

In thelong run, thehigher your LCV, thefewer new customers you’ll need to generate to increase your revenue. Andbecause acquiring a new customer is between five to seven times more expensive than retaining an old one, increasing your LCV is a great way to boost ROI.

Your existing audience will love a gift guide. But so will new audiences.

A well-designed holiday gift guide can become a highly shareable piece of content that has thepotential to go viral. That’s why magazines, online or print, still create gift guides to encourage clicks andtraffic.

Not only can a gift guide help you tap into new audiences, but it can also give you an SEO boost if several other websites link back to it.

6. Grow your email list

A holiday gift guide is a great way to entice new website visitors to join your email list. You can promote your holiday gift guide like any other lead magnet, such as with a popup:

Forexample, you can replace your usual lead magnet with a holiday-themed one to provide a more timely reason forpeople to opt-in today.

Convinced of thebenefits of creating your own gift guide? Follow these steps to make sure you craft a successful, high-converting holiday gift guide forevery holiday of theyear.

1. Analyze data from sales andemail marketing software

Thefirst step to making sure your holiday gift guide converts well is to start with theright data.

What are people buying during this holiday? Andwhat are people clicking on most from your email newsletters around that time?

Resist theurge to guess what people want to see in your gift guide.

Your data will be themost reliable way to tell what your customers’ favorites are.

Make sure to involve your team in this process, too. Forexample, if you have a sales team, they’ll have more insight into what products are trending during which holidays.

2. Pick an audience

Who will your gift guide be for?

You can create a gift guide that’s designed foreveryone in your audience. Alternatively, you can target a specific segment of your audience that’s more likely to be interested in one category of your products.

Andif you’ve been segmenting your email list, it’ll be much easier to analyze what audience segments you have.

Alternatively, you can create a single gift guide with different product bundles inside. But we’ll cover how to do this in Step 6.

3. Research product trends

Your store’s data should be an important factor in how you create your holiday gift guide. But you should also look at outside trends within your niche.

If you source your products from other suppliers, don’t hesitate to reach out to those brands directly with your questions. They’ll have information not just from your store, but from their other distributors as well.

Another way to discover trends is by using research tools such as Google Trends. Forexample, they have a report for2022 Shopping Trends andwill likely have a similar report for2024.

You can also look at Pinterest to see what keywords about your niche andyour specific holiday have a high search volume.

4. Come up with your product list

Now that you’ve got thedata you need to make an informed decision about what goes in your holiday gift guide, it’s time to make a decision.

Keep a good balance between variety andcuration. Too few products will make your holiday gift guide little more than a regular sales newsletter. But too many products will overwhelm customers just as much as shopping on your website.

There’s no perfect number of products to feature — it all depends on how you plan to organize them (see next step).

If you’re not sure about how your customers will perceive your gift guide, you can survey a segment of your email list to get feedback before promoting theguide to everyone.

5. Choose a name andorganization strategy

There are endless ways to set up andorganize a gift guide. But how you organize it will define how people experience it, too.

Your gift guide’s name should also be related to how you organize it. Forexample, Lush launched a 12 Days of Christmas gift guide with 11 limited-edition products andone year-round “surprise”:

You can organize your gift guide by:

Interests/personality:

Product category:

Age:

Price:

Gender:

Specific problems theproducts solve:

Recipient type (kids, parents, partner, friends, coworker, etc):

Some gift guides contain categories foreach of theabove, too. But remember that too many choices can overwhelm your customers.

Instead of creating a section forevery possible gift category, focus on theones that make sense foryour brand andaudience.

Forexample, don’t add an Age category if your products are only designed forone age group (or foreveryone). Andit wouldn’t make sense to add a Budget or Price category if you target high-end shoppers.

6. Bundle your products

Your holiday gift guide can contain single products in each category. But you can also bundle products together into gift sets.

Bundles benefit both you andyour customers. They can increase your average order value while making it easy foryour customers to find perfectly curated sets.

7. Build andformat your gift guide

Once you know every product andbundle you want to include, it’s time to finally build your holiday gift guide.

Forexample, you’ll need to choose a featured image foreach clickable category (if applicable). But you’ll also need to decide where to host theguide. Forexample, you can use:

• A dedicated landing page
• A carefully designed PDF
• A blog post
• An email newsletter

At this step, you’ll also have to decide whether your gift guide is freely available or if you want to offer it as a lead magnet. But no matter which choice you make, you should adopt a few design best practices to make your gift guide pleasant to consume:

• Optimize your gift guide formobile devices
• Add some white space to reduce theoverwhelm
• Make your call-to-action buttons stand out andeasy to click on
• Use high-quality images
• Keep your gift guide on-brand

You can use Canva to design your gift guide if you plan to create a PDF.

8. Promote your gift guide

All theefforts you invest in creating your holiday gift guide will only pay off if you promote it.

Let’s look at themain methods you can use.

Add a popup or banner on your website

Make themost of thevisitors you’re getting on your website by redirecting them to your gift guide.

If your gift guide is available freely, you can add a banner-style popup that links directly to theguide or to its categories:

But if you’re using your gift guide as a lead magnet, you can create an opt-in pop-up form instead.

Promote it on social media

If you have an audience on social media, don’t forget to promote your gift guide on those platforms.

You can adapt your gift guide to make it easily accessible directly on social media, like Betty’s Bookshelf below:

People can see what’s in thegift guide without leaving Instagram. That gives theguide more shareability within theplatform.

If you go this route, you can create Shoppable posts to allow users to buy directly from theapp.

Alternatively, you can promote thegift guide by sending your followers to a link in your bio. This is a better option if your guide is a lead magnet (or if you want to maximize thetraffic on your website).

Depending on your budget, you can use paid social media ads to increase your reach as well.

Create an email campaign

Whether your holiday gift guide is a lead magnet or not, you should promote it to your existing email subscribers — especially previous buyers.

Don’t just send a single email andcall it a day, either. Not everyone will open your first email — according to Mailchimp, theaverage open rate forretail brands is 18.39%.

You can create an entire campaign dedicated to your gift guide by giving each email a different focus.

Here are a few examples of some emails to add to your campaign:

• An initial announcement about your holiday gift guide
• Who is this gift guide for
• Highlight a specific bundle or category in your gift guide (you can create one email foreach bundle you want to highlight)
• Final reminder to access thegift guide

If you have subscriber segments that would enjoy a particular category in your bundle, consider sending personalized emails to make theguide more interesting forthem.

9. Partner with other brands

You don’t have to create a holiday gift guide alone. Consider partnering with other brands whose products complement yours to create a single viral gift guide.

When more than one brand comes together fora single gift guide, you’ll tap into theaudience of each brand to promote it. Forexample, if you sell bathing suits, you could partner with an accessory brand to add sandals, sunglasses, andother beach accessories to a single gift guide.

Launch your holiday gift guide to boost your sales

Now you have everything you need to plan, create, andlaunch your gift guide forany holiday this year. Andif you’re looking fora simple way to promote your holiday gift guide on your website (anduse it to grow your list), look no further than Getsitecontrol.

Getsitecontrol makes it easy foranyone to create stunning popups that boost conversions. Try it forfree to see it in action!