Marketing Advice and Content Ideas for January

January is here, which means it’s time for New Year’s resolutions (both making and breaking them ? ).

Of course, I’m not advocating that you give up on your resolutions — particularly if those resolutions are about improving your marketing.

But, it can be seriously tough to keep coming up with new ideas for content and marketing promotions every month, leaving even the most dedicated marketers wishing their list of resolutions stopped at that new trendy diet.

In order to give you a little extra help, we are launching a series of monthly articles that lay out:

• Important dates that you can use in your marketing
• Seasonal ideas for special marketing campaigns
• Marketing tips to help you shape your strategy for each month

Important Dates and Events for Marketing in January

European Winter Sales (Jan 10 – Feb 20)

Every year around this time, European stores hold a massive clearance sale to clear out items from the previous season.

Many countries in Europe have set dates that are established by the government. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t take a page out of the European playbook and host a sale of your own! This is a great time to have a sale because you can entice shoppers to spend some of that holiday cash while clearing out your inventory from last season. Win-win!

Make Your Dreams Come True Day (Jan 13)

This holiday is dedicated to doing something you’ve always wanted to do. Give your customers some encouragement to pursue their dreams through social media posts.

International Hugging Day (Jan 21)

This is the perfect occasion to battle the seasonal depression your contacts likely experience thanks to those cold winter months. Since you can’t deliver sunshine, try sending your contacts a virtual hug via email.

International Data Privacy Day (Jan 28)

With all of the innovation in technology these days, data privacy has become more and more important for customers and businesses alike. This is especially true considering the impending implementation of the GDPR in Europe. If you have European customers, make sure that your email marketing is in compliance with the new regulation.

January Marketing Advice

Plan out your goals for 2018

The new year is a perfect time to establish your goals for the coming year — both personal and professional!

You can start by spending less money on tools that you can get for free so you can free up funds for more things that are higher on your priority list.

This is also a perfect time to do some email list cleaning to ensure that your contacts are only those customers who are truly interested in hearing from you.

Out with the old, in with the new

Holding a clearance sale in January will help you get rid of last season’s inventory and help you usher in a successful new year of sales.

Need help developing a winning ecommerce email marketing strategy? Check out this email marketing case study on some of the most successful ecommerce brands to gather some best practices for your store!

Try out marketing automation

Starting fresh can also mean trying new ideas. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to try out marketing automation for your business to see how it can help you save time.

Here are a few example marketing automation workflows to get you started!

January is a time for getting organized

Now that you’re finally starting to recover from all of those holiday cookies (I never want to see gingerbread again), you have the perfect opportunity to plan out your marketing.

To help you out, we created an ecommerce marketing calendar to help you plan around all of the important events in the upcoming year and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. We hope it will help you achieve all of your goals for 2018!