Foresight and strategic planning are crucial in the constantly changing world of e-commerce. Important dates and events can dramatically impact your company’s performance on the calendar. Aligning your marketing strategy with these events, from major holidays to seasonal shopping frenzies, is a definite way to increase engagement and sales.

Experts say that consumers spent a whopping $886.7 billion in 2022 during the US holiday season of November and December. In the same year, holiday sales saw an increase of 14.1%.

This in-depth guide examines the essential e-commerce calendar for the second half of 2023, highlighting the significant occasions that demand your attention and participation.

July

Independence Day (July 4th): The US observes Independence Day with ardent patriotism as the year’s second half draws close. This offers e-commerce companies a fantastic chance to draw customers’ attention. Create your campaigns with freedom and patriotism in mind, using traditional flag colors. Promotions and discounts on various goods can draw customers looking for event souvenirs.

August

Back-to-School Season: As summer draws close, families prepare for the upcoming school year. The range includes a variety of goods in addition to books and stationery. Consider items like clothes, shoes, electronics, furniture, and dorm room necessities. Take advantage of the spirit of fresh starts by segmenting your offerings to appeal to people of different ages, from young children to college students.

September

Labor Day (September 4th): On the first Monday in September, people nationwide are recognized for their efforts. Profit from the long weekend by providing special offers showing appreciation for your consumers’ loyalty. Discounts on various goods, from fashion to electronics, might draw customers wanting to maximize their holiday break.

October

Halloween (October 31st): Halloween, a joyous holiday, marks the end of October. Think creatively, including decorations, party supplies, themed home items, costumes, and candy. By creating a variety that caters to spooky items, e-commerce enterprises can capitalize on the Halloween frenzy. Give your Halloween items an air of exclusivity by giving special bundles and limited-edition goods.

November

• Veterans Day (November 11th): Veterans’ sacrifices are commemorated on this day. Make special campaigns that provide veterans and their families discounts as a sign of respect. Showing your customers how much you care about them will strengthen your brand’s relationship and encourage client loyalty.
• Thanksgiving (November 23rd): Thanksgiving, a day of giving thanks and spending time with family, falls on the fourth Thursday of November. This is a perfect time to run special deals in online shopping. You can build anticipation by tantalizing your deals well in advance and promoting things that go well with gatherings and gift-giving.
• Black Friday (November 24th): Unquestionably one of the most eagerly awaited shopping occasions worldwide, Black Friday is a day of unrivaled deals and discounts. Ensure your online store’s platform is prepared to manage the increase in traffic and sales. Conversion-driven, time-sensitive ads can boost your Black Friday success by increasing conversions.
• Cyber Monday (November 27th): Cyber Monday, an online shopping craze, is the Black Friday of the digital world. Enhance the user experience of your website by showcasing special online offers as a way to get ready. You can expand your audience by using social media and email marketing.

December

• Christmas (December 25th): Christmas, which marks the end of the holiday season, is when more people give gifts and celebrate. Offer a carefully picked assortment of gifts for your online store, ranging from inexpensive stocking stuffers to high-end products. Consider incorporating gift guides and expedited shipping options to accommodate last-minute purchases.
• Boxing Day (December 26th): Boxing Day is the next day in the post-Christmas shopping frenzy and is noted for markdowns and clearance discounts. Cut back on excessive inventory while attracting customers with tempting offers. Using the correct promotion, you can ensure that consumers know about your online store even after the holiday rush.
• New Year’s Eve (December 31st): As the year ends, e-commerce businesses can participate in New Year’s Eve celebrations. Draw attention to celebration-related goods like attire, party supplies, and health things that meet new year’s resolutions.

Preparing for the Retail Sales Holidays

You can prepare for the retail sales holidays in two parts:

• Bringing all the shoppers to your store
• Ensure all the shoppers leave your store completely satisfied with what they bought.

The 1st part accentuates the significance of holiday marketing, which includes:

• Pop-up stores
• Discounts
• Promotional emails
• Giveaways
• Gift guides
• Paid advertisements
• Social media activities
• Window display

But you can map out your marketing advance because of the retail holiday calendar. That way, you can easily plan out and develop the visual content, prepare the website in a timely manner, write down all the emails, and partner up with businesses or influencers.

When you want to open up a holiday pop-up store at a fair or market, this will surely give you plenty of time to take care of the logistics.

The 2nd part keeps its focus on the entire shopping experience and all the things that are included in it. There are some questions that you can utilize to optimize the store for holiday shopping. These questions are:

• How to prepare the product inventory and offering?
• Is it necessary to hire some temporary staff members?
• How to effectively organize the staff shift schedules?
• How to opt for store samplings or demos to magnify customer satisfaction and foot traffic?
• Is it possible to provide all the order fulfillment options, such as curbside pickup, purchase online, or in-store pickup?
• Will it be alright to move the physical store to the online platform to avoid crowds and serve all the customers during the holiday season?

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Final Remarks

To successfully navigate the e-commerce world, one must thoroughly understand the elements affecting consumer behavior. Be proactive, adaptable, and conscious of the shifting needs of your clients. By aligning your marketing initiatives with the e-commerce calendar from July to December 2023, you can position your business for maximum success.

For all the online retailers, excess inventory can be a massive issue. It’s mainly because when this inventory is left unsold, it will keep accruing the carrying cost.  This can be a costly proposition because experts say that the carrying cost is around 20% to 30% of the entire inventory cost of a business. Having excess inventory is also bad for the cash flow.

It’s mainly because excess inventory can lessen the profit margins, increase the inventory cost, can cause overstocking, and will lead to dead stock. But there are several methods through which you can easily terminate the excess inventory. Let’s find out what they are!

Terminating excess inventory: How to get it done?

There are some great ways through which you easily get rid of all the extra inventory. These are:

• Build promotions on the extra products

If you want to sell all the extra products from your inventory, you should try promoting them when the competition is less. That way, you can also reach all those customers who are looking for deals on products.

• Concentrate on the products

Effective segmentation can lead to the proper advertisement. You can segment all your promotions through the “Google Merchant Promotions” on various product sets so that you can move all those items.

• Modify the feed

In the Bing and Google feeds, utilize the custom labels. That way, you can flag all those item sets that have a high inventory. After that, you can create more campaigns around those product sets.

• Offer a gift

To get rid of the excess inventory, you can give all your low-cost items as a gift to your customers when they make a purchase.

• Advertise the product bundles

Bundling all the items together is an excellent way for all online retailers to advertise their products, move inventory and also raise awareness for specific products. To promote all these product bundles, you can opt for advertisement campaigns, which will last till the holiday or seasonal period. There are some effective ways you can publicize the product bundles, which are:

• Retarget all your former or existing customers 
• Get more targeted customers through Amazon Advertising 
• Use sponsored display advertisements to raise awareness for the products by directly targeting the competitor ASINS.
• Choose sponsored videos to show all the customers the branded content, which is a new and unique way to eliminate excess inventory. 

Segment the email list.

Send emails to all the historical and recent consumers to give them a reminder about your product line and business. When segmenting the email list, you should make one for all those customers who look for offers and deals.

Selling strategies that can help you sell off excess products

When you’re planning to use the selling method to terminate the extra inventory, there are several strategies that can help:

• Augment the product listings

It’s crucial to optimize product listings. Check to see if any improvements are needed, think about the customers, and take a look at how they shop, where to do they shop, and what they’re planning to get this year, season, and month.  You should revisit the search terms and tweak and update them by adding new details on the products, which will be valuable for the search outcomes.

• Expand to new regions or marketplaces 

Expanding to new areas and also marketplaces is ideal for all online retailers as it will provide them with new customers. It will allow you to trade all the extra products present in your inventory.

• Find new regions in your marketplace 

Choosing international markets to sell your products can help you increase your sales and consumer base. But you don’t need to learn about a marketplace where you’re using online platforms like Amazon to sell your products.

Its Global Selling program has a cross-border trade option, and your products will be available to all those customers who are already shopping at Amazon.

• Test out all the new social channels

Apart from using Facebook or YouTube to promote your products, you can now utilize other social channels, such as Instagram and TikTok, to raise awareness for your products. That way, you can increase the product sale and also gain new customers.

• Get rid of friction from the buying path

All your email advertising, social ads, and other digital touchpoints have a shoppable solution; you must eliminate all the issues from the purchase path. That way, you can turn all the interested individuals into consumers.

Recheck the completion process.

You need to make some primary changes in the fulfillment procedure, and it should apply to not just the excess inventory but to all the inventory. You also might want to see some changes in the fulfillment approach apart from adding new channels, deals, and discounts.

Last Note 

To get rid of the surplus products and work on your business objectives, you should experiment with various strategies. You can gain more information and speak with an e-commerce consultant from ChannelSale and learn how you can magnify your e-commerce business.

Every consumer wishes to have an outstanding experience when they shop from an online store or business. It’s because around 86% of consumers leave a business or brand within 2 seconds because of poor experiences.

Experts have even provided evidence that back in 2022, around 49% of consumers left a brand because of poor customer experience. So, if you want all the consumers to have an excellent customer journey by shopping from your brand, you need a good strategy for it.

There are several ways through which you can easily create an excellent strategy that will help simplify the whole consumer journey. These are:

Personalize the entire experience 

In today’s modern world, personalized service is no longer an option, but it has become crucial. Many customers these days want brands to anticipate all their needs and around 63% of them want to have a personalized experience.

Besides that, 37% of the consumers have claimed that they will not purchase any product or do business with brands that do not provide a personalized experience. Due to such reasons, many businesses have opted for personalized strategies to increase their revenue.

One of the best ways companies can offer personalized experiences is by providing discounts and offers based on consumer behavior. Brands can also provide personalized suggestions to offer their consumers the best experience.

Enhance the UI [User Experience] Navigation 

When the website is not that easy to navigate, it will become difficult for all the customers to fulfill their end goals. Low-quality user experience can frustrate the customers, and they might end up abandoning the application or the website.

Based on 61% of web designers, poor navigation is one of the primary reasons why many customers and visitors leave a particular website. It’s extremely crucial for a business’s website to outline the journey the visitors must take to reach their end goals.

All websites should use logically arranged, easy-to-locate and clear buttons for the navigation menus.

Make the website optimized for the mobile 

Experts have pointed out that 59% of web traffic comes from mobile phones. Many website design companies have also said that the primary reason why people leave websites is that they do not function properly on mobile devices.

Brands optimize their website design for smartphone devices by reducing the size so that it loads faster on the small screen. Besides that, brands have to make sure that their website responds perfectly when consumers access it from their mobile devices.

This will not just provide the consumers with an excellent experience but will also enable them to purchase all the products or items from the website.

Last Note 

Every consumer wants to purchase from a brand that has an outstanding and highly responsive website. That way, they will not just have an excellent experience but will also allow them to navigate from one page to another on the site.

Besides that, businesses should also make their website mobile optimized so that people can access them from their respective mobile devices whenever they want.