Four Seasonal Events Every Retailer Should Use to Drive Sales

The four seasonal events that can prop up your sales in the first half of the year

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Catherine Erdly: So with Christmas well behind us, maybe you’re thinking that the big seasonal event of the year is done and we’re back to business as usual. Well, in today’s episode, what I wanted to highlight is all of the different other seasonal opportunities that there are throughout the year and really encourage you to think about how you can use those to drive your sales as well.

Hi, I’m Catherine Erdly. I’m the founder of the Resilient Retail Club, and I’m also the host of today’s podcast. I’m a small business and retail expert with 24 years in the retail industry. And I want to tell you all about how you can use your seasonal events to drive your sales.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Eardley. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and [00:01:00] tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry and showing you how you can use them in your business.

This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good. Confidently plan, launch, and manage your products, and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

Catherine Erdly: The reason that I wanted to do this episode is that one of the big things that I often talk to people about is how to look for ways to talk to their customers and to create promotions, themes around their business that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with discounts. But it’s something that gives you an opportunity to talk to your customer about something different and to really communicate with them [00:02:00] and excite their imagination.

And I wanted to talk about seasonal events because we are running into a time of year where there are a lot of different, big tentpole events, as the phrase goes. I like that phrase. That kind of events that are propping up can prop up your sales throughout the whole first half of the year if you want them to. And those are Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day are the big four. And there may be other ones as well.

In fact, as you’re listening to today’s episode, I would really encourage you to think about any events that could be used in a similar way, but maybe are really specific to your business. World Book Day, for example, could be another one. Or things to do with Earth Day. Or Fair Trade Fortnight or anything like that, but really thinking about them all in a similar way. So we have got the big events and then we’ve got the small events. But really your approach to them can be quite similar.

You can become quite consistent. In a way, [00:03:00] everything that we talk about for Christmas, thinking about themed marketing, thinking about getting yourself ready in lots of time. That’s all really relevant to these seasonal events as well, albeit on a smaller scale. For most people, Christmas will remain your biggest event of the year.

But what I wanted to do today was really encourage you to think strategically about how to use these events to drive your sales. And the reason that I am passionate about this topic is because I do think it’s something that is slightly underused now, obviously some small business owners. You’ll be listening to this thinking, “Yeah, I’ve got this nailed.”

I know what i’m doing for all of these different events. But then for some of you, you may find yourself kind of waking up on the 7th of February and thinking, “Oh, maybe I should do something for Valentine’s Day.” And really one of the big differences that I see between big business that I spent, you know, nearly two decades in big businesses.

They really, really had this nailed. They thought very carefully about their offering for all of the different occasions. They might even create full [00:04:00] ranges, or full product selections just for that event. And they never left it to chance. It was always planned out well in advance and usually up to a year in advance.

So Valentine’s 2025, for example, for most retailers probably began thinking about it straight after Valentine’s 2024.

And I do think as small business owners you’ve got the added benefit that you can be flexible. I’m not saying that you have to get absolutely everything mapped out to the nth degree far in advance, in a year in advance. You can be much more reactive. But it’s striking the balance between being able to be responsive and leaving yourself feeling like you’re always scrambling.

If you are a gift giving brand, then Valentine’s and Mother’s Day, particularly if you’ve got a strong female customer base, then they are really, really key events for you. So these are not things that you want to leave to chance. And I definitely recommend that you at least think about incorporating them into your marketing [00:05:00] plan for the first half of the year.

Why seasonal events matter for growth

Catherine Erdly: So, why is it important or why are seasonal events a growth opportunity? Well, put most basically, this is a time when consumers have a reason to buy. Customers are primed to spend, they’re looking for gifts, they’re looking for deals, they’re looking for experiences, and so I often talk about retail as a game of probability.

And you want to be thinking about whether it should be on your marketing, on your website, in your store. When you’re leading at a certain time you want to be leading with the thing that people are most likely to be looking for. So these seasonal events, these are great opportunities for you to align what you’re leading with what your customer wants. They’re not always that obvious.

They’re not always that apparent. You often have to put a lot of time and thought and effort at other times of the year into thinking what people might be looking for. But realistically, on the 7th of February, people are most likely if you’re a gifting brand to be looking for a Valentine’s or Palentine’s, or pet [00:06:00] Valentine’s, whatever it is, they’re going to be looking for that kind of gift.

So the seasonal events, they provide maybe a natural hook for your marketing. They help you stand out and they help you talk directly to what your customer is thinking about. People’s spending behaviors often influenced by the zeitgeist as it were, what’s going on all around them at the time. So if they’re immersed deep into Valentine’s, it’s also going to create less resistance to buying from you if what you’re offering is tying in with that as well.

The other reason that I like seasonal events is that they can actually be quite fun. I think that they can be really fun if you almost think about it like a creative writing prompt. I don’t know if you’ve ever done creative writing, maybe at school or maybe you’ve done a course or something like that.

But very often what you’re given is like a prompt. You have to come up with a story around a particular theme that you’re given. And then you have to kind of see how it goes. You can make it work for what you want to write about and [00:07:00] it’s often like that with these seasonal events It can be quite a fun way of embracing your creativity.

Okay. Well, how would I create something around Mother’s Day? How would I create something around Father’s Day? And it’s not to say that every event or every seasonal event is right for you as a business owner. You do have to think about the ones that work for you, and some will and some won’t. And sometimes you have to experiment as well, but also you can embrace it as a bit of a creative prompt if you like. Or think of it as your creative writing prompt. And also to be honest sometimes week in, week out coming up with ideas and plans for your marketing can be tricky.

If you know that you’ve got going to be talking about Mother’s Day for four weeks in a row, then that’s actually quite a good thing because it’s telling you, right, I’m going to talk about this. You don’t have to think much deeper than that. You can just be really clear that at this point in time, customers are most likely to be looking for a Mother’s Day gift.

Therefore that’s what I’m going to be thinking and talking about.

How to work out which seasonal events are right for you

Catherine Erdly: So how do you work out what are the right ones for you? Well, I think [00:08:00] ultimately partly it’s about your product. So clearly if you sell things mainly aimed at men, then probably Mother’s Day is not going to be a great one for you. But then Father’s Day might be brilliant. If you sell things mainly for women, then perhaps Father’s Day is not going to be the greatest event for you. So there will be some things that are pretty obvious that they just won’t work.

Some things you maybe aren’t really sure or never really tried, in which case it’s always good to experiment. And I would say even if you’ve tried it before but it didn’t work, I still think it’s worth trying it again in a different way, just in case you haven’t quite captured what the customer wants at that time.

I mean, obviously, if you don’t keep flogging a dead horse, but there’s a lot of things that you can do. If you have really just tried something once and you didn’t really put that much effort into it. And you just sent out one email talking about your Valentine’s Day offer and that was all, then that is maybe something that is worth exploring again in a [00:09:00] different way.

Also, just to say, don’t forget, we’re not always thinking, right, on Valentine’s Day, I’m going to send out an email featuring my pink and red jewelry and expect to sell loads of it. What you might find is that just the fact you sent that email and it looked interesting, people clicked on it. They may have gone to your website and bought something completely different.

This isn’t always about selling very specifically something for that occasion. It’s about just being there present and relevant at the time that your customers are thinking about a certain event. Think about your target audience. Think about what would align with them. This is when you can also start thinking about those smaller events as well.

So like the less saturated or more niche events, something like World Book Day or International Coffee Day, for example. Who knows? Those could be things that you could consider as well. There are always, if you Google “awareness days,”

Catherine Erdly: you’ll get a list of awareness days. If you’re inside the Resilient Retail Club, we have got our monthly marketing planners. They have awareness days on as well. But it’s worth just having a look through and thinking about the ones that would really resonate. [00:10:00] And really ultimately, it’s about getting prepared.

In an ideal world, you’d be looking two to three months ahead, at least for your general outline. So for example, at this point now, having a think about what you’d want to do for Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, Easter, for example, would be a really good place to be. Now for some of you, especially if you’re card brands who wholesale, I know that sounds specific, but there are a lot of you out there.

You may well have already created these ranges, because retailers often will be in the January and February trade shows buying for those particular events. So you may have already got this all sorted, but for everybody else, that’s the kind of thing I think two to three months ahead is probably a really good place for you to look at and think about, you know, do you want to create new products for these events?

Do you want to just think about maybe slightly amending existing products? Like, what do you want to do? But you need to give yourself time to actually think and plan this stuff out.

3 ways to build a campaign with real impact

Catherine Erdly: So now that you have selected the events that you want to focus on, how do you actually go about creating a campaign that has [00:11:00] impact? Well, first off, I would encourage you to think about a theme. Now, it doesn’t have to be super inventive and different. It could just be, you know, Valentine’s gifts for you or Valentine’s gifts for your loved ones or Valentine’s gifts for your friends.

It could be something as simple as that, but do think about giving a campaign or a series of marketing event activities. Basically do think about giving it a particular unique identity, just like you did at Christmas. So you may well have had Christmas Imagery. You may have had Christmas graphics or Christmas color schemes that you use.

You can do exactly the same thing for these festive events. Now, it doesn’t mean that you have to go out there and pay out for additional imagery, which can be very expensive. It could be that you maybe slightly amend things that you’ve already got, or you just select the things that really fit with your theme. So think about the colors, the language, the kind of imagery that all feeds [00:12:00] into that particular type of event. And then think about creating a bit of an identity for that campaign. So for example, summer can also be equally could be a seasonal campaign.

There’s lots of things you could do around sunshine savings or something to do with, you know, getting out there and enjoying the summer. So if you were doing a summer campaign, you might choose very bright, colorful colors and just give it an overall kind of identity that still fits within your brand, but makes people really understand that this is a coherent campaign.

So we’re going to talk a little bit more about touch points later on, but consistency builds trust. If your customer sees an email that matches a graphic on your homepage, matches some of your social media graphics or matches what’s in your window, then that does give them a feeling of trust and consistency that is really helpful.

And also because [00:13:00] it’s actually frustrating if you’re a customer, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience from a customer perspective. But let’s say somebody sends out an email talking about their Valentine’s Day range, and then you go onto their website and you actually can’t find what they talked about in the email, then that can be frustrating in itself.

So do think about giving something a complete identity. And just making it consistent across touch points. Now, we’re not talking about having to go out and create bespoke graphics for everything. If you really feel like actually, I really don’t want to do something that isn’t in my brand colors or doesn’t really work.

My branding doesn’t really work like that. Then you could just think about the language or the look of what the campaign is going to be about and creating a similar tone. Or a similar language, vocabulary that will work for the whole campaign across all touch points. Even if visually then you’re sticking with your main branding. So that is the the first thing to think about is creating a theme. And this is the bit where I can get creative. If you are somebody who really enjoys coming up with creative ideas. Like think [00:14:00] about what does Valentine’s mean to you?

Or what does Mother’s Day mean for you? Do you want to talk about like a celebration of women and turn Mother’s Day into a whole celebration of women who help us in different ways? Even if they’re mothers or women who support us and have nurtured us in different ways? And what could that mean?

Could you do series of blog posts about it? Or a social media post? Or it’s like getting people to celebrate or nominate people who’ve played an important role in their lives. There’s all different kinds of things that you can do, but it’s good to start with that idea of a theme. And yeah have some fun with it.

The second thing is think about what you’re then offering. So this is the perfect time you can certainly think about bundles is a good one. So for example, people with gift giving, they often want to be able to just select something and have it sent. If you know people are selecting a Valentine’s Day gift, you may want to select various different items and put them together. Now, maybe there’s a slight discount for buying multiple items. [00:15:00] Maybe it’s that there’s no discount, but you put it in a gift box. For example, there’s lots of different things that you can do there, but do think about theming some offers around the time of year and that tie in.

So for example, if you’re a candle brand and it’s Mother’s Day, you could have a special gift box that is a candle for your mother and an eye pillow or something like that. Something that makes it really nice and relaxing. But thinking about, just like we talked about the Christmas, thinking about gifting, thinking about what could you pull together.

It’s also a really, really fun way of tying in things like limited time offers or exclusive products. So for example, you might collaborate, let’s say, go back to the idea of a candle brand, collaborating with a local artist to create a specific range of Valentine’s themed candles. And it could be that the packaging is particularly themed, but [00:16:00] it’s limited edition and it’s just, you know, small quantity or something like that.

So that’s another way of creating excitement, but it’s easier to do that once you’ve got that theme. So if you know what your theme is, gifts for friends is going to be your theme, Palantine’s is going to be your theme. Then that can really feed into what products you want to pull together.

And you know, you definitely don’t have to create specific products for each seasonal holiday. But you can think about it if you want to, if you want to add in those little extras or those little additional sort of limited edition, it all helps add to the buzz and helps add to the excitement. You can, of course, do discounts if you want to some people will do offers Valentine’s Day offers or Mother’s Day offers. But actually I think that doesn’t sit as well.

I think that the discounting message typically works best for sort of clearance whereas almost what the promotion is that you’ve got this great range and you’re going to solve all of their gifting problems You’re going to make it all [00:17:00] brilliant for them, and they’re going to get loads of brownie points from either their Valentine, their Palantine, or their mother or father or whoever it is that they’re buying for.

That’s kind of the hook, if you like you. So I wouldn’t really necessarily be focused on using discounts here. But as I said, maybe something like a multi buy, or a bundle where they get a small discount for buying multiple things. But really it’s more about focusing on some really great product that they absolutely want to have.

The other thing to do is building anticipation. So again, just like a Christmas getting ready to launch your Christmas range, you can definitely as well as the time which you’ll be promoting these products, definitely think about a full launch. So teasing your launch ahead of time, you can do email previews, you could do countdowns, you can do sneak peeks on social media, and that’s all a really good way to create that buzz and create that excitement.

Definitely think about engaging your customers, host polls, contests, themed giveaways, that could [00:18:00] all be part of an overall campaign. So for example, for Mother’s Day, you could have a whole campaign where you’re talking about nominate the important women in your life or something like that, and then one of them wins something.

That’s a good way of creating a feel good campaign, but equally showcasing what you’ve got for Mother’s Day. And then really the key thing that I want to highlight here is just to stress the importance of consistency across your touch points. This is why I like to have things like my launch planner that you can get inside the membership. Where you sit down and you go through, right?

What am I saying on social media? What am I saying in my emails? What’s on my home page? Like everything just to match, to be consistent, whether it’s shop windows, whatever it is. But making sure that everything is saying the same thing at the same time. May seem like it’s boring or not engaging, but actually it really helps again grow that trust and really encourages a clarity of message across all of your various different touch points.

Make sure your campaign can keep delivering over time

Catherine Erdly: [00:19:00] So once we’ve done this, once we have created this campaign, how can it help us on an ongoing basis? Well, firstly, it’s a great way to capture new customers, to give them a new reason to buy, even if they’ve followed you for a while but they haven’t purchased. Then sometimes these seasonal events can be that kind of trigger point that makes them think, “oh yes, I’ve followed these people for a while, but now I’d love to actually go ahead and buy from them because they’ve presented me a great gift idea. And I need that for this particular season. So make sure that you gather customer information. If you are doing any kind of promotions, giveaways, then definitely try and get email addresses. That is by far the most useful thing that you can collect. And then also think about using this as a springboard for repeat purchasing.

So an example I’ve used before is a local florist who sends an email to my husband every year ahead of Valentine’s Day, saying Valentine’s Day is coming up. You bought from [00:20:00] us last year. Can we help you this year? And that’s easy for him, easy for them and great me. So it’s a win, win, win situation all round.

And I think that seasonal events are really, really great way to really hook into your customers, repeat purchasing. And you could try the same thing, if you’ve got data of people you’ve bought from you last year for Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, you could send them a simple email that just says, Hey, just wanted to check in and let you know all about what we’ve got this year for our Mother’s Day range,” for example, and just make sure as well that you gather testimonials. And if you’re getting any photos and you use the generated content sent in, this is a really great thing for you to capture because it can really make a great base for future years.

For example, if you had a really great quote from somebody who said, my dad was overjoyed with this. He said it was the best Father’s Day gift he’s ever had. Then absolutely. That’s a great thing [00:21:00] for you to then use to build off for the future for future events as well.

Why opting out of seasonal emails might not be as effective anymore

Catherine Erdly: I just want to touch on as well, actually, a quick one. Because this is something that had really grew over the last few years, is this idea of allowing your customers to opt out of seasonal campaigns. It’s something that we all need to decide for a long time. I thought it was a really positive development. I was just kind of a side note, but I think it’s worth mentioning it because it’s a question that comes up a lot is that, if you send an email out to your customers that say, if you don’t want to hear about Mother’s Day, then click here and we will, and we won’t send you any more information.

We won’t unsubscribe you, but we just won’t send you any Mother’s Day information. And for a long time that felt like it was a really positive thing to do to be able to, if you’ve got the capability and you know, several email types of email software will let you sort of tag people if they click on something and then exclude them from Mother’s Day emails.

It is something that, for a long time, I felt was a positive because it was about [00:22:00] communicating with your customer. I think this last year in 2024, it was almost a bit of a tipping point where people were getting inundated with emails asking them if they wanted to unsubscribe. And it was almost making it worse. Because if it wasn’t a great time of year for you, then you then had all these emails asking you to unsubscribe.

So I think it’s something that you have to just decide if you’ve always done it and you get a good response from your customers for doing it, then continue. I don’t think it’s necessarily harmful. But I think that before I thought it was definitely the way to go, to let people opt out, but I feel like now it’s got a bit of bad press last year for being a bit overwhelming.

So just think about that, whether or not you want to do it. I mean, I think most people, if they are not in the market for that particular event, they’ll probably just ignore the emails. And there is always an argument that says with emails, even if someone deletes your email, it’s still a reminder that you exist.

So who knows? Maybe that’s okay. People have [00:23:00] very strong opinions about this. If you feel very strongly that you should offer people the opportunity to opt out, then go for it. But it’s just an interesting one, a little bit nuanced.

What to avoid when planning seasonal events

Catherine Erdly: What not to do then, when it comes to seasonal events. I think the key things really with seasonal events is don’t rush it.

Don’t leave it to the last minute. Yes, you’re not going to necessarily get absolutely everything planned out. But do spend some time thinking about the year coming up, and what the seasonal events might be, and what you want to do for. It will also help you with your overall planning. Because I often find that once we factor in various different seasonal events. Then we start seeing where there are gaps, where people aren’t launching products for awhile, there aren’t any seasonal events.

And then that’s when you can start brainstorming what some other ideas might be for your marketing. As opposed to this relentless feeling of waking up every day or every week and thinking, what am I going to talk about now? Don’t ignore your brand voice. If you are very sarcastic and dry, then be sarcastic and dry at Valentine’s Day, [00:24:00] Mother’s Day.

It’s okay. You can do that because the people who are respond well to your voice will respond to that. If you’re very practical, make it very about very practical Valentine’s gifts and Mother’s Day gifts. Don’t feel like you have to change your tone, the way that you talk to your customer, just because it’s a particular time of year.

I don’t actually think you have to spend a lot of money, or almost any money, a lot of the time on these seasonal marketing campaigns. Just think about using the assets you’ve already got. I think if you, especially if you’re not sure if this is an event or an occasion that your customer really will respond to, don’t invest loads of money on products that you can only sell at that time and create those infamous brown bananas, things that expire.

So for example, Be My Valentine. It’s very hard to shift on the 15th of February. So for the most part, what we’re talking about is not necessarily creating new products or buying new products in more about how do we curate and market the ones that we’ve already got. If you’ve got a [00:25:00] really strong established seasonal pattern and you know that Mother’s Day is the absolute pinnacle of your selling, then there may be some things that you want to do around that and to consider some specific products. But for most people it’s going to be about using the ones that they’ve already got. And don’t spread yourself too thin. Don’t pile too many messages on top of each other if, for example, Easter. You know is just not really going to be your thing then that’s fine. You could do some other kind of messaging. You can also, I mean, seasons themselves are seasonal events. Which sounds a silly thing to say, but what I mean by that is, you know, the turn of the season.

So spring in itself can be a seasonal event. Summer certainly is. Autumn, almost like you can look at the time of year and use that as inspiration of what to talk about. So really just think about what your customer wants, what works for you as a brand, and then space out your messaging so that you’re not trying to talk about too many things all at the same time.

Just to recap then. Seasonal events, they’re more than just sales opportunities. They are [00:26:00] moments that you can connect with customers. You can create long term customers. They are opportunities to be creative, flex your creative muscles and come up with some ways of thinking about them and talking about them and have some fun.

Choose the ones that you think align with you, align with your customer. Don’t change your tone of voice for it, but think about how you can make it work for you and, as I said, enjoy it. Have a look at what’s coming up. Don’t feel rushed. Give yourself a bit of time and space and all of that together will mean that you are maximizing yourselves, opportunities and having a bit of fun with some creativity as well as getting yourself ready for the year ahead.

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