Four last-minute Halloween tips for e-commerce stores

Halloween is right around the corner, and we expect spooktacular sales this year.

If you’re a business owner or a marketer, you probably know that your Halloween campaign should have been planned well in advance to see the most ROI. That said, here we are at the eleventh hour… if you’re making a last-minute plan for Halloween, there are still many things you can do to capture your customers’ attention.

Here are four quick tips that will make sure you don’t miss out on sales:

1. Add seasonal elements to your e-commerce store

You can (pumpkin) spice up your website using seasonal elements to draw attention to your store and increase sales. Big brands like Crate & Barrel do this all the time, rejuvenating their promotions, stock, and marketing themes to match the time of year. Some of the website content you can play around with include:

Logo

We don’t recommend doing this often, but some brands adjust their logo seasonally to great effect. Altering your logo to be more Halloween-worthy will trigger positive emotions around your brand. It will leave an impression of a brand that cares about its customers by following seasonal trends. Take a look at this great example by Pringles where a simple creative approach makes a significant seasonal difference. 

Halloween welcome pop-up

Hey, any holiday is a chance to boost email sign-ups and promote deals. Ahead of the day, try adding a pop-up that will notify your visitors and encourage sign-ups. If you’re hosting a Halloween event or having a discount weekend, pop-ups can be a great way to drive traffic.

For bonus points, combine popups with other tactics like personalisation to increase your chances of catching visitors’ attention and driving sales. Around 61% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy after a personalized experience with a brand.  

Remember, how you decorate your online store during the Halloween season will affect brand perception and what you can potentially offer to your shoppers.

2. Create a seasonal landing page

A seasonal landing page isn’t just a good idea to support your other marketing channels (like Google Ads, email, and organic social media) – it’s a great idea for persistent SEO (search engine optimisation). 

The fact of the matter is, it can be hard to rank for seasonal search terms like ‘last minute Halloween costume’ and ‘Halloween decorations’ across your entire e-commerce store. And this is a bad idea unless your store is specific to a season. You don’t want an entire store to rank for Halloween goods all year round if you don’t have them, and most of the time your store isn’t Halloween-focused.

Instead, building a seasonal landing page that pulls in relevant inventory from your site allows you to focus your search engine optimisation work on this singular page, building authority over time (because you never need to hide it from Google or change it like you will with your e-commerce homepage). You can also gather data from this page that you know is specifically relevant to this seasonal audience.

Looking for a good Halloween landing page example? Look no further than Crate & Barrel. They’re tastefully pulling in relevant inventory while maintaining their brand aesthetic. 

What to consider

When building a landing page, pay special attention to 

• The hero graphics: this is what customers will see first. You’ll need to find a way to combine your branding with the seasonal vibe.
• Your calls-to-action (CTAs): these should be visible, prominent, and written in strong language. 
• Page copy: don’t overwhelm your visitors with too much text – instead, you should focus on the most important details & benefits to convey the message. 
• Data: run A/B testing to determine what would work better, but don’t forget that you should only change one thing at a time. 
• How it renders on mobile: if your page is not mobile responsive, you’re leaving money on the table. Build a responsive page for a seamless mobile experience.

3. Run a sale or promotion

You’re an e-commerce store, so season’s greetings mean seasonal discounts, and Halloween is no different. Promotions give consumers an extra boost to buy or, at the very least, browse your products. The end of the year — including Halloween, Black Friday, and Christmas — is the biggest shopping period on the calendar for most e-commerce businesses. People have learned to expect discounts on national holidays and may search for seasonal deals. Proven Halloween promotional tactics include: 

Discount codes

Customers love holiday-inspired discount codes! Promotional Halloween gives customers an incentive to buy products they are unsure of. When creating the codes, try using catchy Halloween words to add more fun.

Giveaway

There are many great giveaway ideas you can use from the simple (for example, Halloween Photo/Video & Costume, tagging a friend in the comments of social media) to the more complicated type (DIY Halloween Decoration or Foods/Drinks, Halloween Performance in the Halloween Party). No matter which one you choose, increase sales through an online contest. 

However, you should keep communicating and encouraging your customers to join in the giveaway by social posts about current submissions or sharing around Halloween topics. You should show your effort in creating fresh and unique activities for your customers, especially in big holiday seasons like Halloween. Giveaways help you reach a wider audience, so they’re a strong platform for promoting new product launches and brand partnerships. Consider teaming up with a partner brand for this year’s Halloween giveaway!

Free shipping

If you normally charge for shipping costs, free shipping is an easy win for your Halloween strategy. Combine free shipping with seasonal discounts to unlock new levels of spending. You might think a discount code will take in more money on its own, but a recent survey found that 77% of customers expect free shipping when shopping online.

4. Send an email to your customers about the Halloween offer

Halloween is a perfect time to get creative and send a spooky email to your contacts. While you’re at it, why not take advantage of the opportunity and get them interested in your products? Email and websites are still the number one place where consumers discover promotions.

If you’re looking for a way to make your emails stand out from the crowd and get people excited about your brand, then spicing them up with a sense of mystery will help your click-through rate.

This will translate into visits to your website. Here are some quick tips for a spooktacular email marketing campaign:

• Add a pumpkin emoji or other Halloween-themed objects in the subject line, and make sure the message comes across as friendly and inviting. This will get you more opens.
• Be bold and use fresh content – the best Halloween campaigns are always a little bit edgy. Be creative, innovative, and original and you’ll see how your effort pays off. Like, for example, offering a 13% off coupon code.
• Adapt your email marketing to your industry: take a look at this brilliant example of a Halloween campaign by Mango: it’s simple yet incredibly effective:

What next?

Halloween is approaching quickly, and if you want to launch a Halloween campaign, you need to do it now. Contact us to learn how to maximise sales volume and put the upcoming holiday at top of mind among consumers, and you’ll be celebrating with scary-good results.