Plan Your 2023 Holiday & Ecommerce Marketing Calendar
A holiday & ecommerce marketing calendar is the ultimate way to streamline your promotional strategy, and boost your chances of crucial sales. No matter which industry you operate in, the chances are you're constantly looking for ways to engage and activate your target audience.
Unfortunately, many business leaders miss out on exceptional promotional opportunities, simply because they don't have the right plan. Building a holiday and marketing calendar for your ecommerce company means you can take advantage of seasonal events, create more relevant marketing campaigns, and consistently engage your audience.
From January to December, there are various major dates you can use to inspire your marketing campaigns. Here's everything you need to know about crafting your own strategic calendar.
What is a Marketing Calendar?
Let’s start with the basics. A marketing calendar is a promotional tool companies use to plan, organize, and manage their marketing projects. It helps you to highlight specific days and times for the promotions, sales, and campaigns you want to run. Plus, it ensures you can tie sales opportunities to major international holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Christmas.
Marketing calendars act as step-by-step roadmaps for your advertising activities. They tell you which strategy you should be working on at any given time across your email, social, and content campaigns. They also provide you with useful themes to work with when you're struggling to find inspiration for your marketing efforts.
One of the best things about marketing calendars, is they give you an opportunity to get one step ahead of your advertising strategy. It's often easy to underestimate just how long it takes to create a great promotional campaign. Having a calendar laid out will ensure you start to work on campaigns for March, April, or June months in advance.
Holiday vs Ecommerce Marketing Calendars
Marketing calendars can come in many different formats. A holiday marketing calendar, for instance, focuses on specific national and international holidays, relevant to broad audiences. For instance, you might pinpoint Valentine's Day in February for a special promotion, or start planning new advertising strategies for November and December, to coincide with the holiday season.
An ecommerce marketing calendar, alternatively, focuses on the major events throughout the year specific to your business. If you know you start to experience fewer sales in your company around March or April, you might plan to host a sale around this time, to activate more customers.
Ecommerce marketing calendars also help to outline the week-to-week marketing campaigns you’re going to be running as a business, with no connection to national holidays. Outside of the holiday period, you’re still likely to invest in social media, email, and content marketing to drive new attention to your site, and boost customer retention.
Most companies combine their holiday marketing calendars with their ecommerce promotional calendars, to ensure they’re scheduling their promotions in a way that makes the most sense.
Holidays and Ecommerce Dates in 2023
A great way to start building your ecommerce marketing calendar, is to start by pinpointing the national and international celebrations and events that take place throughout the year. Once you've chosen the key dates relevant to your company or industry, you can fill in the gaps with other less “time-sensitive” promotional campaigns.
Here are just a few of the dates you might consider throughout each month of the year:
January
January 1, 2023: New Year‘s Day
January 2, 2023: Science Fiction Day
January 3, 2023: Back to School
January 4, 2023: National Trivia Day
January 5, 2023: National Bird Day
January 10, 2023: 80th Golden Globes
January 13, 2023: National Sticker Day
January 15, 2023: National Hat Day
January 16, 2023: Blue Monday
January 20, 2023: National Cheese Lover's Day
January 21, 2023: International Hugging Day
January 22, 2023: Chinese New Year
January 24, 2023: Compliment Day
January 31, 2023: Backward day
February
February 1, 2023: National Freedom day
February 2, 2023: Groundhog Day
February 3, 2023: Wear red day
February 5, 2023: Grammy Awards
February 9, 2023: National Pizza Day
February 10, 2023: Carnival of Nice
February 11, 2023: Inventors Day
February 12, 2023: Super Bowl
February 13, 2023: Galentine's Day
February 14, 2023: Valentine's Day
February 15, 2023: Singles Awareness Day
February 20, 2023: Love Your Pet Day(USA)
February 21, 2023: Mardi Gras
February 27, 2023: National Retro Day
March
March 2, 2023: World Book Day
March 4, 2023: Grammar Day
March 6, 2023: National Dentist's Day
March 8, 2023: International Womens' Day
March 11, 2023: World Start-up Day
March 13, 2023: Napping day
March 12, 2023: The Oscars
March 17, 2023: Saint Patrick’s Day
March 18, 2023: World Recycling Day
March 20, 2023: First Day of Spring
March 22, 2023: World Water Day
March 26, 2023: Earth Hour Day
March 31, 2023: Transgender visibility Day
April
April 1, 2023: April Fool's DayApril 2, 2023: Autism awareness Day
April 7, 2023: Good Friday
April 8, 2023: Holy Saturday
April 9, 2023: Easter Sunday
April 10, 2023: National Sibling Day
April 11, 2023: National Pet Day
April 12, 2023: Space Day
April 14, 2023: Coachella Festival(Apr 14-23)
April 18, 2023: International Day for Monuments and Sites
April 19, 2023: Bicycle Day
April 21, 2023: National Tea Day
April 22, 2023: Earth Day
April 23, 2023: World Book Day
April 27, 2023: Denim Day
April 29, 2023: International Dance Day
May
May 1, 2023: Labor Day
May 2, 2023: Early May Bank Holiday
May 4, 2023: Star Wars Day
May 5, 2023: Cinco De Mayo
May 7, 2023: World Laughter Day
May 9, 2023: Europe Day
May 11, 2023: National Eat What You Want Day
May 12, 2023: Nurses Day
May 13, 2023: World Cocktail Day
May 14, 2023: Mother's Day
May 15, 2023: World Family Day
May 16, 2023: International Day of Light
May 17, 2023: World Baking Day
May 20, 2023: World Bee Day
May 21, 2023: World Music Day
May 22, 2023: International Day of Biodiversity
May 25, 2023: National Wine Day
May 30, 2023: National Creativity Day
May 31, 2023: National Smile Day
June
June 2, 2023: National Doughnut Day
June 5, 2023: World Environment Day
June 8, 2023: Best Friends Day
June 11, 2023: International Children‘s Day
June 14, 2023: American Flag Day
June 16, 2023: National Flip Flop Day
June 18, 2023: Father's Day(UK)
June 21, 2023: International T-shirt Day
June 24, 2023: Midsummer’s Day
June 27, 2023: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Day
June 29, 2023: Camera Day
June 30, 2023: Social Media Day
July
July 1, 2023: International Joke Day
July 3, 2023: Wimbledon Starts
July 4, 2023: Independence Day (USA)
July 5, 2023: National Bikini Day
July 7, 2023: World Chocolate Day
July 14, 2023: National Day
July 16, 2023: National Ice Cream Day
July 17, 2023: World Emoji Day
July 18, 2023: Islamic New Year
July 20, 2023: National Moon Day
July 24, 2023: Parent’s Day
July 28, 2023: World Hepatitis Day
July 30, 2023: International Day of Friendship
August
August 1, 2023: National Girlfriend’s Day
August 5, 2023: International Beer Day
August 6, 2023: American Family Day
August 8, 2023: International Cat Day
August 9, 2023: International Book Loves Day
August 10, 2023: National Lazy Day
August 11, 2023: Son and Daughter Day
August 15, 2023: Assumption Day
August 19, 2023: World Photography Day
August 21, 2023: Poet’s Day
August 26, 2023: International Dog Day
August 28, 2023: Summer Bank Holiday
August 31, 2023: World Blog Day
September
September 1, 2023: Back to School (differs per school)
September 2, 2023: Father’s DayAustralians）
September 4, 2023: Labor Day (US)
September 10: Grandparent’s Day
September 15, 2023: International Day of Democracy
September 16, 2023: Constitution Day
September 21, 2023: International Day of Peace
September 23, 2023: First Day of Fall
September 27, 2023: World Tourism Day
September 28, 2023: National Good Neighbor Day
September 29, 2023: AFL Grand Final
October
October 1, 2023: World Coffee Day
October 4, 2023: World Animal Welfare Day
October 3, 2023: National Boyfriends Day
October 5, 2023: World Teachers' Day
October 6, 2023: World Smile Day
October 9, 2023: Thanksgiving (Canada)
October 10, 2023: World Mental Health Day
October 16, 2023: World Food Day
October 22, 2023: National Nut Day
October 25, 2023: World Pasta Day
October 26, 2023: National Pumpkin Day
October 29, 2023: National Cat Day
October 31, 2023: Halloween
November
November 1, 2023: World Vegan Day
November 3, 2023: World Kindness Day
November 10, 2023: International Intern Day
November 11, 2023: Singles' Day
November 13, 2023: World Kindness Day
November 15, 2023: America Recycles Day
November 19, 2023: International Men's Day
November 22, 2023: National Tie One Day
November 23, 2023: Thanksgiving (USA)
November 24, 2023: Black Friday
November 25, 2023: Small Business Saturday
November 27, 2023: Cyber Monday
December
December 1, 2023: World AIDS Day
December 4, 2023: National Cookie Day
December 5, 2023: World Volunteer Day
December 18, 2023: Free shipping Day
December 24, 2023: Christmas Eve
December 25, 2023: Christmas Day
December 31, 2023: New Year's Eve
How to Format a Successful Marketing Calendar
There's no one-size-fits-all strategy for designing an effective marketing calendar. The right solution for you will be a tool which allows you to monitor your advertising strategies, and keep track of all the right information as painlessly as possible.
You can consider using an Excel spreadsheet to block out specific times in your year, or you can opt for a calendar tool like Google Calendars to help you. There are also some great scheduling tools out there which are designed specifically for content marketing, social media, and email marketing experts. These come with their own templates and even automated reminders to help you.
Fill your calendar with all of the dates most relevant to your brand, focusing on the products you sell, your target audience, and of course, your own marketing strategy. For each day you highlight, decide what you’re going to do around that occasion in advance. Set up calendar reminders to ensure you can start building and promoting content ahead of schedule, whenever possible.
How to Make the Most of your Marketing Calendar
Though marketing calendars can be extremely valuable for today’s business leaders, they’re often considered a relatively daunting concept. Planning content and campaigns months in advance can be an exhausting, and time-consuming process. However, creating your calendar doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. Just follow these steps.
Step 1: Define your events and campaigns
First, decide which specific days and calendar holidays you’re going to be focusing on. While there’s a good chance you’ll want to include the most well-known options like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, and so on, you can also choose a few lesser-known national and international holidays.
Choose days relevant to your target audience. For instance, if you’re producing waste-free print on demand clothing, you might focus heavily on days like World Recycling Day, or World Selfie Day, to encourage user-generated content from your audience.
Combine these national holidays with specific dates relevant to your ecommerce business. For instance, you might spend one week focusing on Valentine’s Day, then follow up with a sale to prepare for a new Spring collection.
Step 2: Assign Roles in Your Team
A marketing calendar isn’t just a tool to ensure you get the right content out on the correct day. It can also be a valuable resource for keeping your team members on track. You may even create different calendars for each group in your workforce. For instance, you might ask graphic designers and content marketers to start working on campaigns a month before they’re due.
The roles you consider when building your marketing calendar will depend on the structure of your business. Some of the most common roles include a team lead, a writer (content creator), and designer (graphic artist). However, you could also work with editors, content strategists, promotional experts, community managers, and content analysts.
Make sure everyone in your team has their own version of your marketing calendar, as well as insights into when certain tasks need to be completed. For instance, you’ll need your social media marketer to write posts for Father’s day so they’re ready to be published on the week or weeks leading up to the actual occasion.
Step 3: Create Content
Once you've established what your marketing calendar is going to look like, which days you'll be including, and who will be responsible for each task leading up to these events, it’s time to start building your campaigns. The earlier you get started with content, the easier it will be to ensure you can promote each campaign at the right time.
If you want to keep your campaigns relevant and fresh, it’s important not to get too far ahead. You might start planning marketing strategies for your social media channels in September or October if you want to be prepared in time for Christmas.
Think carefully about the kind of content you want to produce for each occasion. You might experiment with infographics, videos, or simply post blogs. If you want to work with influencers or other external experts on your campaigns, make sure you reach out to them with plenty of time to spare.
Schedule Success in 2023
A marketing calendar for your ecommerce business can be a valuable tool for keeping your entire team on the same page. It ensures you get your social media, email messages, and other content out at just the right time to engage and convert your audience. It also means you'll never find yourself dealing with a gap in your promotional schedule.
As you progress through the year, remember to pay close attention to your campaigns, focusing on what kind of content generates the best results, and which days generate the most attention. This will help you to prepare more effectively in the year ahead.
Ecommerce Marketing Calendars: FAQ
What's the best type of marketing calendar?
There's no one answer here. The best type of marketing calendar is the one that helps you to coordinate your marketing teams, and boost your return on investment from promotions. Make sure your calendar is informative, and as detailed as possible.
How do I create my own marketing calendar?
You can start with a simple pen and paper if you're running a relatively small business, or use an Excel spreadsheet. There are also calendar apps and scheduling tools available online which can help you build a more comprehensive strategy, with automated reminders.
Which days should I include in a marketing calendar?
There are a few key dates which are valuable for virtually every ecommerce brand, such as Black Friday, Christmas, Easter, Mother and Father's day, Valentine's Day, and so on. Beyond that, it’s up to you to determine which days will be most relevant to your target audience.
