Having reached cult status thanks to staples such as banana pudding, cupcakes, and the festive confetti cake, the team at Magnolia Bakery wanted to improve their fall offerings.
“We identified Halloween as a tent pole where we could grow and innovate the product assortment,” says Adam Davis, Magnolia’s senior marketing manager, on the Shopify Masters podcast. Enter the Dessert Graveyard—a brownie tin that looks like a cemetery. It’s become a seasonal staple.
Whether you’re a celebrated bakery like Magnolia or a small business owner, seasonal marketing is a well-oiled marketing strategy. Consumer spending around Halloween surpasses $10 billion every year, Valentine’s Day brings in nearly $30 billion, and, of course, there’s the end-of-year holiday season’s more than $900 billion in spending.
Whether you plan to introduce limited-edition items, bundles and sets, or promotions aligned with the calendar, learn more about how to plan your seasonal marketing strategy.
What is seasonal marketing?
Seasonal marketing initiatives promote themed products or services during specified times of the year. This approach can follow both major holidays and events, as well as the four seasons. Playing into this timeline specificity lets you experiment with the success of different promotions, events, or products. Not sure which marketing campaigns would be best for your type of business? Strategies like seasonal demand forecasting can help you determine what seasons or events to focus on.
Popular seasonal marketing events
The four seasons bring unique opportunities to market your products
Spring
Spring marks the welcome transition out of a winter that always feels too long. In this context, businesses can target seasonal launches around areas of self improvement and outdoor activities. Near the end of the season, graduation marks a time for investment purchases and gifts, while Mother’s Day is a leading event for gifting across categories.
- Earth Day (April 22)
- Easter (varies)
- Mother’s Day (second Sunday of May)
- Graduation season (May/June)
- Memorial Day (last Monday of May)
Summer
Summer has plenty of opportunities for seasonal marketing. The weeks leading up to Independence Day can be a prime window for themed marketing, and the back-to-school rush lends itself to promotions in apparel, tech, and school supplies. Pride Month lends itself to collaborations and limited-edition releases, while Father’s Day brings its own gifting spree.
- Father’s Day (third Sunday in June)
- Pride Month (June)
- Independence Day (July 4 weekend)
- Back to school (late July into August)
Fall
Fall follows the back-to-school season with Labor Day. Halloween is the perfect holiday for themed drops, seasonal collections, decorations, and costumes. Black Friday weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
- Labor Day (first Monday of September)
- Halloween (October 31)
- Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November)
- Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving)
- Small Business Saturday (day after Black Friday)
- Cyber Monday (Monday after Thanksgiving)
Winter
Winter coincides with the peak of the holiday season, kickstarted by Black Friday weekend. It includes major commercial holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
- Hanukkah (varies)
- Christmas (December 25)
- Kwanzaa (December 26 to January 1)
- Boxing Day (primarily UK, Canada, Australia; day after Christmas)
- New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (December 31 and January 1)
- Lunar New Year (varies)
- Super Bowl Sunday (second Sunday in February)
- Valentine’s Day (February 14)
- Black History Month (February)
How to create a seasonal marketing campaign
Considering that seasonal marketing events can be a big sales driver, the planning phase needs to be focused, strategic, and conducted well in advance. To get your marketing strategy prepared for the holidays, follow these five steps:
1. Choose your events
“We normally plan for the big campaigns one tent pole at a time,” says Adam of Magnolia Bakery. “In October, we’re already doing Valentine’s Day planning. We have our Valentine’s Day emails laid out by then, so our creative team can start thinking about the messaging and the content.”
Major holidays are great for limited-edition releases and promotions across industries. Magnolia Bakery, like many brands, finds that the winter holidays are prime time for sales, and its email marketing reflects this by promoting seasonal products like holiday candy store mini cupcakes.
Beyond the heavy-hitters, niche holidays and events have specific industry pulls. New Year campaigns are a good fit for fitness equipment and wellness brands; Valentine’s Day is a boon for jewelry, home décor, and anything pertaining to gifting. Early summer holidays such as Memorial Day can serve as the perfect launchpad for a warm-weather promotion.
Earth Day is an opportunity for sustainability-minded businesses, and it doesn’t need to be heavily transactional. Yoloha Yoga, for instance, published an Earth Week guide to living sustainably, and also offered Earth Day yoga classes hosted on Instagram Live.
2. Pick your promotions
There are countless ways you can promote your brand and products throughout the different seasons. You might choose a marquee product launch, encourage holiday bundling, emphasize a limited-edition release, announce a major collaboration that aligns with the season, or offer discounts for on-theme products. Each choice can be effective, and the direction depends on your brand identity, mission, and goals.
Jones Road Beauty, for example, approached the 2025 summer season with limited-edition products and special discounts. Its marketing promoted sets such as the Beach Vacation Kit, which cost 30% less than buying the individual products included. The brand also offered a Memorial Day exclusive Mini Miracle Balm, a hit product from the year prior that it brought back for one week only. Seasonal rereleases of limited-edition products can be an effective way to drive demand.
3. Choose content formats
The formats you choose depend, in large part, on your audience and goals. While Instagram and TikTok can help you promote your products to a broad audience and help new customers discover your brand, more personalized channels such as email and text can be especially impactful to connect with consumers who’ve expressed interest in your brand before.
“Email has to be extremely contextually relevant, and SMS has to properly complement the emails,” Adam explains. “They can’t be the exact same thing, because most of a brand’s email audience is also on its SMS audience. You don’t want to send the same email and SMS on the same day, because it’s just a waste of marketing messaging.” You’ll also want to be more conservative with texts. “When I get three SMS a week from a brand, even if I’ve made a purchase, I’m like, OK, that’s enough. For SMS, you’d really want to lean on it for those big announcements.”
For every seasonal event, Hill House Home creates landing pages, ads, and related social media content that contextualize the campaign. For example, the brand promoted its Valentine’s Day and pre-spring capsules on Instagram.
Once the drop was live, the brand shared user-generated content to show its clothing in motion.
4. Launch and learn
Once your campaign is live, use it as an opportunity to gather insights for next year. “We are so ingrained in the data and in the trends. And now that our Shopify platform has been live for over two years, the most valuable data sets for us are the year-over-year learnings,” Adam says. “We know that these big gifting moments like holidays are going to be big for our direct-to-consumer business. We want to see the huge peaks and the tangible growth, not only in revenue, but also in audience and profitability.” This means thinking beyond mere sales.
Seasonal marketing presents a prime opportunity for both customer acquisition and reinforced customer loyalty. “First-time discount codes, site abandonment discount codes, even dynamic ads like Google Shopping or Meta retargeting can keep the brand top of mind,” Adam says. Consider using the customer data you collected from your holiday marketing to launch an ongoing brand advertising campaign. You can also leverage loyalty programs and other incentives to encourage repeat customers.
Seasonal marketing FAQ
What are popular seasonal events besides the major holidays?
Popular seasonal events include Super Bowl Sunday, Earth Day, Black History Month, Pride Month, and back to school.
What is an example of a seasonal product?
Examples of seasonal products include holiday-specific decorations (like Christmas ornaments), seasonal apparel (like winter coats), and products marketed as gifts (like Father’s Day–specific product bundles).
When do people spend the most money?
The period of time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is when people spend the most money. May, which is the start of summer, and August, which is back-to-school season for much of the US, are two other high-spending months.
