Top January Sales Marketing Tips to Boost Conversions & Traffic

The post-holiday season is unique, with many consumers feeling overstretched and fatigued by the previous year's festivities. As a result, most businesses record their lowest sales in January, especially in e-commerce and retail.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

With the right strategies tailored for the January shopping season, you can stay competitive and keep attracting customers even on a tight budget.

In this blog, we share some effective January sales marketing tips to help you take advantage of the consumer optimism that can come with the new year, and boost your conversions.

1. Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is one of the best ways to keep your sales high during the post-holiday season. After all, most people make purchases because they see other people doing it and imagine how the products can solve a problem for them, too.

In addition, UGC helps to build genuine authenticity and customer satisfaction stories around your product, which are effective tools for compelling marketing.

So, while January shoppers may hesitate to spend after the holidays, UGC, like video reviews or before-and-after transformations, can be a great way to encourage them to click ‘Buy.’ You can even launch a ‘New Year, New You’ UGC campaign around your product to tie into customer New Year goals.

Insense can help you source authentic UGC showcasing your products in real-life settings to increase trust and credibility.

Insense helps you source and connect with expert creators, providing you with access to high-quality content your customers can relate to. The creators will also post content they’ve made to their own audience, helping you achieve wider reach and organic conversions.

With Insense, you get:

• Seamless access to expert UGC: Insense’s Direct Chat feature allows you to communicate effectively with professional creators who can produce high-quality, authentic content tailored to the brand’s messaging. You’ll be able to negotiate pricing, share content briefs, receive your content, and provide feedback, all from a central point.

• Targeted influencer collaborations: The platform helps you partner with influencers who align with your brand’s target audience, driving product awareness and sales through social proof.

With Insense’s Creator Marketplace, you can design your ideal creator profile using filter settings and choose the UGC creators and micro-influencers who best align with your brand identity.

• Cost-effective content creation: While traditional product content creation can be very expensive, Insense offers you a scalable way to generate diverse content at a lower cost.
• Better ad performance: The authentic appeal of UGC sourced through Insense can help your ads perform better, as these repurposed videos are more relatable and compelling.
• Maximized post-holiday momentum: Insense campaigns can help you spotlight any January-exclusive promotions or discount campaigns that you run in the new year, ensuring you get top results for your efforts.

2. Promote ‘New Year, New You’ Campaigns

Another way to improve your sales during the post-holiday season in January is to tie your products to your target customers' New Year’s resolutions. In other words, you position your products as a solution to help them hit their newly set goals.

‘New Year, New Me’ is a globally recognized tradition whereby people try to reinvent themselves or correct the shortcomings they had the previous year in the new one. By aligning some of your January sales with this tradition, you can significantly boost your conversion rates as customers are more motivated to buy from you and fuel their goals.

For instance, a fitness brand could run ‘New Year, New You’ sales campaigns targeting people who have resolved to take their fitness journey more seriously in the new year.

Here are some other typical New Year’s resolutions:

• Stick to a healthier diet
• Lose weight
• Reduce social media usage
• Save more money
• Spend more time with family and friends
• Reduce work stress
• Lower living expenses

Depending on the specific products or services you sell, the New Year is a great time to position yourself as a solution to help your customers achieve their new goals.

3. Offer Limited-Time Discounts

Another strategy for improving sales after the holidays is to create a fear of missing out (FOMO). This means offering your target customers exclusive January sales or flash deals with a time countdown to encourage immediate purchases.

For instance, you can launch a sales campaign for your products with a limited-time offer—say, throughout January or maybe the first half of the month. You can also do it for only the first week of the New Year.

The duration of the promotions is entirely up to your business and what your budget can accommodate.

Either way, the goal is to create a feeling of urgency that spurs your customers to buy quickly or risk missing out on the great deals you’re offering.

Your January sales campaign is also a great time to reward customer loyalty from the previous year by giving returning customers exclusive discounts or deals—all with a time limit, of course.

4. Highlight Best Sellers

The next of our marketing tips to improve customer traffic and boost conversions during January is highlighting your best-selling products or services. 

Here are several reasons why showcasing your bestsellers helps improve general sales numbers:

• It showcases the confidence and trust of existing customers in your offerings.
• It inspires the curiosity of your target audience regarding other products or services you have in your catalog.
• It drives up the sales of your best sellers, as more eyes on the products typically mean more opportunities for conversion.

By highlighting your best-sellers with labels like ‘Trending’ or ‘Fan Favorite,’ you can inspire customer curiosity and drive up your sales.

5. Create a Content Calendar

It’s almost impossible to create a compelling sales campaign without a proper content calendar to guide your execution and timing. As a result, it is essential to draw up a content calendar for your post-holiday marketing efforts, detailing the content materials you’ll use, when to post, and on what platforms.

This will help you and your team plan and organize your content strategy for the month and year ahead, keep you on track, and measure your results over time.

If creating a content calendar from scratch sounds overwhelming, you can leverage tools like Notion or CoSchedule, that offer you content calendar templates to edit and optimize for your business content marketing campaign. 

6. Leverage Email Marketing

Several surveys have proven that email marketing remains one of the best ways to reach your target customers. After all, more than 4 billion people use their email daily, and we’d bet your customers are in that number. Besides, email marketing is a minimal-cost, high-ROI marketing tool.

Therefore, it is an excellent idea to incorporate emails into your marketing strategy for the New Year.

You can use emails to communicate your various sales campaigns to your customers during the post-holiday season. You can also create trigger email campaigns that send tailored emails to prospects based on their actions, improving your chances of converting them.

Also: 

• Send thank-you emails to appreciate and re-engage customers who shopped with you during the holiday season.
• Use your January emails to introduce and launch your fresh offerings in the New Year.
• Promote your loyalty programs with emails offering exclusive discounts for returning customers.

7. Celebrate January Landmarks

Another good way to engage your customers and improve your conversion rate in the post-holiday season is to intentionally celebrate special dates in January. Most people will still be in the festive mood and are more likely to take advantage of special-occasion sales that resonate with them if you put it in their faces.

For instance: 

• January 6 is Technology Day
• The second Saturday of the month is Vision Board Day
• January 9 is Law Enforcement Appreciation Day
• January 13 is Korean American Day
• The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• The third Thursday in January is Get to Know Your Customers Day 

You can create campaigns around these dates and more to attract customers with whom these celebrations resonate.

But remember, be creative and intentional about connecting with your audience on whatever special day you choose. Otherwise, it may come across as mechanical and insincere.

January landmarks are a good way to let good cheer work for you!

8. Launch Referral Programs

Chances are you bought things because a friend or family told you about it. In fact, 86% of B2B customers say that word-of-mouth referral is the most compelling factor in driving their purchasing decisions. Such is the power of referrals, and you should tap into it.

Instead of waiting for your existing customers to tell their friends about your brand, why not give them a reason to do so?

Create referral campaigns that reward customers for recommending your products or services to their friends, family, and colleagues. Rewards could be discounts on purchases, exclusive deals, or freebies.

The key to a successful loyalty or referral program is giving your audience what they want. To motivate more customers to join and participate, the rewards should be limited to only those participating in the referral program.

9. Optimize for SEO and January-Specific Keywords

In addition to using customer referrals to drive conversions and boost your sales, you should also leverage SEO to pull the post-holiday internet traffic to your website. 

Search engine optimization helps you improve your website visibility and drive organic traffic, boosting your conversion rates. 

That said, you should target season-specific keywords like ‘January deals,’ ‘post-holiday sales,’ or ‘winter discounts’ alongside your product or service offerings to ensure that your ideal target customers can find you when they search online.

10. Leverage January-related Hashtags

Hashtags are also a great way to reach your customers during the post-holiday season, especially on social media. For instance, did you know that Instagram posts with 11-plus hashtags receive approximately 80% more interactions than posts without?

However, leveraging relevant hashtags is key here. Since you’re targeting January shoppers, here are some ideas:

• #NewYearsEve
• #NewYearsResolutions
• #NewYearNewMe
• #January
• #FreshStart
• #NewYearsGoals

By integrating these hashtags and more into your social media posts, you can connect with potential customers interested in starting the new year on the right foot.

11. Engage Customers With Winter-Wellness Campaigns

As the New Year rolls in, many consumers shift their focus to start their year better, especially regarding their health and wellness. This presents a golden opportunity to capitalize on their goals by aligning your e-commerce campaign with winter wellness.

Depending on your products or services, you can offer discounted prices or bundle deals on your health-focused catalog to engage and convert your customers. 

If your products are not health-oriented, you can still do a lot. For instance, consider creating wellness blogs, content that looks at starting a new year on a high note, or even social media posts encouraging healthier lifestyle commitments.

While these may not relate directly to your products or services, such initiatives give you greater brand visibility, which can translate to more leads and higher conversions.

12. Run Interactive Social Media Campaigns

Another practical tip to improve your January sales and increase conversion rates is to create social media posts that let you interact with your audience. By launching interactive social media campaigns, you boost your customer engagement, improve product visibility, and improve the chances of conversion. 

With this in mind: 

• Invite your audience to participate in social media challenges related to your products or brand. 
• Ask your audience fun, brand-related questions, or let them vote on new product ideas. 
• Tell your customers to share their New Year’s resolutions and how your brand or products can help achieve them.

These social media campaigns can improve your brand visibility and customer engagement and help you build your online community. 

But remember, the key is to keep your challenges or campaigns relatable and shareable to maximize engagement.

13. Create Personalized Shopping Experiences

The holiday season is typically filled with last-minute, frenzied shopping. As a result, many customers are usually in the mood for a tailored shopping experience after the holidays, in January. This presents a unique opportunity to make your customers feel valued and improve their chances of buying.

Try some of the following ideas:

• Leverage customer data to recommend products based on past purchases or browsing history.
• Send targeted emails with suggestions like, “We think you’ll love these picks for the New Year!”
• Offer customizable options, such as letting customers build bundles or choose product features.

Focusing on personalization can strengthen customer loyalty and make your January sales strategy more effective. You can also leverage AI-driven tools to improve the efficiency and accuracy of your recommendations. 

14. Targeted Marketing Through Data-Driven Strategies

In addition to creating personalized shopping experiences for your customers, you can run targeted marketing campaigns based on data insights to pitch the most relevant products or services to customer groups.

Analyze your customer behavior data, including purchasing patterns and product interaction details, to determine the most relevant personalized deals or targeted recommendations for each customer. 

Of course, you should also align these promotions with January shopping trends to maximize your results.

That said, Insense can provide you with real-time insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns.

With Insense, you can access an intuitive data visualization dashboard that shows you comprehensive analytics on your creator collaborations and influencer campaign performance. This includes details on your engagement rate, cost per engagement, and more.

15. Include A/B Testing in Your New Campaigns

Finally, test your new marketing campaigns or strategies and don’t be afraid to return to the drawing board if necessary.

Create multiple options for your web pages or marketing campaigns and leverage A/B testing to compare each option's performance. Based on the results, you can choose the more effective options or make changes to others to improve engagement and conversions.

For example, for your social media marketing, you can A/B test two different versions of your ad to see which one has a higher clickthrough rate. You can also A/B test two subject lines in your emails to see which one gets you a higher open rate.

Here are some tips to ensure you get accurate insights when A/B testing:

• Test one element at a time, say headline or product image. This way, you can get accurate data on what’s driving results.
• Use a sample size that’s large enough to ensure that you get meaningful insights.
• Be patient during A/B testing and give your campaigns enough time to generate sufficient data to inform your decision.

How to Plan an Effective January Sales Campaign

Executing a successful January sales campaign requires proper strategy and creativity, especially since you’ll need to re-engage customers after the holiday rush. Here's how to do it:

• Set clear objectives: The first step to achieving a successful marketing campaign—whether in January or July—is to define your objectives. Are you trying to clear inventory or attract new customers? Perhaps the goal is to increase revenue. Once you have established your objectives, you can set key performance indicators to guide your strategy.
• Understand your audience: The next step is properly researching your target audience to understand their current needs and pain points. Remember, the post-holiday period can be complex. While some consumers may be more budget-conscious, others may be more interested in investing in their New Year resolutions.

• Create compelling offers: Once you’ve identified your audience’s needs, you can create compelling offers or deals tailored to those needs. Remember, the more relevant your offers are, the higher the chances of conversion. 
• Leverage multi-marketing channels: Next, you want to use multiple marketing channels to reach the existing and new customers that you’re targeting. Update your website with a dedicated SEO-optimized sales page for organic search traffic. Launch email campaigns targeting existing customers with personalized deals. Promote your sales on social media platforms with catchy content and hashtags.

This is a good place to partner with Insense and collaborate with top creators to generate high-quality, compelling UGC to improve your social media campaigns and build customer trust organically.

Insense’s Creator Marketplace offers you access to a pool of over 20,000 vetted UGC creators who can help you create targeted content across various channels, including Instagram and TikTok.

• Prepare logistics: You must also prepare adequately for the anticipated sales you’ll close, ensuring that your shipping and delivery partners are ready to handle the increased order volumes smoothly. Also, ensure you have enough products in stock to cater to the high number of purchases.
• Monitor campaign performance: Finally, monitor your marketing campaign by leveraging various analytical tools. Be prepared to adjust and adapt your strategies based on real-time data, such as tweaking underperforming ads or restocking fast-selling items.

During your January sales, you should also engage your customers and ask them to share their purchases or shopping stories online. This helps you generate more UGC and boost your brand credibility.

Over to You!

The post-holiday period in January can be a complex marketing season as consumers are typically caught in a wide range of emotions and decision-making. While some customers may be trying to limit their spending to the bare minimum, others are more willing to splurge to get their New Year off to the perfect start.

Either way, the January sales marketing tips shared in this blog will help you navigate the New Year season and keep your customer conversion rates up through the first month and beyond.

Remember, UGC is a powerful tool to leverage during this period, as it creates an authentic image of your product and vividly inspires potential buyers. 

Book a demo with Insense to learn how we can help you integrate UGC into your marketing strategy and better engage your audience.

January Sales Marketing FAQs

How does customer shopping behavior change in January?

After the holiday splurge, most consumers are more cautious of their spending in January. As a result, many focus only on essentials, New Year’s resolutions, or prioritizing their wellness. This makes it an excellent time to offer promotions and discounts or cater to these fresh priorities. 

How can businesses track the success of their January sales campaigns?

To measure success, businesses should analyze their key performance indicators, such as sales revenue, customer conversion rates, and website traffic. Tools like Google Analytics and CRM platforms can help you track campaign engagement, while social media insights reveal how customers interact with your brand.

What are the advantages of starting marketing efforts early for January sales?

Starting marketing early helps you capture customer attention before competitors. Planning also ensures you can fine-tune your messaging to align with New Year trends and your customer needs post-holiday.