Last updated on January 7, 2024

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Lindsay Sakraida
Director of Content Marketing @ Yotpo
May 5th, 2022

With the right marketing tactics, your brand can kick off the summer shopping season on the right foot.

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Holidays and seasonal events give eCommerce brands an opportunity to make their promotions more timely for shoppers, re-engaging existing customers and acquiring new ones for their online store. Memorial Day in particular has become one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year.

Traditionally, this weekend is considered to be the unofficial start to the summer season, so many brands will offer discounts on summer-themed items like clothing, gardening items, outdoor decorations and furniture, and more. But you’re not just limited to these items! Any time-sensitive offer can work well as a Memorial Day marketing idea.

Here are some easy ways to level up your Memorial Day marketing strategies.

Make your marketing specific to Memorial Day

Make your Memorial Day promotions stand out from year-round offers by leveraging the holiday itself whenever you can. This not only helps to break through the noise and create a sense of urgency (more on that below), but it also impacts your likelihood of success. According to Yotpo data, seasonal or holiday-oriented campaigns see a 47% increase in revenue compared to regular campaigns.

Strategy in action:  

  • Create a discount code, promo, or other incentive that’s in theme with Memorial Day.
  • Discount what people are most excited to buy during Memorial Day weekend — summer items! Create a landing page with top picks for getting ready for the season, or consider creating a Memorial Day bundle.
  • Use visual UGC that’s summery in vibe to get shoppers excited for the season and makes your sale feel aspirational. This can also encourage shoppers to discover new products in a more authentic way.

Create a sense of urgency around Memorial Day

The benefit to holiday weekend sales is that they are inherently time-sensitive, so while adding urgency to your promotions might be overkill year-round, it’s warranted during a seasonal promotion like Memorial Day. This works because it plays into a customer’s fear of missing out on something they want or need.

Strategy in action:

  • Use phrases such as “this weekend only,” “limited stock,” or “offer ends today” on your promotions to motivate customers to act more immediately.
  • Add a countdown timer for when the Memorial Day sale will end.
  • Create anticipation with advanced messaging, like a sneak peek of what’s to come, so customers are more prepared to act once the promotion is live. Give loyalty program members early access to lend an air of exclusivity.

Our friends at Eastside Co — one of the world’s leading Shopify design, development and marketing agencies — offered even more great tips about urgency, exclusivity, and scarcity in our guide here.

Engage customers with SMS messages

If you’re creating a sense of urgency with your promotions, make sure you’re delivering them in the right way, too. SMS marketing is the perfect way to promote time-sensitive offers because of the immediacy of the channel; after all, 90% of text messages are read within three minutes.

Strategy in action: 

Optimize your organic marketing

Organic marketing is more important than ever, and getting in front of mission-oriented customers that match your demo is an easy way to acquire new customers during a shopping heavy weekend. The majority of shoppers start their research for a new purchase with a search, usually through Google.

Strategy in action: 

  • Make sure your Google Seller Ratings are showing up in your listings. According to Google Shopping’s documentation, your brand needs at least 100 unique seller reviews from the past 12 months in a given country for your reviews to display.
  • Leverage product ratings to make your ads stand out. For example, Yotpo customers that deploy Google Shopping ads with reviews and ratings see an increase in CTR of 24%.

Check out our Complete Guide to Google Shopping for more tips.

Trade access for signup

Use interest in your Memorial Day promotions as a motivator to sign up for a program that provides value to your brand, like your email or SMS subscriber lists, or your loyalty program. This gives you greater potential to turn one-off shoppers into repeat customers long after the holiday weekend.

Strategy in action: 

  • Create unique codes that get delivered to customers after signup.
  • Offer early access or an additional Memorial Day promotion, like free samples, for customers that sign up.

Reclaim abandoned carts

Sales weekends generally mean a lot of discounts all at once, and a shopper might get distracted. So it’s important to have a strategy in place to reclaim that Memorial Day sales traffic and abandoned carts!

Strategy in action: 

  • Send personalized text messages to SMS subscribers, to remind them of the item they left behind.
  • Use reviews and visual UGC of the item your customer left behind in retargeting ads to improve conversion.
  • Sweeten the deal with an additional offer for customers that return to buy, or create a new sense of exclusivity or urgency by extending your promotion for “one day only.”

Check out our guide for more tips to combat cart abandonment.

And our final tip for Memorial Day marketing ideas? Get creative! When all else fails, try something new and different to stand out from the crowd. Because Memorial Day is a great time to get your eCommerce brand in front of new customers. By implementing these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to generating sales and building brand loyalty.

To learn more about how Yotpo can enable your brand to build better customer experiences with SMS marketing, loyalty programs, reviews, and user-generated content — regardless of whether its Memorial Day or any other season — click here.