9 Holiday Seasonal App Marketing Tips To Boost Your Mobile App

9 mins read

Being able to enjoy the holidays every year without a doubt takes some preparation. We can say the same for seasonal app marketing, but we can’t deny that marketers need to adopt a mindset of overdelivering in order to get the ball rolling toward that coveted successful outcome. Any great mobile app marketing agency will say as much.

What are the dos & don’ts of mobile app marketing when it comes to the holidays? What techniques work best for Black Friday and Thanksgiving, for instance? Should you be sending emails on Christmas Eve? Learn invaluable insights by reading on.

A Few Reminders Before You Start Aiming for the Prize this Holiday Season

The Changing Seasons Affect People’s Buying Behavior

Let’s not deny the obvious: people tend or even like to spend more once the holidays roll in. That’s also the very reason why many experienced mobile marketers hustle more during this time. It can provide that much-needed push to get them in the green or attain positive results that exceed their expectations.

With that in mind, it’s important to realize the vastly different search trends and holiday shopping trends that happen as the Christmas holidays approach. In order to get your seasonal app marketing right, you have to be able to pinpoint what these shifts are

Key Days of the Holidays

Here’s a list of every day you should be paying close attention to if you’re looking for great holiday app marketing tips:

In November, there are seven: Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and the beginning of Hanukkah.
In December, there are six: Green Monday, Free Shipping Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the beginning of Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve.
In January and February, there’s one for each: New Year celebration and Valentine’s Day.

The below stats should reveal which particular days you must be focusing on.

The first two holidays we mentioned above (Black Friday and Thanksgiving) as well as Cyber Monday have always shown to be pivotal days. For one, every year, there’s a notable 25% increase in spending during those specific days.
Around 70% of purchases made during Cyber Monday tend to be gifted.
Close to 180 million shoppers participate in online shopping on Black Friday.
Holiday spending reached $880+ billion in 2021 in the USA alone with 20% of that total involving online shopping.

Types of Apps Greatly Tied to End-of-Year Seasonality

Naturally, if you’re looking to maximize your app revenue, it’s well worth knowing whether it’s greatly or only mildly affected by seasonality. That’s one important step in mobile app market research, especially if you’re still brainstorming which app category to get into as well as when considering Seasonal ASO.

Look no further than the four ones featured below:

Shopping Apps

These apps fulfill the main purpose of online shopping and delivering exclusive holiday deals to users, so it’s pretty much a given that they enjoy boosts in downloads, usage and revenue come Christmas time, particularly during the specific days mentioned above.

In fact, US shoppers have been found to spend more than 150 million hours in shopping apps during the holidays alone.

Health-Related Apps

Every new year, people make resolutions, mainly related to improving their health. Health and fitness apps are but one of the few useful tools that help them strive for and achieve the said resolutions.

Stats do point to a decrease in usage, especially during the final days of the year due to most people taking breaks.

Music Apps

With the plethora of holiday promotions that are tied to devices such as smartphones and tablets, it’s not surprising that they’re fairly popular gifts. And, since most of us are audiophiles, music apps enjoy boosts in downloads and usage once they’ve unwrapped and unboxed these tech goodies.

Education Apps

The same goes for students who receive these devices as gifts. They’re more than likely preparing for the next school year and will look for the best educational apps that will lighten their academic load for the next year. Students also tend to strive for better grades.

These Exceptional Holiday App Marketing Tips Work Best

The following nine seasonal app marketing are supported by success stories and stats, so we highly suggest you integrate most, if not all, of them in your campaign plan.

Liven up Your Promos and Customer Experience With Holiday Improvements

How do you monetize your app with the holidays in mind? One thing that always works is to actually introduce visible changes.

Give your app’s theme a good Christmas makeover. That always works if complemented by holiday-themed push notifications. The key is for your users to actually immerse themselves in the season.

Another important step is to make sure your offers are readily more visible, following your UI/UX changes.

Make Your App More Successful

During this Holiday season, Our team exists with years of experience in both ASO and user acquisition to assist you in achieving your objectives & improve the marketing effectiveness of your app.

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Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Keep in that 80% of the favored sites on search results are mobile-friendly. One easy step to make sure your site is responsive is to simply use a responsive theme. Aim for minimizing your site’s design and content as much as possible.

Make Your Return Policies Clear and Fair

Did you know that a big chunk of shoppers (up to 60%) actually take the time to read a store’s return policy? So mention the policies in your app that build trust and, in turn, bring higher conversions.

Choose Your KPIs Wisely

Quantifying your exact goals only make sure that they’re actually achievable. That’s what you do by selecting your KPIs, which gives your campaign its much-needed direction before launch.

Pay Attention to New Holidays-Related App Metadata

Seasonality permeates various vital metadata like your standard keywords, promo texts, screenshots, and even app icons. Savvy marketers know how to identify season keywords like “Cyber Monday deals” as opposed to those who are only focusing on general shopping keywords related to eCommerce app marketing.

Update and Optimize Your App Store and Play Store Listing

We’ve emphasized the need to conduct major changes that underscore the start of the holiday season. This transformation should also be apparent in your app’s listing. Focus on the description, keywords, icons, and screenshots, and consider other elements that app store optimization services will suggest.

Continue To Make Your Presence Felt on Social Media

This is one seasonal marketing strategy for apps that pretty much works all year round. However, you have to make it point to double down on your efforts in making holiday-themed posts, sharing stories about your limited Christmas collection, gift ideas, and engaging cart reminders that match the energy the top companies have when doing seasonal advertising.

Adopt a Mindset That Email Marketing Works

Did you know that the average email marketing ROI in e-commerce is $45 for every dollar spent? Any doubts you may have had about email marketing should be long dispelled from your mind. These campaigns have enjoyed this much longevity for a reason. They work with Swiss Army knife efficiency, after all.

You should always send emails that announce your app’s planned holiday sale and are concerned with greetings related to a specific holiday event, exclusive discounts, and deal expiration reminders.

Don’t Delay Optimization

These mobile app marketing tips for the holiday season will only ever work if you don’t procrastinate. Compared to the rest of the year, the season’s timeframe is relatively, spanning, at most, only two and a half months.

Also, don’t forget that optimization should also include mobile app localization, which unlocks highly targeted traffic that can earn you loyal customers, too.

Conclusion

We hope that with the insights and tips we shared here, we’ve given a satisfactory answer to the question, “How do you market for the holiday season?” Always remember that seasonal app marketing techniques overlap with most proven-working digital marketing strategies. So once you get the hang of them, you’re guaranteed to enjoy consistent results every year.

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