Thanksgiving and Black Friday have passed, which means that the next big way to bombard your website with traffic is by offering great holiday specials.

Experian reports that online displays and email marketing are the top two ways to reach customers this holiday season. Approximately 68% of marketers plan to use online displays for the holidays this year, accompanied by 55% of marketers who plan to mainly use email marketing campaigns. Furthermore, television seems to have lost its appeal to many holiday shoppers, causing only 25% of holiday marketing campaigns this year to target TV audiences.

Of course, before you decide how to market your holiday specials, you need to know what specials will appeal to your customers most.

Learn What Your Clients Want Using Google Analytics

Delve into your Google Analytics account to see what pages, products or services are attracting the most traffic on your website. If a certain product or service seems to be getting more attention than usual, consider running a holiday special on it. If you keep record of the seasonal trends on your website (and you really should be doing this), take a look at what was popular last year. More likely than not, similar products and services will be high-buying again this year so create a holiday sale based around those items.

If you haven’t been monitoring the seasonal shift in your Web traffic, now is as good a time as any to start. Watch what pages and content are popular on your website throughout the holiday season and compile a report a week or so after New Year’s. Having this data available for the next holiday season will help you get ahead of your competition.

Top 5 Strategies for Holiday Specials This Year

According to Experian, the majority of holiday specials for 2013 will be centering on online offers and sales. In fact, the top five marketing strategies of 2013’s holiday season will implement an online approach. If you’re looking for an effective way to attract more customers with holiday sales, chances are one of the methods discussed below will work for you.

1. Free Shipping
   Experian reports that approximately 39% of marketers will use free shipping offers as their primary holiday sales method this year. With so many consumers doing their holiday shopping online, it’s no wonder that free shipping offers close the sale for many businesses.
2. Deal of the Day Specials
   Holiday specials that change on a daily basis are a great way to not only entice customers to keep coming back to your site, but they can also persuade customers to subscribe to your RSS feed and purchase sooner rather than later. Experian’s data shows that approximately 27% of marketers plan to focus their holiday sales efforts on daily specials this year.
3. Niche-Targeted Specials
   Niche targeting is a great marketing strategy for any time of the year, but is especially effective around the holidays. This is mainly due to the fact that many people are shopping for that one-of-a-kind gift for their brother, cousin or aunt during this season. About 24% of marketers will focus on holiday specials geared toward specific channels this year.
4. Ecoupon Offers
   Ecoupons will be used by approximately 20% of online marketers this year. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, online displays and email marketing campaigns are going to be the two big ways to attract customers this holiday season.  Ecoupon offers play into these trending marketing strategies and allow you to reach your customers both through your website as well as through their inboxes.
5. Online Marketing Combos
   It’s no surprise that with so many great opportunities to attract holiday shoppers there are a number of marketer who plan to use, not just one, but several primary marketing strategies this holiday season. About 19% of marketers plan to combine various online marketing strategies – and maybe a few offline strategies as well – to give their customers the best holiday specials this year.

What kinds of online marketing strategies do you have for this year’s holiday season? Tell me in the comments section below!