Guillaume Deschamps / 9 Mins Read
Updated: January 17, 2024
Discover seven advanced funnel marketing strategies you can use to convert leads this holiday season, along with a helpful checklist.
Looking to boost sales during the holiday shopping season? Begin planning your marketing funnels as soon as possible. While running PPC ads and posting on social media helps, you also need more strategic ways to guide your target audience to conversion.
Setting up funnels helps you collect valuable data and contact information in case a lead decides they’re not ready to convert yet. This gives you ample opportunities to nurture them to a sale long after they’ve left your website.
Keep reading to discover advanced funnel marketing strategies you can use to encourage higher conversion rates and collect opt-ins. We also have a Holiday Funnel Marketing Checklist as a bonus gift — just for you.
Create a guided selling funnel to lead website visitors to the exact solution to their needs. This strategy works great for ecommerce businesses, service-based brands, and subscription-based models.
Get inspired by Form Health, a telehealth brand that helps people interested in Wegovy, Mounjaro, and other weight loss solutions. The brand attracts holiday searchers to its website with aligned content that speaks to their pain points, such as…
It then hooks interested users with its guided selling quiz, featuring a large call to action (CTA) button that reads…
“Am I a candidate?”:
After the user clicks the question, a simple page pops up inviting them to start the quiz:
Next, the user enters their name and chooses their weight loss motivators:
On the following page, Form Health personalizes the screen with the user’s name. It also reveals the health specialists in charge of tailoring the potential customer’s weight loss plan:
Doing so helps put a face to a name and establishes trust. This inspires a sense of ease, encouraging the lead to continue the quiz.
The quiz goes on to ask the user simple questions. These include what state and zip code they live in, what insurance they have, and if they have any pre-existing health conditions:
Soon enough, Form Health reveals the prospect’s eligibility and asks for their email address to send over a custom plan:
While the user could drop off, they'll likely continue forward if they’re genuinely interested in weight loss support. They’ve already invested time into the quiz — so they may as well hand over their contact details to receive the results.
This helps Form Health grab quality leads that have a better chance of converting.
If they don’t convert right away, Form Health adds them to a lead nurturing email sequence. This not only helps the brand build up its email list with interested prospects — but it also teaches it how to segment its audience.
With tailored and contextualized emails, leads have consistent opportunities to take their weight loss goals from insight to action.
Use this strategy to:
Lock arms with relevant influencers, subject-matter experts, and guest authors to scale your conversion approach. (Secure partners by Q3 at the latest, so your SEO strategy has time to work before the holiday rush.)
The more authoritative authors you have speaking about your brand and solutions, the more conversion opportunities you’ll have.
For instance, ask brand partners to create content such as product reviews, comparison guides, demos, and how-tos. These highly searchable content assets align with your target audience’s needs and your holiday sales goals.
Get inspired by the following Surfer SEO content optimization tool review DivByZero published. It’s thorough, actionable, and brings the reader’s eye down with engaging screenshots, headers, and honest pros and cons.
It also includes relevant sales-focused CTAs and informative content the searcher cares most about:
What a huge bonus this strategy offers! Link-building opportunities.
By having authors with high DR scores follow white-hat practices when writing about what you sell, you build up valuable external links to your site. (Just make sure they’re set to “Do-Follow”.)
To learn from DivByZero, ask partners to:
To make the most of each asset, have partners repurpose snippets of them across their social media channels, SMS campaigns, and email marketing campaigns. Take this tip up a notch by having them create engaging video commercials, carousel images, and Story posts.
Be sure to also ask partners to weave in email sign-up CTAs so they can follow up if the user hasn’t converted yet. Supply partners with holiday coupon codes so they can nudge leads to conversion faster. Make sure to have mutual access to the email leads so you can continue communicating with them long after your partnership ends.
Use this strategy to:
Give website visitors an immediate opportunity to convert by featuring a product banner at the top of your home page. Make the visual as engaging as possible to captivate visitors and keep them on the page.
No need to add holiday colors or seasonal imagery if that’s off-brand.
Simply add a professional design, photo, or video that makes your offer stand out. Use A/B testing to finalize your banner look and CTA so it has the highest conversion potential. When creating your banner, put the spotlight on the core product or service you’d like to sell.
Or use an auto-slider to feature a few main products or services you’re aiming to sell for the holidays.
Get inspired by YUPLAY’s auto-slider product banner.
The banner (currently) features five main products, an easy-to-spot CTA button, and helpful product shots. Visitors can also quickly glance over to “Game Info” for detailed product specs or use the convenient product search feature above the banner to look up add-ons:
Its search bar populates suggestions based on what the visitor enters. The visitor can also click “Show All Results” or hit enter to see all related products. This is the golden potential for product add-ons. For instance, if a user enters “Fortnite”, they’ll see 19 related product options:
These include Fortnite gaming packs and add-ons.
What’s more, many of these are highly discounted, like the Fortnite Spiderman Outfit, making them an easy sell for Fortnite enthusiasts. They also have noticeable “Add to Cart” CTAs to nudge visitors to fill their shopping carts.
When visitors check out, YUPLAY grabs their email addresses to continue following up with upsell campaigns and targeted offers.
Use this strategy to:
Get your website visitors excited about shopping with you by integrating the following engagement-focused funnels:
Use interactive content, such as dynamic filters, forms, and AI makers, to encourage users to engage with your website.
These assets should help them find tailored solutions, customize products to their exact specifications, or help them create something they want.
Add a form or button to collect their contact information after they complete the filters and forms (or use your AI maker). Send automated and segmented lead nurturing emails if they don’t convert. Send loyalty campaigns if they do.
Inspirational examples:
Use a simple discount pop-up to help interested leads complete a purchase as soon as possible. Ask for their email addresses before you supply the code.
Add leads that opened the email to your active subscriber's list. Continue nurturing them if they haven’t used the code in three to seven days. If they purchase, add them to a loyalty campaign and send them relevant upsell offers.
Inspirational examples:
Pull website visitors immediately into a fun virtual game for the chance to win a prize…
I.e., “Spin the wheel to earn money toward your next purchase!”
Gate the prize, so the user has to submit their email address to claim it. If they use the special offer to make a purchase, consider sending them auto-generated gamified emails with more chances to play games for prizes.
If they don’t, offer them bonus points or extra prize money to encourage them to use it. You can also offer them the chance to play a different game to win even more gifts.
Inspirational examples:
Use an AI chatbot on your website to present offers based on contextual evidence.
For instance, “I see you’re viewing our productivity software page. Would you like to know more about our pricing plans?”
Or “Would you like to customize the stand mixer you’re viewing? We have 18+ color choices.”
Always have the bot ask the shopper for their name and email address. This is helpful in case they get disconnected, and it also gives you follow-up opportunities.
Inspirational examples:
Below you’ll find the Holiday Funnel Marketing Checklist we promised earlier.
Put your best foot forward by testing and optimizing each holiday sales funnel before going live.
Use the following checklist to help you refine your funnels:
Make sure you can confidently check off each box before launching your holiday funnels.
When competition’s fierce, you need advanced strategies to help you stand out.
This is especially true during the holidays when everyone’s working to grab a slice of the market share.
You can create multiple sales layers across an omnichannel presence by testing, optimizing, and integrating the seven funnels we covered today.
For good measure, here are the holiday funnels we recommend using for better conversions:
Don’t forget to use our Holiday Funnel Marketing Checklist when finalizing your funnels!
Here’s to a successful holiday season! 🎁
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Guillaume is a digital marketer focused on handling the outreach strategy at uSERP and content management at Wordable. Outside of work, he enjoys his ex-pat life in sunny Mexico, reading books, wandering around and catching the latest shows on TV.
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