Holiday Packaging: Pro-Tips To Impress Your Customers

The holiday season is one of the most important for many businesses, including your company. Making your products attractive and easy to ship is vital to maximizing your profits during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday shopping spree.

The proper holiday packaging can make your brand stand out from the competition and inspire your target customers to shop at your company again and again. Not sure where to start? Let’s examine nine smart tips to impress your customers with quality packaging.

7 Pro-Tips for Holiday Packaging

1. Start brainstorming early
2. Include and prioritize seasonal products
3. Incorporate a narrative to connect with customers
4. Watch deadlines closely
5. Use quality materials
6. Consider a packaging supplier
7. Distinguish yourself from the competition

Start Brainstorming Early

Your company can master holiday packaging and bring smiles to the faces of all its customers. One of the best ways to ensure holiday cheer is to start brainstorming holiday packaging ideas early.

If you try to come up with holiday package designs and solutions the week before Black Friday, you won’t have time to implement those solutions. Instead, you should start thinking about your holiday packaging right now, ideally in the summer before your target holiday season.

When you brainstorm, you can develop ideas like:

• Including handwritten notes to each of your customers
• Incorporating your logo into gift boxes
• Designing your holiday or Christmas packaging to appeal to individual customer groups

Bottom line: start figuring out your holiday custom packaging strategy sooner rather than later. It'll pay dividends when the holiday shopping season finally rolls around.

Include and Prioritize Seasonal Products

Next, you should try to include and prioritize seasonal products at your store. Say that you sell T-shirts or other clothing to your customers. If you have one or more themed T-shirts, like shirts with Santa Claus or other holiday subjects, try to push them by offering them at a discount or displaying them on your packaging as special offers.

You can also go the extra mile and include seasonal trinkets, like tiny ornaments or decorations, in every holiday package you ship to your customers. Not only does this make for an excellent experience for your consumers, but it also helps you stand out from the competition (see more below).

Incorporate a Narrative To Connect With Customers

The best packages incorporate narratives, so their products connect more deeply with their users. You can keep this same philosophy intact with your holiday shipping and packaging goals.

For example, you might include a picture of someone enjoying a product on your holiday packaging. Then someone can imagine using the product inside before they get their hands on it.

Good narratives strengthen long-term customer relationships with brands just like yours. The more narratives you can leverage, the more likely someone will be delighted and surprised by your holiday packaging and whatever’s included.

Watch Deadlines Closely

The holiday shopping season can be chaotic. Every business owner ramps production and juggles a million different things to fulfill orders.

But if you order customized holiday packaging to surprise and impress your customers, you must closely watch your deadlines. Holiday packaging loses much of its luster and appeal if those packages show up after a critical date, like Christmas day.

Be sure to watch your deadlines so your new holiday packages are completed on time, and you can ship them to your customers with time to spare. The earlier your customers get their holiday packages, the sooner they can place them beneath their Christmas trees or stockings.

The longer your packages are out there, the more time they have to passively market to people who haven’t yet purchased anything from your store.

Use Quality Materials

Quality materials like eco-friendly yet high-quality cardboard boxes, or elegant bags, can do a lot to elevate your brand and make your packages seem like delightful gifts in and of themselves.

You can also add special finishes to your packages to go above and beyond. For example, you can emboss or deboss your packaging or use packaging materials with a glossy finish for added effect.

Combined with the right design, your boxes will light up the room and look great sitting underneath a Christmas tree.

Consider a Packaging Supplier

E-commerce packaging suppliers can streamline your holiday packaging process by providing you with the packing materials, such as shipping boxes or inserts; you need to fill all your orders and get your holiday presents shipped out to their customers on time.

Box Genie is just one example. With Box Genie, you can design and prep custom mailer, shipping, or triangle mailer boxes for your customers, ensuring you can ship them whatever they ordered in a package that speaks to them and inspires them to buy from you again.

Ordering custom packages from packaging suppliers are often the best way to fulfill big orders around the holiday season and to make sure you don’t lose time trying to put together your packages from scratch.

Distinguish Yourself From the Competition

Above all else, your holiday packaging should help to distinguish your company from the competition. Whether that’s through the design of the packages, their unique elements, or including a handwritten note inside each box or bag, your packages should enhance your company and make it an even more appealing choice.

Why Is Holiday Packaging Important?

Holiday packaging is essential because it highlights the shopping season, gets people in the mood to spend money, and inspires a more festive spirit in everyone who visits your online store.

More importantly, holiday packaging is crucial because:

• It helps distinguish your brand from stores that don’t make any effort to highlight the holiday season
• It shows that your packaging can change throughout the year, which drives interest in what you offer all year round
• It provides an opportunity for you to make purchasing something special

The last element is most crucial. When people shop, they want to feel delighted, entertained, and excited. If you offer quality holiday packaging, you make the buying experience all the better for your target customers, whether they’re buying for themselves or a friend or family member.

In short, holiday packaging helps enhance your customers' purchasing and shopping experience. You can go the extra mile and drive brand loyalty to your company by investing in bright, aesthetically excellent holiday packaging today.

Timeless Holiday Packaging Trends

• Festive patterns
• Nostalgic design
• Bright colors
• Sustainability

Festive Patterns

Luckily, there are several timeless and classic holiday packaging trends you can rely on if you don’t know where to start or don’t have a degree in graphic design.

First on the list is festive patterns, like snowflakes, snowmen, and red sleighs. Positive patterns drum up the holiday spirit in everyone, especially folks who celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or other winter holidays.

Plus, with creativity, you can incorporate your brand's logo or iconography into the festive patterns. Say that you decide to have a snowflake-themed package for your boxes or bags. Add your company logo here and there, and your customers will be thrilled to see your unique spin on a classic idea.

Nostalgic Design

Nostalgic holiday designs, of course, also have a place with any holiday packaging push. What counts as nostalgic depends on your country of origin, your target audience, and even your age. But say that you offer products to primarily American consumers. In that case, you can lean into nostalgic designs like:

• Holiday package exteriors or cards with Santa Claus or other holiday figures
• Square boxes with bow ties on top — a classic gift look that people still love
• “Surprise” designs are like a box or package with a distinct 3D shape that hides something different. Imagine a big box that has a tiny snow globe inside.

Bright Colors

Then there are bright colors like red, green, white, and silver. These classic holiday shades are perfect for packaging paper, box exteriors, and even the cards for handwritten notes you may decide to include within each box you ship out.

Sustainability

Lastly, you can and should lean into sustainable holiday packaging by prioritizing eco-friendly materials and design practices.

For example, maybe you’ll stay away from unneeded tissue packaging, aside from stuffing it into boxes with very fragile items that need a little extra protection. That way, you use only a little or no unnecessary packing paper. Similarly, you should design your packages as small and compact as possible. Don’t leave much space inside them, so you waste as few materials as possible.

Alternatively, maybe every paper product you use for your packaging comes from recycled materials. By emphasizing sustainability, you send a message to your target audience members and make your brand a great choice to shop at for holiday spending.

The Bottom Line

Holiday packaging can maximize your brand recall for target customers to make a single purchase. Done right, you can even inspire people to buy from your brand again and again or enjoy passive marketing boosts just from the quality of your custom boxes, bags, or other packaging materials.

Best of all, you can get started designing and launching themed holiday packaging right now with brands like Box Genie. Check out our custom box solutions today.

Sources:

embossing | art | Britannica

Identifying Greener Paper | US EPA

Brand Loyalty Definition | Investopedia