Let it grow! Ideas for B2B tech marketers this holiday season

Expectations and traditions around Christmas gifting mean B2C marketers get all the fun when it comes to December campaigns. Just look at our beloved festive icon Rudolph, who was invented by a department store in 1939 to sell books! Where people celebrate Christmas, everyone is in the market for B2C goods. 

But when it comes to B2B tech and SaaS, marketers can look at the holiday season two ways: 

1. Optimistically: Decision makers don’t take much annual leave, but gatekeepers do, meaning their calendars are free from internal meetings and they have time to book demos and do research. The new year is also often a time for renewals and re-strategizing, as budgets need to be spent by the end of the year and confirmed for the next. This pressure means B2B leads might be more willing to buy. 
2. Pessimistically: Ad spend is high on Google and other platforms, and there’s no point in targeting prospects who aren’t working or are mentally switched off from work. Campaigns and strategies might be on hold until the new year as people slow down before the holidays and time off. Finally, budgets could renew at the end of the fiscal year, not the calendar one, meaning there’s no pressure to buy new tech. 

Whether you fall into the optimistic or pessimistic bucket, the Christmas season presents easy opportunities to delight your audience, nurture your leads and bring joy to your existing customers. B2B tech and SaaS companies are often presented as cold and lacking humanity, but Christmas is the perfect time to warm up your brand and steer clear of being labelled a grinch. 

If you want ideas to add some festive spirit to your B2B tech marketing, keep reading! 

1. Deck the emails 

Why do ​​93% of B2B marketers use email as a channel for distributing content? Because it works! And over the holidays, B2B decision makers are still checking theirs. A festive email is a great way to acknowledge the season and keep your prospects and customers engaged. 

Emails are a low cost option for Christmastime as they require no additional budget, just a creative marketer and some festive assets. It’s as simple as adding some mistletoe to the logo of your usual campaign email. 

Or, you could send out a dedicated ‘Season’s Greetings’ email to existing customers and leads, accompanied by a Christmastime offer. This lets readers know you’re not ignoring such a prominent annual event, to let them know you’re not a Christmas grinch, that tech and SaaS companies celebrate the holidays too! 

2. Give back with charitable donations or volunteering

In the season of giving, charity donations are a fantastic way to show how much your company cares about the greater good. Not only will you get to help out a worthy organisation of your choice, Christmastime donations are a great way to prove how your company takes corporate social responsibility seriously. 

Another way to showcase this is to hit pause on normal operations for a day and encourage your employees to get involved in charity work. They could collect donations on behalf of an organisation, participate in an environmental clean up or volunteer in their own communities.

Be careful as to how you position these donations and acts of service, as there’s a propensity for insincerity to pervade your promotion! To avoid this, you could get an executive leader, like your CEO, to post on their social media, thereby giving it a personal tone. Or you could take pictures of employees at work to provide evidence that you really truly care about the cause.

3. Santafy your brand

This Christmas, you could try exciting your current customers with gifts at their homes through direct mail marketing. Whether it’s a greeting card or a voucher, this token will make a lasting impression, just in time for potential subscription renewals. 

For mature leads, entice them with discounts and special offers through the mail that keep them warm for their purchase decisions in the new year. 

Not only will your brand physically exist in your buyer’s homes over the festive season, they might associate it with happiness, joy and good times. Just make sure you offer value to the recipients, otherwise your marketing attempts might come across as irritating or bad timing.

You might be wondering about the effectiveness of direct mail in a majority digital world, but real life marketing materials have a clear impact on digital activities. However, the Data and Marketing Association found that as a direct result of receiving mail, 92% have been driven to online or digital activity in 2020. Therefore, the holidays are the perfect time to try out a direct mail strategy, because it’s the season of giving! 

4. Sprinkle festive cheer onto your social media 

For B2B tech organisations, social media is often used as a way to exhibit internal culture, encourage employee advocacy and reveal a warm side to an otherwise humanless tech or SaaS brand.

The holidays offer a fantastic opportunity to move further towards these social media objectives. Having an employee Christmas party? Take photos of the exciting event and tag everyone so they’ll share it themselves. Photos of a decorated office and its inhabitants are also a great way to show off the fun side of your company. 

Employee advocacy through social media is a great tool for B2B tech marketers who know the impact of word-of-mouth marketing. People trust other people above all else! 

5. Gift wrap your website homepage

As a B2B tech marketer, you probably already know that your website, and its homepage, sit at the heart of your marketing strategy. 

With every other website splashing some festivity onto their homepage, it’s obvious when yours hasn’t got any! Don’t be that boring B2B tech company that refuses to acknowledge the holidays… instead, give your website some cheer! 

All it takes is a little holly here, a few baubles there, and voila, a festive B2B tech website. 

6. Gamify your brand

Customisable games are a great way to capture and engage a B2B audience. Themed ones such as this Kwik Fit Konga game are a perfect Christmas campaign idea that pushes the envelope and innovates a B2B tech marketing strategy. Kwik Fit’s Konga game received over 200,000 plays with an average of 20 minutes playing time! 

This amount of attention and level of engagement from an audience is a testament to the favourable reception of custom games. Because they’re lots of fun to play, they can build positive associations with your brand and leave a lasting impression on your audience. 

Now go forth and spread the cheer with these B2B tech marketing Christmas ideas!