Spooky Halloween sale ideas to kick off the holiday season

Many people view Black Friday as the start of the holiday sale season, but according to our State of Sales 2019-2020 research, the lucrative end-of-year sales season begins in October, followed closely by April to June.

What is your most successful period for selling?

Your team can make the most of the sale season if you kick off holiday sales during Halloween whether you sell a Halloween product or not.

In this article, we share Halloween sale ideas with examples from different industries to inspire your holiday marketing campaigns and boost end-of-year sales.

Halloween sales and website marketing ideas

If your business operates exclusively online, showing your holiday spirit to customers through a Halloween-themed in-store experience isn’t an option.

Businesses without a physical Halloween-themed product may lack inspiration in their marketing efforts for Halloween campaigns.

Online-based businesses with or without holiday-themed products can boost Halloween revenue using clever copy and spooky graphics.

Here are a few examples of how to do that.

Clever Halloween sales copy

Brands can boost sales and show their Halloween spirit on their online store using Halloween-inspired website copy. For example, you could use temporary phrases like “scary savings” or “spooktacular discounts”.

Safety apparel and footwear brand Tingley does this with its “Scary Savings for Spooky Season” 20% off campaign.

Even though the product remains unchanged, Tingley leans in to Halloween-themed copy to show its Halloween spirit and offer site visitors a discount to increase sales.

You can enhance any sale this way using Halloween-inspired copy.

Consider the following examples as you craft your Halloween sales writing, pricing and special discounts:

• BOGO sales: “Double the scares, double the savings”.

• Free shipping: “No tricks, just treats”.

• Post-holiday discounts: “The haunt is over, but the savings remain”.

• Halloween-themed promo codes or discounts.

• Sitewide Halloween promotions, free product promos or other freebies.

Creative Halloween graphics

Beyond clever marketing copy, Halloween provides an opportunity to use creative designs with Halloween-inspired graphics.

Soft drink brand Fanta encourages site visitors to sign up for its newsletter with fun graphics on a Halloween-themed landing page where you can enter a contest to win movie tickets.

Beyond Halloween landing pages, brands with access to designers and developers can spice up their homepages or create fun Halloween-themed popups.

Businesses can also use free and low-cost tools, like Canva, that offer customizable template-based graphics to support these marketing strategies.

Halloween-themed blogs

If you want a lower commitment, publishing a Halloween-themed blog is an easy way to embrace the Halloween spirit on your website.

Online food magazine Delish accomplishes this well.

Delish doesn’t sell Halloween products, like costumes or Halloween treats, and it didn’t set out to redo its entire website. Instead, it embraces Halloween with a DIY costume blog – a topic relevant to its website visitors who take a DIY approach to cooking.

This team avoided making substantial changes to their website while still including a fun and easy Halloween graphic as the primary blog image.

There’s no strong funnel link between food and Halloween costumes, but this example demonstrates how to tap in to an audience’s other interests to build relationships, become a trusted brand and potentially draw in a new audience.

Beyond adding to the Halloween theme of your virtual storefront and driving organic search traffic, Halloween blogs can bring web visitors from other channels when shared with email subscribers and on social media.

Halloween-themed email marketing campaigns

A successful email marketing campaign needs a click-worthy subject line to get subscribers to open it and strong email body content to get readers to take the next step.

Here are a few ideas to spark your email marketing creativity this holiday season.

Email subject lines

Email subject lines are key to a successful email marketing campaign and there are many ways to use them creatively during Halloween sales.

Food delivery service Uber Eats does this well with a subject line that offers candy discounts and speaks to your worst Halloween nightmare – running out of treats.

Consider the following ways to spookify your email subject line:

• Personalize the subject line: “Looking for Halloween sales?”

• Create intrigue: “Enter if you dare” or “Scary good deals”.

• Use a play on words: “Ghouls just wanna have fun” or “Creep it real with ghoulish savings”.

• Ask a question: “Ready for something spooky?”

• Use numbers: “3 spooktacular ways to save this Halloween”.

• Lean on the classics: “No spooks, just savings, during our Happy Halloween sale!”

• Add Halloween or fall emojis: 🎃 👻 🩸 🧛 🦇 🍁

Halloween email body ideas

After a scroll-stopping subject line, the email body is your chance to make the sale or drive subscribers to take the next step.

A well-designed Halloween email body should:

• Be well formatted with concise text, a logical structure and relevant graphics that break up text

• Remain on brand while embracing a level of Halloween themes that make sense for your brand and audience

• Be targeted to your audience and speak to their needs or desires

• Drive action with a strong CTA (call-to-action) so readers know what to do next

Health-conscious wine brand FitVine does these things well. It speaks to its audience’s concerns about consuming too much sugar around the treat-focused holiday, breaking up text with well-placed Halloween graphics and driving users to purchase with direct product links.

Consider these additional ideas as you plan the body of your Halloween email campaign:

• Share a sneak peek at your website sales and direct readers to your site

• Reward customer loyalty with a gift or discount

• Point users to your Halloween contest landing page

• Send Halloween-themed videos and blogs to subscribers

• Drive email subscribers to engage with your Halloween social media campaigns

• Use a Halloween-themed template

Halloween social media ideas

The goal of social media marketing is to get users to interact with your brand on your social media platforms. Creating content that sparks conversation and engagement with your brand can be challenging, however.

To show your holiday spirit and inspire users to engage with you, consider these social media Halloween marketing ideas.

Host a Halloween photo contest

Social media campaigns are another opportunity to use Halloween-themed graphics, clever writing and even user-generated content (UGC).

UGC is content created by people who aren’t official representatives of your company.

In this case, we’re not talking about affiliate videos on TikTok. You could ask users to submit an image for a photo contest, like a best costume or pumpkin carving contest.

Insurance agency Paradigm does this well. It combines fun jack-o-lantern graphics with a pumpkin carving contest that drives UGC in the comments section.

The comments and engagement on this post will drive the success of this campaign.

For the most success, brands should set up a hashtag like #PipedrivePumpkinCarving and be sure to repurpose the winning photo in a post of its own.

Run a Halloween giveaway

Another social media opportunity is to host a Halloween giveaway. Your giveaway could be product-related or a simple Halloween gift basket with branded goodies.

It’s a great way to grow your business generally, but can also help attract people during your sale. Tailwind found that Instagram accounts that hold contests grow 70% faster than those that don’t.

To enter the giveaway, social media users must engage with your brand, such as liking, sharing, commenting or even tagging a friend who might benefit from your products. Requiring users to tag a friend in the comments gets your brand in front of even more potential customers.

Clothing brand Simply Magnetic Me does this well. It asks users to follow its page and leave a comment to enter the giveaway. They offer additional entries into the giveaway to those who share the post and tag its page.

The more engagement your giveaway gets, the more people will see your brand across their feeds.

Bonus tip: Start early

Whichever social media posts you decide to create, start your holiday posting early for the best engagement. Starting early offers your audience more time to prepare, builds anticipation and gives you time to repost about the winners before the holiday.

For Halloween, you could start posting about your upcoming contest or giveaway as early as September.

Grocery store Rainbow Grocery builds anticipation for upcoming posts and discounts with posts letting followers know to check back for more information.

Remember to share your Halloween-themed blogs or videos with your social crowd as well.

Halloween ads

Now that we’ve shown examples of how to use Halloween graphics in your sales and marketing, it’s worth discussing low-key design changes that still embrace the holiday.

Temporarily changing your color palette to include orange, black and even purple is a subtle way to catch your audience’s attention and show your holiday spirit.

Review management platform Birdeye does this with Halloween’s signature orange in its advertising.

Another way to show Halloween spirit in your advertising is to lean in to the spooky vibe.

Car manufacturer Toyota does this with a well-photoshopped image combined with clever messaging.

Direct mail campaigns

Mounting sustainability pressure and the convenience of digital marketing means most brands gave up on traditional, if not outdated, direct mail marketing strategies long ago.

Consumers now expect to see digital ads to the point that they may not be as effective as they once were. What consumers don’t expect to see anymore is a physical ad in their mailbox.

Since most brands gave up on this strategy a long time ago, you could catch your unsuspecting audience’s attention by reinstating this classic marketing technique.

Direct mail campaigns may be worth the investment if your company produces a Halloween-themed product, like personal care brand Bath and Body Works.

Knowing its target audience loves Halloween, Bath and Body Works anticipated record Halloween spending and released a 55-plus limited edition Halloween collection in late July.

Not only does this brand catch consumers by surprise with a physical ad, it also capitalizes on surprise by sending its Halloween messaging out to consumers months in advance.

It’s proof that with the right audience it’s never too early to start celebrating the holidays.

More ideas for local businesses

Business owners who operate retail or other small businesses can embrace Halloween celebrations beyond the typical spiderweb Halloween decorations.

Local businesses can boost brand awareness and increase sales if they go into their communities and offer discounts.

Here are a few local promotion ideas to fill up your marketing calendar.

Participate in local events

Local businesses can build brand awareness and attract new customers if they hand out treats and store coupons at local Halloween events.

While children might not be your target audience, local events serve as an opportunity to get your brand in front of their parents and caregivers.

For example, your brand could customize trick-or-treat bags like these from Perfect Imprints with your brand name and logo, then pass them out at local harvest festivals or trick-or-treat events.

Consider these additional ways to participate locally:

• Sponsor or partner with other businesses to host a community Halloween event or scavenger hunt

• Hand out fliers offering gift cards or Halloween treats with in-store purchases

• Host an in-store pumpkin carving contest or Halloween party for kids

No matter which local events you participate in, each one makes great content to send to email subscribers ahead of time and photo opportunities for social media campaigns after the fact.

Offer discounts

If your business is brick-and-mortar rather than e-commerce, consider offering a “come in costume” discount like cocktail bar Copper Fox Distillery.

Better yet, take it a step further and offer an extra discount to those who go the extra mile to post their photo on social media and tag your store – another opportunity for UGC.

You can also build relationships and incentivize purchases with referral coupons for other local stores or community events.

Final thoughts

Halloween marketing campaigns can bolster more than just end-of-year sales.

Halloween is a chance to get your brand in front of new audiences, grow your email subscribers and show your fun side on social media.

Spicing up your campaign ideas this Halloween season, whether your business is local or operates online only, offers significant brand awareness and sales opportunities.

When it’s time to start thinking about Black Friday and Christmas sales, we recommend checking out our guides on Black Friday emails and Christmas emails.