Using promotions to aid New Year resolutions

Henry Bewicke

Content Writer

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Most people have mixed feelings about the New Year. On the one hand you have the post-Christmas blues and the end of the festive season for another year. On the other hand, it’s time to start looking ahead to summer and new beginnings.

On the journey towards summer, many people aim for a bit of self-improvement, often in the form of a New Year’s resolution. For some businesses this is a great opportunity to market products and services to a new group of potential customers.

Let’s take a look at some interesting ways businesses can create compelling promotions that will help customers achieve their New Year’s resolutions.

Fitness & exercise

It should come as no surprise that fitness & exercise is the most common theme for New Year’s resolutions. After weeks of excessive eating and drinking, people are eager to hit the gym.

This makes it the best time of the year for gyms and sports brands to market their products to a new audience. But it also means there’s a lot of competition. To switch things up a little, a gym can target New Year’s Resolutioners with a promotion like this:

A gamified New Year loyalty program running through January and February.
Customers would gain loyalty points every time they go to the gym throughout this period.
This encourages new sign-ups while also helping customers achieve their health/fitness-related New Year’s resolutions.

Healthy eating

Along the same fitness & exercise theme that pushes people to join the gym in the new year, many people also aim to eat more healthily.

This makes it a great time for healthy eating/food brands to market their products to a new audience. While there are fewer relevant promotions for food brands than there are for gyms, there are still plenty of ways to create attractive, eye-catching deals.

If you own a healthy eating or food brand, try targeting people working towards their New Year’s resolutions with a promotion like this:

Free product coupons. These could be for the entire value of the product or simply a percentage discount.
A follow-up promotion with 10% discount on the product for the rest of January and February if customers provide their contact details.
This campaign exposes your brand's product to potential new customers who may never have tried it otherwise.

Money & savings

Another common New Year’s resolution theme that’s not health/fitness-related is money and savings. The festive season can be expensive, so many people decide to be more careful with their money in the new year.

This provides a good opportunity for financial services businesses to offer potential customers deals to help them save. A good promotion example in this case might be:

$100 cashback when a new customer deposits and doesn't withdraw X amount of money in the first three months of their membership.
A referral program that also offers $20 to existing customers and new customers when a new sign-up is completed.
This promotion would give a financial services brand high quality, relevant leads, while also helping its customers save money using the lure of a reward.

Education & learning

Many people head into the New Year with a strong desire to learn something new, whether that’s a skill, a language, or simply taking up a hobby.

This is a broad sector that’s occupied by many businesses. But with a potential influx of new customers, the new year gives these businesses some great growth opportunities.

Let’s use a language learning app or course as an example for a relevant New Year promotion:

The business could offer customers a special New Year bundle deal on a selection of courses/modules.
For each course a customer completes, they receive a free gift or $15 cashback.
This promotion uses a reward to encourage customers to stick with their learning course and work towards their New Year’s resolution.

Reading

In a similar vein to learning a new skill, many people decide they want to read more in the new year. Unsurprisingly, the lead up to Christmas is a busy time for book sales, but they slow down again once January arrives.

Meanwhile, the new year is a good time for self-help books, exercise books and the like. If you own a bookshop, you can use a promotion like this to capitalize on the wave of New Year readers:

Cumulative discount for book purchases up to five units.
This would offer customers 10% off one book, 20% off two, and so on up to 50%.
This promotion would help your book shop increase sales and also encourage customers to buy, and hopefully read, more books.

New Year promotions for other industries

The promotion examples listed above relate to industries that can easily capitalize on popular New Year’s resolution themes. But other businesses can set up promotions to specifically target New Year’s Resolutioners too.

Promotions that encourage some form of self-improvement are more likely to attract customers in the new year. They don't necessarily have to relate to one of the top New Year's resolution themes.

The promotion examples mentioned above can all be built using Talon.One's Promotion Engine. If you'd like to learn more about our platform and the ways it can help your business, get in touch or check out our Content Library.