Elevating Your Unboxing Experience for the Holiday Season

We've talked about unboxing a lot on this blog – after all, what we specialize in helping our customers with! With the holidays fast approaching, it seems topical to talk about how you can give your brand a seasonal overhaul.

The festive time of year is truly THE unboxing bonanza. It evokes memories of childhood Christmas mornings, and the anticipation of presents under the tree! This means that it’s more important than ever that your brand is ready to deliver on your customers’ expectations. People are looking to you to capture the magic of the season, but also to take away stress in their gift-giving!

This makes the November and December months one of your most valuable opportunities to make a great impression on your customers. 60% of sales are from first-time purchasers during the holiday season! If your brand is going to see repeat purchasers, you need to show how important their patronage is to your brand. This means giving your customer an experience that sets you apart from the crowd. The requirements for a great seasonal ‘unboxing’ are not dissimilar to the rest of the year – you just need to give it a nice festive twist!

This gives you two main sets of considerations – the aesthetic and the practical. Both are equally important for a smooth festive season!

Your festive packaging design – This is where it is the most important to think outside of the box (pun intended!) Seasonal packaging rebrands are a brilliant marketing tool when well-executed. According to Dotcom Distribution, 49% of eCommerce customers said that branded packaging made them more excited about their purchase. The cosmetics brand Too Faced and Godiva Chocolates are great examples of brands who have nailed the balance between maintaining their recognizable packaging and refreshing it with a new seasonal look. However, we know that many small businesses don’t have the budget of multi-national corporations. Custom designing all-new packaging can be a big expense. But there are other seasonal touches you can add at a much lower cost.

Holiday-themed packaging tape and stickers are a great way to revamp your existing look. Going custom can also allow you to design a seasonal twist on your logo or motif! This is where your packaging inserts can also play a key role. Think about adding handwritten thank-you notes, greeting cards, seasonal discount coupons, or gift tags for your customer to use. This allows you to create a point of difference and celebrate the season in style. Inserts can also serve a more practical purpose. The New Year always opens up the floodgates to a ton of returns and exchanges. Placing this information inside the package will help to ensure a smoother process.

Functional considerations – We can never forget that packaging does have an actual purpose in protecting your goods for transportation. This is especially important given the time constraints of the holiday season. A gift turning up damaged, or otherwise too late for gift-giving, will cause a massive amount of stress that your customer DEFINITELY won’t thank you for! Avoiding this means using sturdy packaging materials that are durable and travel well, and also being aware of delivery times. There is much more strain on the postage system both domestically and internationally during the holidays. This means that delivery often takes much longer. This is something highly important for your brand to check out in advance. It’s also worth giving your customers a cut-off date from when you can no longer guarantee delivery before Christmas to avoid confusion.

Something else to be conscious of is your environmental footprint. As fun as the festive season is, it’s also extremely bad for the planet. With all that gift wrap, plastic packaging, and unwanted gifts thrown away, the impact is staggering. The UK alone throws away more than 227,000 miles of wrapping paper a year, with Greenpeace estimating that just 1kg releases over 3.5kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. Engaging in sustainability efforts will show your commitment to being a responsible brand. Using recyclable and biodegradable materials in your packaging, or encouraging customers to reuse elements such as ribbon, are great initiatives to get your customers' attention and do your bit for the planet!

Bringing your customers some festive cheer through their unboxing experience is a fantastic way to not only make your brand memorable, but also to retain customers once the tree goes away for another year. Happy holidays!