Ecommerce Marketing Checklist for the Holidays: 2026 Edition

Whether you are a big-time ecommerce pro or you are just starting your journey in this crazy ecommerce world, we want to help! Here’s a simple to-do list to get your ducks in a row before the start of the holiday madness.

2026 key dates

Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 26, which leaves less than four weeks between Cyber Monday and Christmas. Hanukkah also starts earlier than last year.

• Oct. 15 – CustomCat holiday shipping surcharges take effect
• Nov. 26 – Thanksgiving
• Nov. 27 – Black Friday
• Nov. 28 – Small Business Saturday
• Nov. 30 – Cyber Monday
• Dec. 4–12 – Hanukkah (begins at sundown Dec. 4)
• Dec. 17 – USPS-recommended send-by date for Ground Advantage delivery by Christmas (lower 48 states)
• Dec. 25 – Christmas (Friday)
• Dec. 26 – Jan. 1 – Kwanzaa
• Jan. 17, 2027 – Holiday shipping surcharges end

That Dec. 17 date is when a package needs to be with the carrier. Your customers’ order deadline has to come earlier to leave room for production.

Operations

• Update your shipping rates for the holiday surcharges. From Oct. 15 through Jan. 17, 2027, CustomCat shipping rates include temporary carrier surcharges: $0.40 on Economy (contiguous U.S.), $0.60 on UPS Ground, and $2.00 on Economy to Alaska, Hawaii & Puerto Rico and on UPS 2nd Day Air & Overnight. Full details here.
• Add a buffer to your processing times. We post a 7-day production average every week on CustomCat Updates. Production times tend to rise with holiday volume, and marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon penalize late shipments.
• Set your holiday order cutoffs and publish them. Work backward from carrier dates, leave room for production, and phrase them as “order by Dec. X for the best chance of Christmas delivery” rather than a guarantee. More in What to Consider When Setting Holiday Order Deadlines.
• Be clear that expedited shipping speeds up transit, not production. Say it on your shipping page and at checkout.
• Order samples of anything new you plan to push. You get real photos and a firsthand look at print quality before customers do. How to place a sample order.
• Check your listings for discontinued or closeout blanks. Swap them now so a best-seller doesn’t go unavailable in mid-December. Catalog changes are posted on CustomCat Updates.
• Give seasonal help their own logins. Two-factor authentication is required on every CustomCat account, so shared logins get awkward fast. Pro accounts support up to five users.

Storefront & listings

• Build gift collections by recipient and price. “Gifts for dad,” “personalized ornaments,” “under $30.” That’s how shoppers search, and how they describe what they want to an AI assistant.
• Test checkout on your phone. Adobe expects 57.4% of holiday online spend to come from mobile, and 63% on Thanksgiving. Check load time, image sizes, and how many taps it takes to pay.
• Turn on express checkout and buy now, pay later if your platform supports them. Adobe forecasts $21.3 billion in BNPL spending this season.
• Offer personalization. Names, dates, and photos turn a tee or mug into a gift. CustomCat works with personalization tools like Customily, Zakeke, and Anywhere POD.
• On Etsy, group your styles. CustomCat’s Etsy integration can put a tee, hoodie, and crewneck with the same design in one listing, with separate Style, Color, and Size menus. How to set it up.
• Decide your promos before Black Friday week. Adobe expects apparel discounts to peak around 23% off listed price. Before you pick a percentage, run your margin after platform fees and the holiday surcharges. Bundles and free-shipping thresholds are worth a look before deep discounts. 6 Ways to Increase Your Average Order Value.
• Update your policies page. Order cutoffs, shipping times, and what you accept for returns on custom items, in plain language.
• Fix the basics. Broken links, 404s, slow pages, and banners left over from last season.

Getting found by AI shopping assistants

This is the biggest change since the original list. Adobe expects traffic to retail sites from AI tools to rise 130% this season, and last year those visitors converted 31% better than other traffic. AI assistants can only recommend what they can read, so clear product data matters more than clever copy.

• Describe products the way a shopper would describe the gift. Who it’s for, the occasion, the material, the fit, the colors. “Garment-dyed unisex tee for a coffee-loving dad” says more than a string of keywords.
• Fill in every attribute field. Color, size, material, occasion, personalization options. Structured details are what these tools read.
• Shopify sellers: check your Agentic Storefronts settings. That’s the Shopify channel that controls whether your products show up in AI tools like ChatGPT.
• Etsy sellers: the same cleanup pays off in ChatGPT. Etsy launched an app inside ChatGPT in May that searches its listings.
• Collect reviews. Shoppers and AI tools both lean on them. Add a review request to your post-purchase emails.
• Watch your referral traffic. Look for visits from chatgpt.com and similar sources in your analytics so you know whether it’s worth more effort.

Email marketing

• Confirm your sending domain is authenticated. Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft now require SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and one-click unsubscribe from bulk senders, and Gmail stepped up enforcement in November 2025. Most email platforms handle part of this, but check your domain settings now, not on Black Friday.
• Send to engaged subscribers. Emailing a cold list in late November is a fast way to spike spam complaints, and Gmail’s ceiling is a 0.3% complaint rate.
• Measure clicks and revenue, not opens. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates.
• Build your automations before volume hits. Abandoned cart, browse abandonment, and post-purchase emails that set delivery expectations and ask for a review. How to Use Post-Purchase Follow-Ups to Sell More.
• Map your campaigns to the calendar. Early access in early November, Black Friday through Cyber Monday, Hanukkah gifts before Dec. 4, order-cutoff reminders, then gift cards once shipping windows close.
• Segment. Past buyers, last year’s gift buyers, and repeat customers shouldn’t get the same email as new subscribers.
• Test on mobile before every send. Links, images, dynamic fields, and the unsubscribe link.

Social media & creators

Adobe expects social media and affiliates (a category that includes influencers) to see the biggest gains in share of holiday revenue this year, up 17% and 12%. Paid search is expected to rise 4%.

• Match your social calendar to your email calendar. Same dates, same offers, same cutoffs.
• Post short video of real products. Print close-ups, fabric, packaging, someone actually wearing it. Your samples double as content.
• Send samples to a few creators in your niche. Smaller creators with engaged audiences are easier to reach and often a closer fit.
• Pin your gift collections on Pinterest. People use it to plan gifts, and pins link straight to your listings.
• Swap your banners and link-in-bio to your holiday collection.
• Set a daily time to answer comments and DMs. Order questions pick up in December.

Paid ads

• Set your budget by date. Weight it toward Cyber Week and the run-up to your order cutoffs.
• Check your tracking before you scale spend. Confirm your Meta pixel and Conversions API, Google tag, and conversion events are all firing.
• Refresh your product feed. Update titles, images, and shipping settings in Google Merchant Center so your ads and free listings match your store.
• Retarget site visitors and cart abandoners.
• Shift spend after your cutoffs. Stop pushing products that can’t arrive by Christmas, and promote gift cards instead.

After the holidays

• Revert your shipping rates when the surcharges end Jan. 17, 2027.
• Write down what sold and when. Export sales by product and by day. That’s the start of next year’s plan.
• Ask for reviews once holiday orders have arrived.
• Clean your email list. Sunset subscribers who signed up for a deal and never engaged again.
• Keep selling in January. Gift-card redemptions, the new year, and Valentine’s Day are close behind.

Questions about holiday production or shipping? Check CustomCat Updates each week for production averages and holiday announcements, reach out to our support team, or compare notes with other sellers in r/CustomCatOfficial.