How to Stand Out During the Holiday Shopping Rush

The holiday rush is the one time of year every store is chasing the same shoppers in the same few weeks. Adobe expects U.S. online holiday sales to reach $275.1 billion this year, and plenty of sellers will go after it with the same blanks and the same discounts.

Print-on-demand sellers have an edge here. You can offer things a big-box retailer can’t, like personalized gifts and designs built for a specific niche. Here’s how to use that edge this season.

Lean Into Personalization

A personalized gift is hard to comparison-shop. Names, dates, inside jokes, and photos turn a tee, mug, or ornament into something only your store sells.

CustomCat works with personalization tools like Customily, Zakeke, and Anywhere POD, so shoppers customize on your product page and the order still goes straight to production. If you’re new to it, start with two or three best-sellers and one field, like a name or a year.

Time Your Promotions

Flash sales still work, but a steady stream of them teaches customers to wait for the next one. Pick a few moments and make each one count.

Adobe expects Black Friday to grow faster than Cyber Monday this year because retailers keep starting discounts earlier. Cyber Monday is still forecast to be the biggest online shopping day of the season, at $15.1 billion. Whatever you run, spell out the details: what’s included, when it ends, and when orders will ship.

Keep Momentum After Cyber Monday

Plenty of stores go quiet once Cyber Week ends. Shoppers don’t: Adobe expects discounts in the 10–15% range to run throughout December.

Plan a few reasons for people to come back, like Hanukkah gifts ahead of Dec. 4, a recipient-based gift collection in mid-December, and a final “order by” reminder before your shipping cutoff. Give past customers early access by email. They’ve already bought from you once.

Make Shipping a Selling Point

When it’ll arrive is part of what shoppers are buying. With CustomCat, orders are printed and shipped from our Detroit facility under your brand, and production runs 24/7. We also added Amazon Shipping to our Economy options this year, with weekend pickups, so more orders keep moving through the weekend.

We post average production times every week on CustomCat Updates. Use them to set honest processing times, then put your “order by” dates on product pages, in emails, and in your social bios. A clear date gives people a reason to buy now without another discount. More in What to Consider When Setting Holiday Order Deadlines.

Run a Giveaway

A giveaway gives people a reason to follow, share, and come back. Your prize can be your own product, and a sample order doubles as both the prize and your content.

Award entries for actions that help you later: following your account, joining your email list, or posting a photo of a past order. Keep the entry window short, and check the platform’s promotion rules before you launch.

Partner With Creators and Like-Minded Shops

Adobe expects social media and affiliates (a category that includes influencers) to gain the most share of holiday revenue this year, while paid search grows more slowly. Two ways to put that to work:

• Team up with a complementary shop. If you sell gardening tees, partner with a seed or plant shop on a bundle or a cross-promotion. You each reach an audience that already trusts the other.
• Send product to creators in your niche. Smaller creators with engaged audiences are easier to reach than big names. Pay a flat fee, offer an affiliate commission, or both.

Run Meta Ads With a Plan

Facebook and Instagram ads still work for print-on-demand when the creative shows the product clearly and the audience fits the niche. Start before Black Friday, so you’re not testing new ads when costs are typically highest.

Install the Meta Pixel and set up the Conversions API so you can retarget visitors and see which ads actually drive sales. New to Meta ads? Start with A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ad Campaigns.

Make Them Laugh

Humor helps an ad stick, and for print-on-demand it works in the product itself. Funny designs are some of the most giftable items in almost any niche.

Keep it specific: an inside joke for nurses or fly fishers lands better than a generic one. Just make sure the useful details are still there, like price, sizes, and when it’ll arrive.

Show Your Products on Video

Short video does what a product photo can’t: shows how a print looks up close, how a hoodie fits, how big a mug actually is.

Film your samples, build quick gift guides by recipient (“gifts for a new homeowner”), and post the same clips to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and your product pages.

Recover Abandoned Carts

Baymard Institute puts the average cart abandonment rate at about 70%. Some of that is people just browsing, but surprise costs at checkout are one of the most common reasons shoppers leave. Two fixes:

• Show shipping costs and delivery estimates before checkout.
• Turn on abandoned checkout emails. Shopify includes them, and email platforms like Klaviyo let you build a short series. Send the first one within a few hours.

Make It Easy for AI Assistants to Recommend You

More shoppers now ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode for gift ideas, and Adobe expects traffic from AI tools to retail sites to rise 130% this season. These tools recommend what they can read, so specific titles, complete product details, and reviews matter. Our holiday marketing checklist covers the specifics.

Measure What Worked

Once the season wraps, look at what actually moved sales: which products, channels, promotions, and days. Check your store analytics and Google Analytics, and look at referrals from AI tools separately.

Write it down while it’s fresh. It’s the first draft of next year’s plan.

What’s working for your store this season? Compare notes with other sellers in r/CustomCatOfficial or the CustomCat Facebook group.