Is the Crimbo Limbo period outperforming Black Friday?
Prior to Black Friday’s dominance on the shopping calendar as a key event, the major sales period would start on Boxing Day with retailers ramping up clearance sales on old stock or simply offering deals on selected popular products. This was a particularly big occasion for electronics and apparel with brands clearing the current season, ready for the launch of the following. Since Black Friday and Cyber Monday, that period has still seen sales but seems to have received less coverage with the post Thanksgiving sale dwarfing Crimbo Limbo.
Until this week, I had only ever known the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to be the Boxing Day sales but the name Crimbo Limbo has been coined as that odd period between the two occasions that people tend to float around.
For a consumer, Crimbo Limbo is a period that people can go online and in store to use those vouchers or money received as a gift to spend during the period coupled with an opportunity to get discounts as suggested earlier in this blog. It also serves as a period where consumers can buy those wanted items that they may have not received as a gift for Christmas taking advantage of deals on offer. According to ChannelX over 50% of consumers choose shopping as a preferred activity to do over this period with Millennials and Gen Z being a key demographic.
This opens up opportunities for brands, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are key periods to try to drive awareness for your brand but considering saving or planning budget for Crimbo Limbo could be fruitful particularly if you plan to run deals. We recommend that brands consider their advertising budgets, when to activate and consider which products would be most effective for this period.
We can see that on Amazon that traffic in 2023 across November and December saw that Boxing Day traffic is not too dissimilar to the traffic on Black Friday raising a clear opportunity to be considered.
It’s important for brands to plan effectively to ensure they get the best performance out of Q4, to maximise this period our key takeaways are:
Consider Crimbo Limbo in your Q4 planning
Launch deals to clear stock and boost sales for underperforming products
Post sales periods, compare the periods and factor into the following years plan to drive greater efficiency any prioritise advertising and promotional budget to the best performing periods
