As marketers, we're always on the lookout for any relevant opportunity to engage with our ideal customers!
That’s why we’ve painstakingly put together this handy Social Media & Marketing Holiday Calendar that’s going to give you a comprehensive list of all major holidays, observances, events, and special days throughout 2024.
Included with the dates are the key themes for the month that will help you craft the perfect message so you can fire off an email, drop a social post, or run a promo campaign for your target customers.
How to Use the Marketing Holiday Calendar for Maximum Effectiveness
Keep in mind that not every date will be relevant to your business, industry, and audience! Be sure you approach every date with respect, relevance, and authenticity. The last thing you want to do is offend your customers, come off as out-of-touch, or worse yet, corny (aka cringe!)
Also, recognize that your customers aren’t all the same! Knowing which customers to engage specifically and with which messages and offers is critical if you want to optimize your budget, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately grow your revenue.
Check out our Holiday Gift Giving, Customer Engagement, and Personalization posts for more tips on how you can create more effective communications.
January
January is the month to emphasize fresh starts and new beginnings. Think about how your products and services can help bring about growth, transformation, and change in your customer's lives. Encourage them to reflect on the past year, set goals, and create a plan for achieving them (with your help!).
Get to Know Your Customer’s Day is the perfect day to engage with your most loyal customers! Admittedly, we're pretty obsessed with this one as Kognitiv’s entire mission revolves around helping our customers build loyalty and deepen relationships with their customers (click here to learn how we do it). Get to Know Your Customers Day is celebrated on the third Thursday of every quarter. In 2024, the first celebration is on January 18. The other dates are April 18, July 18, and October 17.
Other key themes include opportunities for cultural celebrations, equality-focused initiatives, and customer engagement.
1st - New Year's Day #NewYearsDay
2nd – Science Fiction Day #ScienceFictionDay
4th – National Trivia Day #NationalTriviaDay
15th – Martin Luther King Jr. Day #MLKDay
18th – Get to Know Your Customers Day #GetToKnowYourCustomersDay
24th – National Compliment Day #NationalCompliementDay
26th - Australia Day #AustraliaDay
February
February is all about celebrating people! Black History Month and Valentine’s Day are a few of the many opportunities to show your customers’ appreciation and encourage celebration with the people in their lives.
National Retro Day is a unique opportunity to build community by sharing memes about how things used to be done in your industry back in the day (and subtly how you’re making things WAY better now.)
Whole Month – Black History Month #BlackHistoryMonth
10th - Lunar New Year / Chinese New Year #LunarNewYear #ChineseNewYear
11th - Super Bowl #SBLV #SuperBowlSunday #SuperBowl
14th - Valentine's Day #ValentinesDay
17th - Random Act of Kindness Day #RandomActsOfKindnessDay
19th - Family Day #FamilyDay
19th - Presidents' Day #PresidentsDay
20th - Love Your Pet Day #LoveYourPetDay
27th - National Retro Day #NationalRetroDay
March
March is a great time to celebrate and promote the achievements of women with your customers. March also marks the start of spring, which is the perfect time for a seasonal campaign.
Whole Month – Women’s History Month
1st - World Compliment Day #WorldComplimentDay / National Employee Appreciation Day #EmployeeAppreciationDay
3rd - World Wildlife Day #WorldWildlifeDay
8th - International Women's Day #BeBoldForChange
10th - Mother's Day (UK) #MothersDay
11th - Start of Ramadan #Ramadan
17th – St. Patrick’s Day #StPatricksDay
20th - World Storytelling Day / International Day of Happiness
29th – April 1st – Easter Weekend #Easter
April
April kicks off with April Fools Day, the ultimate day to bust out your funniest and wackiest ideas and show off a lighter side of your company. Earth Day and World Wildlife Day are great opportunities to showcase green initiatives and share how your company promotes sustainability.
Get to Know Your Customer’s Day and Customer Appreciation Day can be combined into an entire week of customer love ripe with customer stories, Q&As, and exclusive offers!
1st – April Fools #AprilFools
11th - Eid Al Fitr #EID
11th - National Pet Day #NationalPetDay
18th – Customer Appreciation Day #CustomerAppreciationDay / Get to Know Your Customer’s Day #GettoKnowYourCustomersDay
22nd - Earth Day #EarthDay
23rd - World Book Day #WorldBookDay
28th – National Superhero Day #SuperheroDay #NationalSuperheroDay
May
Mother’s Day is another fantastic opportunity to celebrate and highlight the stories of some of your special mom employees or customers.
There is also an opportunity to promote authentic conversations with your customers and employees about mental health throughout the month.
Whole month – Mental health awareness month #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth
1st - International Workers Day #IntWorkersDay
4th - Star Wars Day #StarWarsDay, #MayThe4thBeWithYou
5th - Cinco de Mayo
7th - World Laughter Day
12th - Mother's Day
22nd - Victoria Day (Canada)
27th - Memorial Day
June
Pride Month and Juneteenth are opportunities to promote equity and inclusivity and to celebrate diversity. Social Media Day and National Selfie Day are easy opportunities for social engagement and user-generated content. There are also spots to promote some Dad love and personal wellness. Lastly, June is the start of the summer season and another opportunity for seasonal engagement.
Whole month – Pride Month #Pride #PrideMonth
5th - World Environment Day #WorldEnvironmentDay
10th – Global Wellness Day #GlobalWellnessDay
18th - Father's Day #FathersDay
19th - Juneteenth #Juneteenth
21st - National Selfie Day #NationalSelfieDay
30th - Social Media Day #SMDay
July
July gives you ample opportunities to run some national pride campaigns.
Days like National Ice Cream Day and World Chocolate Day are the perfect excuse to shoot your best customers or prospects a gift card for a treat on you.
July also denotes another Get to Know Your Customers Day opportunity and it would be a perfect time to collect some super valuable zero-party data. Check out the article here to learn more about why collecting Zero-Party Data is a game-changer when it comes to maximizing customer revenue!
1st - Canada Day #CanadaDay
1st - International Joke Day #InternationalJokeDay
2nd – World UFO Day #WorldUFODay
4th - Independence Day #IndependenceDay
7th - World Chocolate Day #WorldChocolateDay
17th - World Emoji Day #WorldEmojiDay
18th - Get to Know Your Customer’s Day #GettoKnowYourCustomersDay
21st - National Ice Cream Day #NationalIceCreamDay
30th - International Friendship Day #DayOfFriendship
August
August gives you a few opportunities to inject some humor with National Lazy Day, National Relaxation Day, and National Tell a Joke Day!
If it is relevant, be sure to start your back-to-school messaging in late summer.
End-of-summer sales are also a staple promo strategy leading right up to Labor Day in September.
Mid-August - Back to School Season
8th - International Cat Day #InternationalCatDay
10th - National Lazy Day #LazyDay
15th – National Relaxation Day #NationalRelaxationDay
16th – National Tell a Joke Day #NationalTellAJokeDay
19th – World Humanitarian Day #WorldHumanitarianDay
26th - Dog Appreciation Day #NationalDogDay
September
Late September marks the start of fall and gives you another easy seasonal promo opportunity.
If you have a Podcast, be sure to spread the word on International Podcast Day!
2nd – Labor Day #LaborDay
5th - International Day of Charity #CharityDay
12th - National Video Games Day #NationalVideoGamesDay
21st - International Day of Peace #PeaceDay
27th - World Tourism Day #WorldTourismDay
30th - International Podcast Day #InternationalPodcastDay
October
With Halloween, spooky-themed campaigns are what’s in for October! Tastefully running some clever “horror stories” about the problems your customers were facing before your products/solutions are a fun way to get your message out.
International Coffee Day is another easy win when it comes to rewarding some of your best customers with a coffee on you!
You also have your final Get to Know Your Customer’s Day opportunity this month.
1st – International Coffee Day #InternationalCoffeeDay
4th - World Animal Day
5th - World Teacher's Day
6th - World Smile Day
10th - World Mental Health Day
14th - Thanksgiving (Canada)
17th - Get to Know Your Customer’s Day #GettoKnowYourCustomersDay
29th - Internet Day
31st - Halloween
November
It's time to bring your A-game when it comes to marketing promos as November includes Black Friday which runs through Cyber Monday! Take advantage of the entire month by running early sales campaigns leading up to those dates. Often, Thanksgiving messaging can be mixed into these promos.
November also marks “Movember” a no-shave men’s health-focused month which is a great opportunity for male-centric brands to engage.
Men’s Health Awareness Month – Movember #Movember
8th - National STEM Day #STEMDay
12th - Remembrance Day #RememberanceDay
13th - World Kindness Day #WKD
16th - Fast Food Day #FastFoodDay
19th - National Entrepreneurs Day #EntrepreneursDay
21st – World Hello Day #WorldHelloDay
28th - Thanksgiving #Thanksgiving
29th - Black Friday #BlackFriday
December
December kicks off the holiday gift-giving season and is full of marketing opportunities leading right up to Christmas Day. Everything from last-minute shopping deals to generous discounts in the spirit of the season are just 2 of the angles you can take.
In Canada, Australia, and the UK, Boxing Day (and week) are great opportunities to refresh your Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns and run them again!
End-of-year messaging can also work well in many industries. Inventory clear-outs and last year’s model messaging and discounts are common angles.
2nd - Cyber Monday
7-1th - Hanukkah
25th - Christmas Day
26th - Boxing Day (UK/Canada)
26th - Jan 1st - Kwanzaa
31st - New Year's Eve
Right Message, Right Time, Right Individual
Now that you have the dates and some ideas, should you just put your campaigns together and blast them across every channel reaching every customer you have?
Of course, you know that would be less than ideal and a more effective use of your promo budget would be to specifically cater your communications and discount offers based on each individual customer’s relationship with your brand.
For a long time, that’s been a lot easier said than done involving a ton of manual data segmentation work often worked on by a team of analysts.
But what if you could use AI to get a holistic view of where each of your customers is in their lifecycle and predict where they’re going—at an individual level—so you can engage them with personalized messages and promotions at scale?
That’s exactly what we help marketers just like you do with our customer engagement AI platform. Check out the links below to learn more or click to book a personalized live demo.
- Track and predict your customers’ lifecycles with Kognitiv Pulse. Learn more.
- Enable 1:1 personalization at scale with Kognitiv Ignite. Learn more.
- Launch and manage a successful loyalty program with Kognitiv Inspire. Learn more.
- Intelligently acquire and engage customers across paid channels with Kognitiv Amplify. Learn more.