Get ready for holiday sales season—your ultimate back-to-business checklist is here

TL;DR: Start prepping your business for holiday sales now with our ultimate checklist. Reflect, refresh, and grow by completing 10 essential tasks.

Summer may be coming to an end, but your best sales season yet is just around the corner. Now is the perfect time to start preparing for holiday sales as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the most competitive shopping periods of the year. Every brand will be fighting to win customers—and with the right preparation, you’ll be standing out from the masses and hitting your sales goals in no time.

Make the most of this slower period with our comprehensive back-to-business checklist, designed to help you tackle essential tasks and get growing.

After completing this checklist, you’ll be set up for selling success by:

Complete the 10 essential tasks below to start preparing for holiday and year-end sales now. For more details, just click into each task.

Task #1. Audit your content to ensure you have a:

Task #2. Dig into your data to find out everything about your:

Task #3. Freshen up your freebie offer and update your:

Task #4. Optimize your sales email template
Task #5. Add 3-5 Form Preferences to your opt-in form

Task #6. Place a Flodesk Link in bio in your social bios
Task #7. Draft 3 evergreen social posts to drive followers into your Link in bio
Task #8. Create a welcome email series to engage new subscribers
Task #9. Maximize sales with an upsell and bonus offer
Task #10. Set up simple integrations to connect Flodesk with your favorite tools

As a business owner, carving out time to reflect and reset is crucial for business growth. It allows you to identify and better understand areas your business excels at—and which areas need improving.

Start by reflecting on your business journey and the progress you’ve made. Audit your marketing content, dig into performance data, and develop clear goals—arming you with everything you need to make informed business decisions that propel you toward success.

Take stock of your existing content and make sure you have all the key pieces for email marketing and sales success. Conduct a content audit to ensure you have a:

Make note of the content you don’t have or what pieces need updating.

Review your analytics and determine which of your marketing efforts are progressing your business forward. Use a holistic data tool, like Flodesk Analytics, to uncover powerful insights about your subscribers, emails, forms, workflows, and sales pages. 

Use data to answer your most pressing questions and determine what to do next. For instance, with Flodesk Analytics, find out:

Leverage your key insights to adapt your year-end goals and create a plan to double down on what’s working and ditch what isn’t. Get in the habit of tracking your analytics on a weekly basis, so you can make data-driven decisions in real-time that steer your brand toward success. 

Out with the old, in with the new. After you determine what needs refreshing and have clarity on your year-end goals, it’s time to make updates and improvements to your existing assets. Use the following checklist as a starting point. Then, add additional areas you identified during your content audit to the list. 

Breathe new life into an existing freebie with your latest branding, copy, calls-to-action (CTAs), and links. Or better yet, refresh your opt-in strategy with an ultra-engaging new freebie offer your audience will love, like a quiz or challenge. If you’re unsure what freebie to create, find inspiration in our roundup of top opt-in freebie ideas. 

Now is the perfect period to ready your sales email template for higher conversions (and easier selling). Use the key insights from your reflection tasks to determine what aspects of your sales emails are performing well and what needs changing. 

If you’ve had selling success with a previous sales email, duplicate it and refresh the content to match your latest branding, visuals, copy, and offers. To create a new sales email template, use our best templates for making money as a starting point. For extra inspiration, explore our top tips and best practices for creating holiday sales emails.

By prepping your sales email template now, you’ll be able to quickly create, segment, and send emails to potential customers within minutes all season long.

Update your forms to capture subscribers’ personal preferences at opt-in—like what they want to hear about and how often. Start using Form Preferences to send hyper-personalized messages that build loyalty and trust. Learn how.

You can set your business up for success by implementing new systems and strategies to help you effortlessly grow. The holiday sales season doesn’t have to be stressful. With the right preparation, you can boost sales and exceed your goals with ease. Here’s how.

If there’s one thing you do today, make sure you optimize your social bios to get your audience out of rented spaces, like Instagram and TikTok, and into your email list. Turn your social followers into subscribers by collecting email addresses right from your profile.

Include one essential link in your profile bios—a Flodesk Link in bio—to build an audience you can keep, engage, and grow, irrespective of platform or algorithm changes. Create your own in just five minutes. Learn how.

Once you’ve added a Link in bio to your profile bios, start preparing evergreen social posts to drive your audience to your link. By drafting social posts that you can use whenever to direct traffic to your Link in bio, you can continuously convert followers into subscribers.

The secret to maximizing opt-ins? An exciting freebie or waitlist people can’t wait to access. Discover how entrepreneurs, like Jessica Hawks, use a Link in bio waitlist to achieve six-figure sales.

Set up a Flodesk Workflow to automatically welcome new subscribers into your email list. By greeting individuals with a curated series of emails as soon as they opt in, you can make an incredible first impression and nurture subscribers from the start. 

We recommend sending each email in your welcome sequence one to two days apart to ensure your brand stays top of mind. Here’s an example welcome sequence you can use to nurture new subscribers:

Double your freebie’s impact potential by driving opt-ins directly into your sales funnel. How? By using Flodesk Checkout to design a beautiful sales page, set up payments, and deliver your freebie instantly. You don’t even need a website.

With Flodesk Checkout, you can increase opt-ins to your email list while simultaneously boosting sales. Start by customizing a sales page template to promote your freebie. Then, collect names and email addresses to turn page visitors into subscribers. Experiment with selling strategies, like pairing your freebie with a paid upsell or post-opt-in bonus offer at checkout—prompting instantaneous purchases before you’ve even sent an email.

Watch this tutorial from Flodesk University instructor, Rosanna Clark, to learn exactly how to use your freebie to grow your email list—and drive sales with an upsell. There’s no stopping what you can create.

Automate tasks within minutes and say goodbye to manual work. Integrations allow you to spend less time managing subscribers, segments, or sales data—and more time focusing on growing your business.

With direct integrations to tools like Pabbly Connect and Zapier, you can easily connect Flodesk with thousands of your favorite apps. Here are three simple integration ideas to try for a stress-free sales season:

Explore our top 10 automations to try with Pabbly Connect for more inspiration.

Bookmark our back-to-business checklist and refer back to it as you prepare for your best sales season yet. Revel in the satisfaction of accomplishing tasks and arm yourself with everything your business needs to thrive in the months ahead—like a Flodesk membership.

Get growing with Flodesk’s beautiful email, high-converting sales page, and stunning form templates. Set up workflow automations that make money (and build relationships) while you sleep and unlock powerful insights with analytics. Transformative growth is just a few clicks away. Try Flodesk free.