We’ve already had our first Christmas enquiries land, and if that feels early, it isn’t. The businesses who get the best results from their festive mail are almost always the ones who started planning while everyone else was still thinking about summer.
Here’s what’s behind that, and what’s worth putting in place now.
Working Backwards From Your Send Date
Christmas mail needs to land well before Christmas, often several weeks before, depending on your sector and what you’re asking customers to do once they receive it. By the time shoppers are in a festive mindset, your campaign should already be in their hands.
That means the real deadline isn’t your send date, it’s everything that has to happen before it: data preparation, creative sign-off, print production and despatch scheduling. Each of those steps takes time, and each one is harder to do well under pressure. Planning in summer simply gives every part of the process the time it needs.
What the Data Tells Us About the Christmas Period
Industry data backs up why this quarter matters so much. JICMail’s Q4 2025 results, covering the most recent Christmas trading period, showed both open and read rates for mail growing year on year. The mail channel’s impact on sales, online and offline combined, grew to 6% across Direct Mail, Door Drops, Business Mail and Partially Addressed Mail.
Digital response was particularly strong. 9.7% of mail prompted a website visit in Q4 2025, the highest level recorded in five years and a new record at the time, surpassing the previous quarter’s figures. Engagement from younger audiences also grew, with 25 to 34 year olds interacting with mail 8% more frequently by the end of 2025 than at the start of the year.
The pattern is consistent with previous years too. JICMail’s Q4 2024 results found that 77% of mail was read or looked at during the Christmas trading period, an all time high since JICMail began tracking consumer mail behaviour. Christmas is not a quiet moment for the mail channel, it’s one of the busiest and most effective points in the calendar.
Making Your Festive Offer Work Harder
A strong Christmas mailing usually rests on a clear, well timed offer rather than volume alone. A few principles worth building into your planning conversations:
✅ Give People a Reason to Act Now: Time limited offers or early booking incentives give customers a reason to respond rather than put the mail aside for later
✅ Match the Offer to the Audience: Existing customers respond well to loyalty style offers, while new prospects often need a lower risk introductory incentive
✅ Keep the Message Simple: One clear offer, clearly explained, tends to outperform a mailing trying to say too much at once
✅ Think About the Follow Up: Mail that prompts a website visit or a search needs a landing page and online journey that continues the story, not a dead end
None of this needs to be complicated. It needs to be planned early enough that the offer, the data and the production schedule are all working towards the same date.
Tracking What Actually Happens
One of the advantages of mail as a channel is how measurable it now is. JICMail’s panel based data captures not just whether mail is opened and read, but what happens afterwards, including website visits, account look ups, app downloads and online purchases prompted by a physical item landing on someone’s doormat.
JICMail’s Response Rate Tracker adds a second layer, providing response rate, return on investment, cost per acquisition and average order value benchmarks drawn from thousands of campaigns across the industry. For Christmas specifically, this data lets you set realistic expectations before you commit budget, and measure your own results against a proper industry benchmark afterwards rather than guessing.
If tracking hasn’t been part of your planning before, this is a good year to change that. It’s a conversation we’re happy to have as part of your campaign planning.
Starting With Clean Data
None of the above works as well as it should if the underlying list has gone stale. Lists that haven’t been reviewed since last Christmas will have picked up new gone aways and address changes over the year, and every one of those records is a wasted mail item come December.
If your data hasn’t been checked recently, our free Data Hygiene Report is worth a look before you start finalising volumes and budgets for the festive period.
Getting the Timeline Right
There’s no single correct start date for Christmas planning, it depends on your sector, your data and the complexity of your creative. What matters is working backwards from your send date and being honest about how long data preparation, print and despatch actually take, then adding a sensible margin.
If Christmas is on your mind, even loosely, it’s worth talking it through now. We’re happy to help map out what a realistic timeline looks like for your campaign.
Visit us at firstmove.co.uk, call us on 01494 539300, or email enquiries@firstmove.co.uk.