Your January Revenue Dip: Why Sales Drop After The Holidays & How to Fix It
You just had your biggest sales month of the year. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the holiday push, your customers were hunting, buying, spending. Revenue was flowing.
Then January hits, and everything goes quiet.
This isn't a failure of your strategy. It's the natural cycle of D2C retail. But it doesn't mean you have to watch your revenue crater without a plan.
Here's what happened: during the holidays, your customers' inboxes & feeds became a war zone. Every brand competes for attention with the same message: buy now. Your strategy worked in November/December because customers were actively looking for deals.
Now in January, it’s fighting an uphill battle. Your customers are fatigued and depleted. The channels that carried you through peak seasons are losing steam. Let’s talk about where to go from here.
Here's Why Your Channels Won't Work The Same Way In January.
The holidays just hit record-breaking numbers this year. Shopify merchants generated a record $14.6 billion in sales over Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, up 27% from last year. That is amazing news for ecomm!
You probably leaned on email marketing heavily during this period and it delivered. If you didn’t you’re missing out but, that’s a conversation for another day. Email generates between $36 -$42 for every dollar spent, making it the highest-ROI channel by far. Combined organic social and paid ads, you built a multi-channel strategy that worked because your customers were actively hunting for deals. Their mindset was simple: "I need something for someone, and I need it now."
Every channel you used was amplified by customer intent. They were searching, browsing, and opening emails specifically looking for ideas and promotions. Your message hit at exactly the right moment.
But here's what changes in January: that intent evaporates. Your customers aren't hunting anymore. They're recovering. They've spent their money, given their gifts, and now they're evaluating budgets, clearing closets, and pulling back. The same channels that worked in December are now fighting against customer behavior, not with it.
Email in particular has a bit of a weakness in this environment: it relies on inbox real estate that's fatigued. After the holiday bombardment, your subscribers are either ignoring promotional emails or actively unsubscribing.
This isn't a failure of your marketing. It's the natural cycle of D2C retail. But it does mean your December strategy won't work in January. You need a different channel for a different customer mindset. One that reaches people in a less crowded space, where fatigue and skepticism don't have the same hold.
That's where SMS comes in.
Why SMS Works When Email Doesn't
Let's talk about the raw numbers first. SMS has an average open rate of 98%, compared to email's 20-30%. That's a massive shift in how your message gets received but, it’s not just about open rates.
SMS creates a different relationship with your customer. A text message feels more personal, more direct, and more immediate than an email. There's also an implicit understanding with SMS: if a brand is texting me, it's probably worth paying attention to. People don't subscribe to text lists casually the way they do email lists.
Here's what makes SMS particularly powerful in January specifically: it's the antidote to email fatigue. During the holidays, inboxes became flooded, conversion rates on holiday campaigns dropped from 6.1% in November to 3.1% in December, not because customers stopped wanting to buy, but because they likely simply missed the message in all the noise. After weeks of that bombardment, your customers are exhausted by email.
A well-timed, relevant SMS feels like a breath of fresh air instead of another interruption. You're not adding noise; you're providing clarity and value in a way that stands out.
The other piece here is that SMS bypasses the crowded inbox problem entirely. Your message lands on your customer's phone with the same visual prominence as a text from their friend or their bank. It's not competing with a hundred other promotional messages for attention in a cluttered folder.
The Strategic SMS + Email Playbook for January
This doesn't mean you abandon email in January. It means you use SMS and email together in a way that actually respects your customer's attention while maximizing your sales opportunity.
Here's how we think about it:
Segment Your Audience
Not everyone needs the same message at the same frequency. Start by identifying your most engaged subscribers, the people who have clicked email in the last 90 days, made a purchase recently, or interacted with your brand consistently. These are your best SMS targets for January conversion campaigns.
Your less-engaged list? They're getting email only, and probably less frequently. And your cold email list? You're potentially not reaching them at all during this time or you're being very selective about timing.
Use SMS for Your Highest-Intent Moments
Don't waste SMS bandwidth on soft awareness content. Use SMS for things that require immediate action: limited-time offers, restocks, or time-sensitive promotions. If you've got a special January offer, maybe it's a discount on your best-selling product, exclusive access to a new launch, or a teaser of what’s to come, SMS is where you announce it first and with urgency.
Email can handle your longer-form storytelling, educational content, or softer brand messaging. SMS is for the moments where you need a response.
Create a Sequence Strategy
Here's a common mistake: brands treat SMS and email like separate channels and run identical campaigns on both. That's redundant and annoying to your customer if they are both email & sms users.
Instead, think of them as complementary. You might use email to introduce a concept, tell a story, or provide educational value. Then you follow with SMS as a reminder or call-to-action 2-3 days later when engagement has dropped off. Or you reverse it: SMS announces the thing, email provides the details.
The key is that your customer isn't receiving duplicate messages; they're receiving a progression of touches that feel intentional and relevant.
Respect Frequency and Timing
January is busy for customers in a different way than December. The holiday rush is over, people are back to work and school, and routines are resetting. That means SMS that lands at 9am on a Monday or Wednesday might perform better than the unpredictable timing that worked in December. Test your timing, but lean into what feels natural for your audience.
And yes, respect SMS frequency limits. Two to four strategic SMS per month is usually the sweet spot. You're not texting people every other day—you're being selective and valuable.
What Success Looks Like
When SMS is working alongside email correctly in January, you'll see a few things happen:
Your email metrics might actually improve because you're sending less and being more strategic about it. Unsubscribe rates drop because you're not over-messaging. Your SMS list grows because customers are opting in specifically for time-sensitive offers and updates they actually want.
Most importantly, your January revenue doesn't crater. Plenty of D2C brands see January as a write-off after the holiday rush, but it doesn't have to be. With the right channel strategy, January can be a solid revenue month, just with a different playbook than December.
The Real Challenge: Execution
Here's where most D2C brands struggle: they understand the concept, but they don't know how to actually build this. Which email campaigns convert to SMS followups? Which products should drive SMS announcements? How do you segment appropriately without spending weeks on setup? How do you write SMS copy that actually drives action without feeling pushy?
These are the details that separate brands that see real SMS ROI from brands that send a few SMS messages, see mediocre results, and abandon the channel.
And here's the bigger picture: SMS + email strategy isn't just a January solution. This is about building consistent retention marketing throughout the year so you're not dependent on holiday chaos to hit your revenue goals. The brands that win aren't the ones that panic every time sales drop post-holiday. They're the ones that have reliable, strategic retention engines running all year. January might be slower than December, but it shouldn't be a disaster if you've built the infrastructure properly.
This is exactly what Strategy Maven does. We build SMS and email strategies that work together, not as separate channels, but as a coordinated retention engine. We handle the segmentation, the sequencing, the timing, and the copy so you don't have to figure it out alone. We also build year-round retention strategies so you're not scrambling whenever a seasonal cycle hits.
If you're a D2C founder looking at January and feeling overwhelmed by email fatigue, or if you know SMS could work better for your brand but you're not sure how to make it happen, or if you're realizing you need a stronger retention strategy beyond peak season, let's talk about what this could look like for your specific business.
Ready to turn January fatigue into revenue?
Book a consultation with Strategy Maven to build an SMS + email strategy that actually works for your brand. We'll look at your current approach, identify where SMS can have the biggest impact, and show you exactly what to do.
Sources
Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2025 Sales Data: Adobe Analytics and Salesforce reported Black Friday 2025 online sales at $11.8 billion with a 9.26% increase, and Cyber Monday 2025 generated $14.25 billion in online sales, up 7.1% year-over-year. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/02/black-friday-cyber-monday-shopping-turnout-nrf.html
Shopify BFCM 2025 Results: Shopify merchants generated a record-breaking $14.6 billion in sales over Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, up 27% from last year, with 81+ million customers making purchases. https://www.shopify.com/news/bfcm-data-2025
Holiday Email Engagement Drop: Marketing Dive reports that analyzing more than 6 billion emails found conversion rates on holiday-themed campaigns dropped to 3.1% in December from November's average of 6.1%, indicating that marketers have a shorter window to engage consumers during the holidays. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/engagement-window-shortens-for-holiday-email-marketing-study-finds/567314
December Email Engagement: MailChimp research on email fatigue shows that excessive email frequency and volume lead to declining subscriber engagement and increased unsubscribe rates during peak sending periods like December. https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/
