How much is left to sell after Cyber Monday?
Most of the season. Adobe Analytics counted $257.8 billion in US online spending from November 1 to December 31, 2025, with $44.2 billion of it in the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. That leaves $213.6 billion outside those days, and that period includes the first weeks of November as well as December. Shoppers spent more than $4 billion a day on 25 days of the season.
Intent to buy holds up too. Amazon Ads cites Mintel data showing 31% of shoppers planned to buy between Cyber Monday and New Year's in 2025. For 2026, the National Retail Federation forecasts November and December retail sales of $1.013 trillion, up 4.2%. That figure covers all retail, online and in stores.
Which holiday marketing ideas should you run in December?
Run the ones tied to a date on the calendar. Generic ideas such as a festive theme or a giveaway can wait until the items below are done.
| Idea | Channel | Start | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gift guide by price and recipient | Email, site | December 1 | Gives past customers a reason to return |
| Order-by dates on the site | Shopify, Merchant Center | December 7 | Answers the buyer's first question |
| Digital gift cards with a send date | Shopify, email | December 7 | Keeps selling after the carriers stop |
| Holiday settings for your own shipping | Amazon | December 7 | Keeps delivery promises honest |
| Last-shipping-day sends | Email, text | December 14 | Gives a real deadline without a deeper discount |
| Budgets that follow delivery dates | Amazon, Google, Meta | December 14 | Stops paying for clicks you cannot deliver on |
| Returns and first-order follow-up | December 26 | Limits refund losses and brings new buyers back |
December 1 to 6: reset after Cyber Monday
Bring ad budgets back down over a few days instead of switching campaigns off. Keep campaigns running through December to reach last-minute gift shoppers, and re-engage people who viewed products during the peak and did not buy. Sales during peak events often come days after the first ad click, so check 7 to 14 days of attribution before you judge a campaign by its ACoS (ad spend as a share of ad sales). Our Black Friday plan covers how to write up the weekend while the numbers are fresh.
Count your stock on Amazon. Amazon's inbound dates for the Black Friday period were October 21 and 28, and its warehouses focus on customer orders in November and December, so a new shipment may not arrive in time to sell. Send ad budget to products with enough units to last, and lower it on the rest. Add the peak fulfillment fee to your margin math: it averages $0.32 a unit through January 14, 2027, with a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on top.
Send past customers a gift guide this week, grouped by price and by who the gift is for. Hanukkah begins at sundown on December 4, so a Hanukkah message has to go first, and buyers shipping to family need it early.
December 7 to 13: set your order-by dates and gift options
Start with the carrier dates, then subtract the days you need to pack an order. These are for delivery before Christmas in the lower 48 states.
| Carrier and service | Last day to ship in 2026 |
|---|---|
| FedEx Ground Economy | December 15 |
| USPS Ground Advantage | December 17 |
| USPS Priority Mail | December 18 |
| USPS Priority Mail Express | December 19 |
| FedEx Express Saver | December 21 |
| FedEx 2Day | December 22 |
| FedEx overnight services | December 23 |
The dates come from USPS and FedEx. FedEx Ground depends on the transit time for each ZIP code pair, and FedEx says its dates can change. USPS Ground Advantage to or from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and US territories can take 10 days or more. We could not confirm 2026 dates for UPS, so check its schedule at ups.com if you ship with it.
Say you ship USPS Ground Advantage and pack orders within one business day. Your order-by date is then December 16. Put that date on your announcement bar, in your cart, in the shipping rate name and on your best-selling product pages.
Make the promise one you can keep. The FTC's Mail Order Rule requires a reasonable basis for any shipping claim. If you learn you will miss it, you must promptly give the customer a choice: agree to the delay, or cancel for a prompt refund.
Then change these settings:
- In Google Merchant Center, the arrival date shown to shoppers uses your maximum handling time plus maximum transit time, counted in business days. Orders after your cut-off time get an extra day, and a blank cut-off defaults to 8 a.m. PST. Set all three to match your December warehouse schedule.
- On Amazon, for orders you ship yourself: if your warehouse will work on a public holiday, mark it as an operating day under Settings, then Shipping Settings. If you will close, Professional sellers can add a seller-set holiday of up to ten days in a row. Your offers stay on sale with later ship-by dates.
- In Shopify, turn on the gift card recipient fields so a buyer can enter a recipient, a message and a send date. They work on Online Store 2.0 themes in the Dawn and Horizon families from v9.0.0, and Vintage themes do not support them.
Check your gift card terms while you are there. Federal rules require the funds on a store gift card to last at least five years, and limit inactivity fees. A promotional card, such as "$10 with a $50 order", falls outside those limits, but it must say on its front that it was issued for promotional purposes. State rules can add more, so have someone check yours.
December 14 to 20: work through the shipping cutoffs
Send each deadline two to three days ahead, to the people most likely to act: recent site visitors, engaged subscribers and anyone who added to cart in the last week. Keep it plain. One date and one button are enough, and a real deadline can replace a deeper discount. If you want help with the list or the sends, see our email marketing services.
| Date | What to run | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| December 14 | First order-by email for standard shipping | Clicks by product, stock |
| December 16 | Last day for standard shipping, on site and in email | Late orders, support tickets |
| December 17 to 18 | Switch the banner to the faster shipping date and its price | Checkout errors on phones |
| December 19 | Last Saturday before Christmas: gift guide resend to people who did not open it | Amazon stock, budgets by midday |
| December 20 | Reminder of expedited dates, first gift card mention | Margin after shipping costs |
Change your ads as each date passes. Once a product can no longer arrive by Christmas, gift buyers have less reason to click, so we would lower bids on it and move budget to products that still can, or to gift cards. Amazon extended its FBA and Seller Fulfilled Prime cutoff to December 23 in 2025. We could not find the 2026 date, so watch Seller Central and the delivery promise on your own listings. For who should handle those day-to-day changes, see our post on Amazon PPC management.
December 21 to 24: sell what does not need a truck
Switch your main message to gift cards from December 21. They need no shipping, and they suit the buyer who has run out of time. The demand is there: 47% of 2026 holiday shoppers told NRF they would like to receive gift cards. Scheduled Shopify gift cards go out between about 4 and 10 a.m. in the buyer's time zone, so a buyer on December 24 can set one for Christmas morning. Say so on the page.
If you have a shop or sell through retail partners, promote pickup. Curbside pickup reached 39.0% of online orders on December 23 last season at retailers offering it, as shoppers worried about getting gifts on time.
Keep Amazon ads running on products that still show delivery in time, and keep the last-chance email short. Check what your site says about arrival dates each morning, because the dates in your banner, your cart and your emails go out of date on different days.
Test the gift card on a phone before Christmas Day: buy one, receive it and redeem it. Phones drove 66.5% of online sales on Christmas Day 2025, the highest mobile share of the season.
December 25 to January 3: handle returns and keep new customers
Returns arrive quickly. One out of every seven returns last season happened from December 26 to 31. On Amazon, purchases from November 1 to December 31, 2026 can be returned until January 31, 2027, for FBA and seller-fulfilled orders alike, and Apple products have an earlier date. Hold back some of your December revenue in your reporting until February, so a good month does not look better than it was.
Put your return steps where people will look for them: the order confirmation, the shipping email and a page linked from your footer. Offer an exchange or store credit first on your own store, with a refund always available.
Send your gift-season buyers something useful in the first days of January: how to use the product and what pairs with it. Review new-to-brand numbers on Amazon as well, so you know who to reach again. Some people redeeming gift cards will be new to your brand, so give them a welcome message once they use the code.
Next step
Riithink runs email, Amazon and ads for e-commerce brands. See our work on Shopify stores and Amazon accounts, and get in touch if you would like a second pair of eyes on your December plan.
