Now that Labor Day is over, it’s time to put away those summer whites and get ready for the holiday sales rush.Many subscription sites assume that CyberMonday and similar digital marketing events in Q4 apply almost exclusively to eCommerce sites, but that’s not the case. Both The New York Times and The Economist have been known to take advantage of the holiday buying bonanza to push digital subscriptions. And The New Yorker ties its gift subscription sales to its renewal efforts. In addition, last year we discussed how every subscription site can optimize gift subscription sales around the holidays.If you’re looking to boost your digital subscription sales in the last quarter of 2013, here are some tips:

• Start early. October is the perfect month to offer opportunities for subscribers to pre-order popular holiday specials, whether they’re one-off eBooks or subscriptions that are heavily discounted.
• Let subscribers create an on-site wish list of people they may want to buy subscriptions for. Don’t ask for email addresses just yet, but do consider offering them a bulk discount.
• Since you’re a virtual company, don’t be afraid to steal Black Friday’s thunder by making your holiday sales price available on Thanksgiving, or even the day before. After all, someone will be surfing the Net while Thanksgiving dinner is being prepared. Just make sure your payment processing is in order and there’s someone to take customer service calls (and pay that person well!).
• Offer free cards, certificates, or some shippable item that gift givers can wrap and present to gift subscription recipients.
• Tie a gift subscription or even a subscription renewal to a cause. For example, A Story Before Bed could boost their donations to deployed military personnel by letting paying subscribers donate their own money to a subscription. Or a news site could offer to make their content available to a school for a year. Or a B2B site could let subscribers donate a subscription to a business library.
• Holiday messaging will decline after January, but that doesn’t mean your sales will, especially since gift recipients will need to be onboarded. Be prepared for the intense customer service needs in December and January.

To learn more about how you can boost your holiday subscription sales, including best practices for onboarding gift recipients and handling refunds, read our in-depth How-To on Best Practices for Gift Subscription Offers.