Seasonal Marketing Campaign Checklist

Operational workflow a marketing manager runs to plan, build, launch, and review a seasonal campaign across email, paid, and social channels. Covers brief and budget, creative production, pre-launch QA, in-flight optimization, and post-mortem reporting.

5 sections 26 steps Collects data
1

Pre-Campaign Planning

  1. Define ICP segment and audience list

    • Identify which ICP tier the campaign targets and pull the audience from the CRM or CDP (Salesforce, HubSpot, Segment). Note expected list size, geo split (US / EU / CA — relevant for consent rules), and which existing lifecycle segments the campaign will suppress against.

  2. Set primary KPI and target
    Collects list Collects text Collects paragraph
  3. Run competitive scan against last year's seasonal

    • Pull last year's send dates, offers, and creative from the top three competitors. Check Semrush or Ahrefs for paid-keyword overlap and Meta Ad Library for current creative. Note when their seasonal lands so your send window doesn't collide.

  4. Lock budget and channel mix
    Collects number Collects paragraph
  5. Publish the campaign brief and timeline

    • Brief lives in Notion or Asana with: objective, KPI + target, audience, offer, key dates (build / QA / launch / end), channel owners, and creative requirements. Circulate to creative, paid, lifecycle, and sales for sign-off before any production starts.

2

Creative & Content Production

  1. Lock messaging hierarchy and offer

    • Headline, subhead, primary CTA, secondary CTA, proof points. Run it past the messaging house / brand voice doc — seasonal language drifts toward generic ('this holiday season...') if not pinned to the positioning statement.

  2. Produce creative against the brand guidelines

    • Designer pulls assets from the DAM (Brandfolder / Bynder / Frontify). Deliverables typically include: 1200x630 social/OG, 1080x1080 + 1080x1350 paid social, 1200x600 email hero, 728x90 / 300x250 / 160x600 display, and any Reels/TikTok 1080x1920 vertical cuts.

  3. Write email, ad, and landing-page copy

    • Subject line + preheader for email (test 2-3 variants), three headline options for paid, full landing-page copy with H1 / H2 / proof / CTA. Include FTC disclosure language for any influencer or partner posts (#ad or platform-native paid partnership tag).

  4. Build the landing page with UTMs and tracking

    • Stage in CMS (HubSpot / Webflow / WordPress). Apply UTM convention from the link-builder doc — source / medium / campaign consistent across email, paid, and organic. GA4 conversion event mapped to the actual form submit, not button click. Confirm GTM fires only after consent on EU traffic.

  5. Route creative for legal and brand sign-off

    • Creative + legal + brand sign-off goes here with a timestamped record — not a Slack DM thread. Substantiate any comparative or performance claims (Lanham Act exposure) with a citation file before approval.

    Collects list Collects paragraph Collects file
3

Pre-Launch QA

  1. Run inbox-rendering test on email creative

    • Push to Litmus or Email on Acid; check Gmail, Outlook desktop / web, Apple Mail, iOS, Android. Outlook is where dark-mode and table layouts break. Confirm physical address in footer (CAN-SPAM) and working unsubscribe link routing to the suppression list.

  2. Verify consent and suppression by region

    • EU recipients require GDPR lawful basis (express consent for marketing); CASL recipients in Canada need express or implied consent on file. Apply suppression for unsubscribes, hard bounces, and the 6-month-quiet sunset segment to protect sender reputation.

  3. Validate GA4 events and UTM parameters

    • Walk every CTA path in GA4 DebugView. Common gotcha: conversion event firing on button hover or email-blur instead of submit success — this inflates reported conversions 3-5x. Confirm UTM parameters land cleanly in source / medium / campaign reports.

  4. Confirm paid-media setup and pixel firing

    • Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn campaigns built but paused. Audiences attached, lookalikes seeded, frequency caps set. Pixel fires post-consent on EU traffic — verified through the consent-management platform (OneTrust / Cookiebot).

  5. Confirm campaign is launch-ready
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  6. Resolve launch blockers and re-route for sign-off

    • Document each blocker, owner, and ETA. Re-run the affected QA gate — inbox test, GA4 validation, or pixel check — before the campaign is reopened for launch approval.

4

Launch & In-Flight Optimization

  1. Launch email send and unpause paid ads

    • Send broadcast through MAP (HubSpot / Marketo / Klaviyo). Unpause paid ad sets in Google, Meta, LinkedIn. Notify sales in #pipeline-alerts so reps know inbound leads from the campaign source are landing.

  2. Monitor deliverability and pacing on day one

    • Watch open / click rates against historical baseline, spam-complaint rate (cut-off 0.1%), and bounce rate. Paid pacing: spend on track for daily budget, CTR not collapsed, ROAS within tolerance. If complaint rate spikes, pause and investigate.

  3. Reallocate budget against early ROAS signal

    • 72-hour read: shift spend toward ad sets above target ROAS, pause the bottom 20% by CPA. Refresh the worst-performing creative if frequency is over 4. Don't kill an ad set inside its attribution window without checking view-through.

  4. Respond to comments and inbound on social

    • Community manager works the Sprout / Hootsuite inbox daily through the campaign window. Hide brand-unsafe comments per the guidelines doc; route product complaints to support; flag PR-sensitive threads to the comms lead.

  5. Sync sales on lead volume and quality

    • Mid-flight check with SDR lead: are MQLs from the campaign source converting to SAL? If lead-quality score has dropped, tighten audience or form qualification before more spend goes through.

5

Post-Campaign Reporting

  1. Pull final performance against the primary KPI

    • Reconcile the GA4 / MAP / paid-platform numbers — they will not match exactly because of attribution windows and de-duplication. Source-of-truth is typically the CRM for pipeline, GA4 for site behavior, and the ad platform for spend.

  2. Record campaign result and ROAS
    Collects list Collects text Collects text
  3. Run the post-mortem with creative and paid

    • 30-minute structured retro: what worked, what didn't, what we'd do differently. Capture creative-level winners (top three ads by CTR and by CPA) and document any deliverability or QA misses for the runbook.

  4. Diagnose underperformance and rework plan

    • Triggered when the campaign missed target. Isolate where the drop happened — audience size, list quality, creative CTR, landing-page conversion, or sales follow-up. One owner per failure point with a corrective action before the next seasonal.

  5. Publish the campaign report and next-cycle inputs

    • One-page summary in Notion / Confluence: KPI vs. target, spend vs. plan, top creative, key learnings, and three concrete inputs for the next seasonal brief. Link from the editorial calendar so the next cycle's planner finds it.

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Sections 5
Steps 26
Category Marketing
Price Free to start
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