Q5 & New Year · 6 min read · July 22, 2026

The New Year Sale Playbook: Keep BFCM Momentum Through January

Most stores sprint through BFCM, limp through December, and go dark in January — right when ad inventory gets cheap and millions of shoppers are holding gift cards and resolutions. Q5 is the quietest profitable season on the calendar.

What Q5 actually is

Marketers call the stretch from December 26 to mid-January "Q5": CPMs drop 20–40% as big advertisers exhaust budgets, while purchase intent stays oddly high. Three audiences are actively shopping:

• Gift-card holders — money already committed to spending, looking for a reason.
• Self-gifters — "I bought for everyone else, now me."
• Resolution shoppers — new year, new gear, highest motivation of the year for fitness, learning, and organization products.

All three share a trait: the intent is real but shallow. They'll buy if it's easy right now. Which makes January the best month of the year for one-click carts.

Recycle November's work

You already built the machine for BFCM. Duplicate the presets and rebrand them:

1. bfcm-bundle becomes fresh-start-kit — same products, resolution framing, moderate discount (Q5 shoppers expect a sale, not a fire sale).
2. Schedule the december-26 preset before you log off for the holidays. Boxing Day traffic arrives whether you're at your desk or not.
3. Cap the aggressive offers. January margins matter after a discount-heavy Q4 — purchase limits keep the clearance from swallowing full-price demand.

Three January campaigns worth running

1. The gift-card magnet

Email and retarget December's customers: "Got a gift card? Here's the shortcut." Link to a loaded best-sellers cart. Gift-card revenue is already yours; the sale just decides when you recognize it.

2. The resolution bundle

A complete starter kit — everything a beginner needs, one price, one click. Resolution buyers are novices in your category; curation is the product.

3. The VIP thank-you

A segment-restricted link for everyone who ordered in Q4: early access to new-season stock, small stacked discount, one-per-customer. It converts holiday first-timers into year-round customers — the actual point of Q5.

BFCM buys you customers. Q5 decides whether you keep them.

Measure the quiet season properly

Keep UTMs on every January link so you can compare channels at Q5's lower spend. The channel that wins in January at cheap CPMs is usually the one worth scaling in February — you're buying next year's playbook data at a discount, too.