---
title: The New Year Sale Playbook: Keep BFCM Momentum Through January | Cart Rocket Blog
description: The weeks after Christmas (Q5) bring gift-card holders, self-gifters and resolution shoppers. How Shopify stores keep selling in January with preloaded cart links, reorder links and Shopify Flow.
url: https://cartrocket.dev/blog/new-year-sale-playbook.html
---

Q5 & New Year · 6 min read · By Robin · Updated October 7, 2026

# The New Year Sale Playbook: Keep BFCM Momentum Through January

A lot of stores push hard through BFCM, coast through December and go quiet in January. That's a shame, because plenty of shoppers are still holding gift cards or starting resolutions, and the big advertisers have usually spent their budgets by then.

## What Q5 is

Marketers call the stretch from December 26 to mid-January "Q5". Ad costs often ease once the big holiday budgets are spent, and some groups of shoppers are still buying. People with gift cards have money set aside and are looking for something to spend it on. Self-gifters bought for everyone else and now want something for themselves. Resolution shoppers are motivated in January, especially for fitness, learning and organisation products.

What these shoppers have in common is that they mean it, but they won't try very hard. They'll buy if it's easy right then, which is exactly what a preloaded cart is for.

## Reuse what you built in November

If you set up presets for BFCM (if not, start with the [Black Friday checkout playbook](https://cartrocket.dev/blog/black-friday-checkout-playbook.html)), duplicate them and adjust:

1. Turn **bfcm-bundle** into **fresh-start-kit**: the same products, framed around the new year, with a moderate discount. Q5 shoppers expect a sale, and a smaller one than Black Friday is fine.
2. Schedule a **december-26** preset before you log off for the holidays. Boxing Day traffic arrives whether you're at your desk or not, and active dates are in UTC, so convert from your time zone.
3. Put [purchase limits](https://cartrocket.dev/docs/#purchase-limits) on the bigger discounts. After a discount-heavy Q4, January margins matter, and a cap stops a clearance offer from eating into full-price sales.

Undo the sale settings in your abandoned cart flow as well. If you shortened delays or added a last-call email for Black Friday, as we suggest in [abandoned cart email timing for BFCM](https://cartrocket.dev/blog/abandoned-cart-email-timing-bfcm.html), check that January's flow is back on normal delays and doesn't mention the sale.

## Four January campaigns worth running

### 1. Gift card reminders

Email and retarget December's customers with something like "Got a gift card? Here's a shortcut," linked to a cart with your best sellers already loaded. Gift card holders have already paid, so a reminder with a full cart helps them use the balance on something they'll like.

### 2. The resolution bundle

A starter kit with everything a beginner needs, at one price, in one link. Resolution buyers are usually new to your category, so choosing the products for them is a big part of what they're paying for.

### 3. The VIP thank-you

A link limited to a Shopify segment of everyone who ordered in Q4, with early access to new-season stock, a small discount and a limit of one per customer (which needs the shopper to be logged in). It gives holiday first-timers a reason to order again.

### 4. Buy-again links for repeat products

If you sell things people run out of, a [reorder link](https://cartrocket.dev/docs/#reorder-links) adds a logged-in customer's last order back to their cart, so one link works for everyone in a "time to restock" email. Shoppers who aren't logged in are asked to log in first, and items no longer available are skipped. To send it automatically, the Repeat purchase recipes on the [Automations page](https://cartrocket.dev/docs/#automations) show how to build the email in Shopify Flow, and our [Shopify Flow guide](https://cartrocket.dev/blog/shopify-flow-cart-link-automations.html) walks through a 30-day reorder reminder.

## Measure the quiet season properly

Keep UTMs on every January link so you can compare channels while spend is lower. The channel that does well in January is often worth scaling in February, and what you learn now feeds next year's holiday plan.