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Q5 marketing is a campaign plan for the shopping period after Christmas. Think with Google uses “Q5” for December 26 through mid-January; it is Google’s shorthand, not a formally standardized retail quarter. For a practical plan, treat the days immediately after Christmas as one phase and extend relevant activity into January only when your audience, stock, and margins justify it.
Why plan for shopping after Christmas?
Some shoppers keep buying after December 25—for deals, gift-card purchases, exchanges, self-purchases, or belated gifts. In a U.S. National Retail Federation (NRF) survey of 8,005 adults conducted December 1–10, 2025, 70% said they planned to shop in the week after December 25. That is stated intent, not a count of completed purchases; NRF reported a margin of error of ±1.1 percentage points. Among respondents planning to shop, 45% cited holiday sales and promotions and 26% cited gift cards as reasons.
Returns also shape the period. NRF says most holiday returns occur in January, without giving a percentage on its FAQ page. Adobe Analytics found that one in seven online returns during the 2025 U.S. holiday season fell between December 26 and 31; returns during those six days were up 4.7% from the same period a year earlier. Some customers may make another purchase or shop post-holiday sales during a return visit, but a return does not guarantee another sale.
These figures support preparing for continued activity, not assuming a particular sales lift. NRF’s figure measures consumer plans, while Adobe’s measures U.S. ecommerce activity. Neither establishes a universal Q5 budget, discount, posting schedule, or forecast.
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Choose the part of Q5 you can serve
Do not treat every post-Christmas shopper as having the same need. Choose a campaign window and audience based on what you can fulfill profitably.
| Shopper intent | Possible message or action | Check before promoting |
|---|---|---|
| Looking for post-holiday deals | Feature an offer on eligible products. | Confirm the discount works with your margin, stock, and fulfillment costs. |
| Spending a gift card or holiday money | Show products that fit likely redemption needs, including options at different price points. | Make redemption terms and any exclusions easy to find. |
| Exchanging or returning a gift | Make return and exchange steps clear; offer related discovery where appropriate. | Keep the return path straightforward and do not make a new purchase a condition of service. |
| Buying a belated gift | Promote suitable gifts with accurate delivery or pickup information. | Check current stock and ensure the arrival promise is still achievable. |
| Shopping for themselves | Present useful products or post-holiday offers without assuming every customer wants a discount. | Match the message to the products and inventory you actually want to sell. |
Google’s Q5 guidance specifically suggests messages for gift-card or holiday-money spenders and belated gifting. Treat these as creative options, not proof that every category will see demand. The NRF survey supports considering promotions and gift-card use, but it does not rank campaign types by likely performance.
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Build a short post-Christmas campaign plan
1. Set the window and objective
Decide whether you are planning only for December 26–31, the first week of January, or the full period through mid-January. Set one primary outcome for each campaign: for example, completed sales, gift-card redemption, qualified product visits, or completed exchanges. This keeps a service message from being judged by the same measure as a sales promotion.
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Choose an offer only if the products, stock, margin, and fulfillment costs make it sensible. A discount may suit selected seasonal stock, while gift-card redemption, belated-gift messaging, or product discovery may work without a sitewide price cut. The sources do not establish that discounts are necessary across all businesses or categories.
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- Half Meeting Half Note: 1.MEETING PLANNING: Date, Location, Topic & Attendees 2.MEETING MINUTES: Agenda, Quick Notes & Other 3.NOTES AREA: Lined Page 4.ACTION ITEMS: Action Steps, Person, Due Date & Check Box 5.NEXT MEETING: Date, Time & Location 6.INDEX PAGE: Date, Title, Page Number, which will help create more effective meetings and good results.
- Premium Quality Notebook for Work: Golden spiral binding is sturdy and flexible, with easy-to-turn pages. Hot-stamped cover is water-resistant and not easy to bend. Bonus Bookmark and Pockets. Perfectly hold up well to frequent transfers in and out of backpacks, briefcases, and cars.
- Fight Ink-bleeding & Great Size: The high-end 100gsm paper could prevent ink bleeding through or feathering, handle double-sided writing and most daily use pens pretty well. The office/business work notebook measures 7.5"x 10"(similar to B5 size), Generous size provides ample space to jot down your meeting notes.
- Each 160 Pages Per Book: Provide ample space for note taking & planning and with the date section at the top for tracking them. With 160 pages for meeting minutes, the manager notebook will cover more than half a year, even in daily use. Also provides index pages for organizing this office planner.
- Better Tool Drives Better Meetings: The hassle of organizing the chaotic meeting notes VS this professional meeting notebook. Definitely a step up! Everything is neatly zoned on each page makes it a breeze to fill them out and ensure all you need are accounted for.
3. Make every customer-facing detail agree
Before sending an email, publishing social posts, or running paid media, check that the campaign’s product pages, availability, offer terms, shipping or collection promises, and return or exchange information match. Pause or change creative when stock or delivery timing changes; a campaign promise that the checkout cannot keep creates avoidable friction.
4. Check the mobile journey
Test the complete path on a phone: campaign link, product page, offer application, cart, checkout, and confirmation. Adobe Analytics reported that smartphones accounted for 56.4% of U.S. online holiday transactions from November 1 through December 31, 2025. That is full-season context, not a Q5-only result, but it makes mobile checkout a sensible part of campaign quality assurance.
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- Smartly Plan Ahead & Boost Your Productivity: Absolutely clever & efficient! With the to do list notebook / notepad you can break down your daily tasks into half-hourly focus blocks and map out priorities & follow-up duties to keep your day on track and enhance productivity
- Plenty Of Space For Efficient Planning: Stay focused & manage your time wisely! The 8.4x6.1” work planner & organizer notebook offers ample space for 105 days of life-changing planning with each day being spread across 2 pages - set yourself up for purposeful days
- Now Is The Best Time To Start: The daily planner is undated so you can start to add structure to your schedule and cultivate new planning habits right away! Beat procrastination, boost happiness & make each day count with the hourly planner
- Adds Beauty To Daily Planning: A gorgeous dark green linen cover, chic golden letters, a gold ring wire and a clean, easy-to-use layout, elastic band - enjoy the lovely and modern design of the undated daily planner!
5. Prepare for returns and exchanges
Put return instructions where customers can find them and make sure customer-service staff know the current process. If relevant, offer an alternative product or a post-holiday promotion during a return interaction—but keep the return or exchange itself easy to complete. NRF identifies returns as a point at which some consumers also make another purchase or shop post-holiday sales, not as a guaranteed sales opportunity.
6. Measure against your own baseline
Review results by audience intent, channel, device, and campaign objective. Use measures that fit the goal: sales campaigns might track conversion or revenue; gift-card messages might track redemption; service-focused work might track completed exchanges or qualified visits. Define the measurement window and compare it with a relevant prior period or your own historical results. Google and NRF do not provide a universal Q5 performance target.
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- Smartly Plan Ahead & Boost Your Productivity: Absolutely clever & efficient! With the planner notebook you can break down your daily tasks into half-hourly focus blocks and map out priorities & follow-up duties to keep your day on track and enhance productivity
- Plenty Of Space For Efficient Planning: Stay focused & manage your time wisely! The 9.3x6.3” (inner pages) work planner & organizer notebook offers ample space for 80 days of life-changing planning with each day being spread across 2 pages - set yourself up for purposeful days
- Now Is The Best Time To Start: The daily planner is undated so you can start to add structure to your schedule and cultivate new planning habits right away! Beat procrastination, boost happiness & make each day count with the hourly planner
- Adds Beauty To Daily Planning: A gorgeous champagne pink cover, chic gold foil letters, a golden ring wire and a clean, easy-to-use layout - enjoy the gorgeous and modern minimalist design of the undated daily planner!
Choose channels you can evaluate
Use channels that reach your intended shoppers and let you assess the outcome. Email, paid media, social, and affiliate or partner activity can support different messages; none is automatically the best choice for every retailer. Adobe’s 2025 U.S. holiday analysis attributed 20.4% of online revenue share to “affiliates and partners,” a category that includes social media influencers, compared with 17.6% in 2024. That is Adobe’s seasonal channel-attribution result, not a forecast or expected return for an individual campaign.
Keep the comparison tied to your business: consider audience intent, timing, device experience, stock, margin, fulfillment, and the outcome you set. Adobe’s broader holiday figures describe November and December, not Q5 alone. Its report puts U.S. online spending at $257.8 billion from November 1 through December 31, 2025, up 6.8% year over year; that establishes seasonal ecommerce context but does not isolate post-Christmas sales.
What Q5 does—and does not—tell you
Google’s November 2025 article by Samantha Gelinas defines the period as December 26 to mid-January and describes it as an active shopping opportunity. That definition is useful for campaign planning, but “Q5” is not a formal, universally accepted retail quarter. Be explicit about the dates you mean when briefing a team or reporting results.
The evidence here has different scopes: NRF’s post-Christmas result is a U.S. consumer survey about planned behavior; Adobe’s figures cover U.S. ecommerce in November and December, with its return statistic specifically covering December 26–31; and Google’s article draws on Google-commissioned Ipsos studies spanning Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S., with survey activity from October 10, 2024, to January 8, 2025. Those data do not combine into a single Q5 sales forecast. Use them to justify having a plan, then decide how much to invest using your own customers, inventory, and prior results.
Quick Recap
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