September 11, 2025
In this webinar, the Suds team for a fresh take on holiday promotions, where we’ll break down three proven campaigns and how to make them shine:
- A spine-tingling Haunted Tunnel (October)
- A high-impact Gift Card Promotion (November)
- A revenue-boosting Annual Membership Push (December)
We’ll share insider strategies, real-world case studies, and actionable tips to help you plan, execute, and maximize your holiday profits.
Transcript
Becca:
Welcome everyone to “From Spooky to Sparkly Holiday Campaigns That Work”. We are super excited to be with you today. Let's take a moment to get acquainted. You've been hearing my voice already, but let me officially introduce myself. I'm Becca LeFoll, one of the graphic designers here at Suds. And I've been with the company for a little over five years now. And in that time, I've had the chance to work on more than a hundred campaigns for operators across the country. What I love most is creating visuals that don't just look good, but actually drive results. From tunnel arches to Google ads, I focus on design that helps car washes attract attention, convert more customers, and build a strong presence in their communities. I like to say that one of my superpowers is helping people make money by making things look good. And it might sound simple and a little silly, but the truth is it works. And that's exactly what I'm here to share with you today. The holiday promotions are some of my absolute favorites to design, so I'm excited to dive in.
Hailey:
Hi everyone, my name is Hailey and I'm a marketing manager at Suds. I've been with Suds for four years now and I've worked with over 70 car wash brands to help operators run and grow great businesses. This has looked like helping our new investors open their very first car wash. So think branding, pricing, signage design, website design, and successful go-to-market campaigns. And then I've also helped operators with multi-site locations have successful campaigns so that they can increase membership, revenue, traffic count, increase contact collection, and brand awareness. To put it simply, at this point, I am a car wash consultant.
Becca:
Thanks Hailey. All right, I'm going to kick us off. Why holiday promotions are a big opportunity? You feel it every year. The moment the holidays start creeping in, the energy shifts, people rush to the stores, the ads get louder, and everyone seems to be pulling out their wallets. It's gifts, food, decorations, and experiences. Last year, according to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent a record $984.3 billion during the holiday season. That was a 3.8 jump, 3.8 % jump from the year before. And it's not just spending, it's emotional spending. The holiday season is the single biggest emotional buying period of the entire year. And when you know how to tap into that, it can completely change the results you see from your promotions. For car washes, that translates into three things. A chance to stand out in your community by creating and creating more brand loyalty, a way to connect your brand with seasonal excitement and cash in on the emotional buying of the season and the potential for one of the highest returns of any campaign you run all year. If strategically planned, our clients have seen holiday promotions boost traffic by an average of 36 % with some individual sites seeing over 80 % boosts in traffic.
Hailey:
All right, so in this webinar, you'll learn about three kinds of successful holiday promotions and what all they encompass to drive traffic, boost revenue, and strengthen customer loyalty. The first one is a haunted tunnel in October, followed by a gift card promo starting on Black Friday in November and an annual membership plan in December. These will all be paired with real world examples. And then by the end, you'll know when to start planning these promos,the budget that's needed for media spend, and what I think is always the most exciting part, the design strategies to capture your audience's attention and convert.
Okay, planning for success. So behind any successful campaign launch is a clear and organized action plan. So on the next couple slides, I'll be discussing all of the components that need to be considered and planned out ahead of time. First, let's talk timeline. You'll want to give yourself at least one to two months prior to launch to create everything. The timing on when to start advertising depends on the promo. If it's a one-day event or a weekend event, give people a couple weeks notice. But if it's going to be ongoing for a month or longer, you can typically start advertising as soon as the promo goes live. Next, you'll want to create a full promo and visual plan so all the bases are covered. Here at Suds, we begin by creating a campaign brief and landing on a design concept theme. Essentially, a campaign brief is a document where you lay out all the details for the campaign, like what the promo is, who it's for, how it works, what assets need to be created, et cetera. And the design concept theme makes sure all of the assets are uniform in design for clarity.
Okay, next you'll need to decide on a budget for assets and media spend. Figure out how much it costs to get print assets ordered, whether this is at your favorite local print vendor or if you're doing it online. And this is only if you're gonna have print assets in your promo, like flyers, banners, rat cards, that sort of thing. Be sure to take into account how long it will take to get those printed so you have them in time.
And the other component to budgeting is media spend for your digital ads. So like Facebook or Google ads, and this can vary depending on how big or tight your budget is. Almost always the ROI is going to be worth it. So if you can put a bit more spend into your ads, you will get that back and more in sales. And we'll dive a bit deeper into some real life examples later in this webinar to give you an idea on spend.
Another critical component in planning for success is training your staff to sell at the point of sale. Be sure to share the promo plans with your staff, like what it is, when it's running, and how it's going to work operationally on site. That way they can be confident in sharing it with customers. To make sure this is more fun for CSAs and possibly lead to more sales, create some friendly competition amongst the CSAs through incentivizing.
So an example of this is each sale could be an extra $5 bonus or hitting a certain goal collectively can get them a pizza party. Honestly, this can also create an overall more fun place to work too. And then the last one, when creating digital assets, have a mobile first design approach. Meaning nowadays people are gonna interact with your brand on their phone, more than a desktop computer. And there are hacks on how to capitalize on this to make you more money. So Becca's now going to go deeper into the importance of design, including this mobile first mentality.
Becca:
All right, this is my bread and butter. Designing for impact. All right, so design can make or break your promotion. Design isn't decoration. And it's the difference between a promo that people scroll past and one that they stop at and remember and act on. The goal is to create clarity and not clutter. You can double your engagement simply by cleaning up your design game. So how do we do that? Take a look at the example on the slide.
On the left, it's chaos. You've got about seven different fonts, colors that clash, horrible contrast, so it's hard to read, and no clear hierarchy. Your eyes don't know where to land. And so your brain gives up before you can even figure out what this is. And if you look on the right, it feels like a breath of fresh air, right? You immediately see the offer, the holiday theme, and a simple call to action. The design guides your eye in the right order so that the information makes sense and it sticks.
So great design is magic and it works because it gives the brain exactly what it needs in seconds. It can, and it can kind of feel like magic. So here's how your hierarchy needs to go. What's the offer? Why should they care? And what should they do next? When your design answers those instantly across all of your promotional assets, you create campaigns that convert. Keep your hierarchy simple and consistent.
So you have your offer. What are you offering? Get to the point, very first thing. Then details. Once you've got a customer's attention, tell them everything else they need to know. And then urgency. When is this happening? Should they purchase today or next week? And then you need a call to action. They have their wallets out. You've convinced them that they need what you're offering.
And now you need to help them complete the purchase or send them to where they can purchase, whether that's to your site, your website, a landing page, or your app. Keep this formula across all marketing platforms. And finally, use seasonal touches without falling into cliches. There's a lot of visual noise during the holidays and consumers are bombarded with ads. And you want your campaign to stand out from the rest.
It can still be with classic seasonal visuals. Nostalgia is actually the perfect motivator for conversion, but it must still feel like your brand and it has to be led by strategy. Like Kaylee mentioned, we create campaign themes before any campaign and it allows designers and marketers to meet and brainstorm ideas and slogans and offers and visual looks. And we read through the generic because that's the low-hanging fruit, and we cherry pick the best ideas.
Color choice matters. It also is not just decoration or random choice. It's an emotional shortcut. Incredibly, 62 to 90 % of a product-based first impression comes down to its color. We recognize brands 80 % faster when their colors are consistent. And when it comes to buying, 93 % of shoppers say looks and especially color drive their purchase.
That's why the colors you choose matter deeply. Red creates urgency and passion and excitement. Green evokes trust and calm and eco-friendliness if that is something that your wash promotes. It's a great color to use. Blue signals reliability and competence and stability. You see a lot of locations with blue. And metallic tones, gold and silver are perceived as premium when used correctly.
So you see color isn't superficial, it's psychological. And when you pair the right color with the right message, you're not just showing an offer, you're making people feel it.
And mobile first mentality. Here's the reality. Most of your customers are seeing your promotions on their phones first. Over 60 % of all web traffic now starts on mobile. And it's not just browsing. 65 % of online sales happen on mobile. That means if someone is going to buy a gift card, grab a membership or click through your holiday promo, odds are they're doing it on their phone. Tiny text, overloaded graphics, they're gone in a swipe. So it's too confusing for our brain to organize that much information in a matter of seconds. So mobile first design forces you to simplify. Big offer, bold visuals, clear call to action. That's how you capture customers in the moment when they're ready to buy. And the best part, companies that design with mobile in mind see 15 to 30 % higher conversion rates. That's huge. It means if your ad is clean, bold, and easy to act on from a phone, you are instantly going to be getting more sales. And whether that's gift cards, wash packages, or memberships, if your promo doesn't work on a phone screen, it doesn't work, period. All right. Now that we've talked about how to make your campaign successful from a design standpoint, let's dive into some real world examples. Hailey is going to start us off.
Hailey:
Okay, thanks, Becca. So the first holiday promo we're going to talk about today is a Haunted Tunnel. These are a client favorite and customer favorite because it's a chance to get creative design-wise and do something a bit abnormal for a car wash. Plus, it only happens once a year. Common goals for a Haunted Tunnel include driving traffic to the site, increasing revenue, increasing brand awareness, and getting involved with the community. You'll typically need to start building the campaign at least a month in advance, if not two. You'll then want to start advertising for the event a couple of weeks out so people can get it on their calendar. There are several marketing channels you can leverage and it might depend on your budget. So if you can do all the things, it would include on-site marketing, which is broken into two pieces. So print assets, like a flyer and a win master sign. And then the second component to that is digital assets. So like the pay station screen and a digital menu board if you have one. Another marketing channel you can leverage is social media. So ads and posts. And then of course sending out texts and emails to your contact base.
Okay, let's look at an actual case study for a haunted tunnel. This Suds client that we're looking at is Rainforest Car Wash in Ohio. They have several locations, but they only ran the haunted tunnel at one location. The theme was a graveyard zombie vibe, and Rainforest actually has a mascot, which is this parrot that you can see on the screen. His name is Petey.
And running holiday themed promos gets fun because our designers get to lean into the theme with the mascot. So in this case, Petey is designed to match the theme. The promotion that the event, the promo for the event was that the members got in for free. Otherwise it was $25 per car, which is a price of the top single wash. The event covered two weekends. So a total of four nights, and it ran from six to nine PM. It was actually, Rainforest was one of the first car washes to become popular and go big with a haunted tunnel. And so they had some fun and advertising because they were able to say, quote, visit Ohio's favorite car wash as seen on CNN, Good Morning America and ABC. And they had a $2,000 budget which went toward their Facebook ads and they started running those 16 days in advance. This is more on the aggressive side for spend, but it's going to reach a wider audience. And with the results they had, you can see how every penny was worth it. There were specific assets created for this event, each with purpose. The banner brought in traffic driving by. The flyer was handed out to all customers coming to the wash the few weeks leading up to the event. The WindMaster sign and pay station screen on site were additional ways to communicate details to all customers and members. They also had a web slider at the top of their homepage, which reached web searches and organic traffic on their website. They had a social media ad to reach a wide online audience. And lastly, there was a landing page that that Facebook ad directed people to, to get all the details for the event. And they had great results. In just 12 hours, they made a little over $20,000 in revenue. And that Facebook ad was clicked on over 8,000 times and had almost 300,000 impressions. And due to all of those clicks, the cost per click was only 24 cents, which is awesome.
All right, so this graph actually shows the combined retail traffic pattern over the course of the two weeks that the event ran in. So it's an hourly traffic breakdown for all of the days, including and leading up to the promotional days. So during the actual promo hours, we can see there in green that the retail traffic spikes for both weekends.
Okay. And we wanted to end by sharing a couple of tips on how to make a haunted tunnel shine. So first, if you can pair the event with a giveaway, something like one lucky winner will get a year free washes, or it could be something smaller, like a basket full of local goodies, just something to make the event more enticing to participate in. And second, if your site is needing a member boost, pair the event with a member promo for an either or offer.
Since members get in free for all of the retailers, a 9.99 first month member promo is a lot more appealing than paying $25 to get in. But like I said, the answer to this is gonna depend on your site data and if you're needing a revenue boost or a membership boost. And with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Becca and she's gonna talk about our second promo example.
Becca:
Alright, Black Friday gift cards. I said it earlier, the holidays can feel like chaos, long lines, crowded stores, everyone stressed about getting their shopping done. And that was the inspiration behind this campaign. Avoiding the merry masses. Instead of adding to the madness, AutoPride, and they're located in California, wanted to be the simple stress-free option. They were the brand that took away the stress. They had one clear goal, drive holiday revenue while giving customers an easy win. Gift cards are the perfect promotion opportunity. They're quick stocking stuffers, they're easy to grab, and they're flexible on all budgets. AutoPride took a problem that occurs during this time of year and they solved it, making the season just that much more peaceful. And that's a very strong emotional pull for conversions.
The offer was pretty straightforward. $450 spent, got $75 in free gift cards. $200, you got $25 free and $100 spent got $10 free, plus 15% off of washbooks. So no matter the budget, there was an incentive to spend more. The timeline ran from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. And they invested about $1,680 in ad spend for all seven locations and backed it up with flyers handed out on site, social ads and posts, and an email blast for existing contacts. They made sure that customers saw the promo everywhere.
And the results. Here's the fun part, it's the numbers. The campaign brought in $33,648 in gift cards alone and an additional $35,259 in washbooks. So nearly $70,000 total revenue right at the end of the year with one well thought out promotion.
So the big takeaway, when you pair a strong theme with a smart offer and make it impossible to miss, meaning it's online, on site, everywhere, you turn a hectic season into a huge opportunity. AutoPride did this perfectly. They combined a gift card promotion with a washbook discount, giving customers multiple ways to save, and the theme made you smile, and it connected with everyone who's ever braved holiday shopping madness.
On site, lean into the decor. Have fun with it. AutoPride put up a gift card tree in the lobby and decked out their space, making it super fun and festive. And most importantly, train your team. Every single car that comes through should hear about your promotion. Staff should know the offer inside and out, and they should be comfortable pitching it. A simple script actually goes a really long way. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Hailey for our last promotion.
Hailey:
Perfect, thanks, Becca. So yeah, our third and final promo example is an annual membership push at the end of the year. When considering an annual membership as your end of year promo, cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation says it best. That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year. Common goals for an annual membership push are simple. Increase revenue and member count.
And annual memberships make for thoughtful and generous Christmas gifts for the car lovers in your life. Like the other promo examples, you'll want to start building the campaign at least a month in advance, if not two. Since the promo typically runs for a month, you'll want to start advertising on the first day the promo is available. There are several marketing channels you can leverage. And again, it might depend on your budget. If you can do all the things, Marketing channels to leverage would include on-site marketing. again, print assets, which could be a road banner, a WindMaster sign and a rack card, digital assets. So your pay station screen, a digital menu board, and even an LED message center sign, if you happen to have one of those. Another marketing channel to leverage is going to be social media. So ads and posts, your website. And then of course, texting, emailing, and sending out app push notifications to your contact base.
Let's look at an actual case study for an annual membership promo. The Suds client we're looking at here is Turbo Tide Car Wash in Colorado. They have two locations and the promo was ran at both. The theme that they went with was steal of a deal with your classic burglar and black and white striped apparel so it could stand out a bit from the common holiday designs. And the promo was three months free on their top two annual membership plans.
This offer was available from November 29th, which was Black Friday through December 31st. They focused their spend money on print assets. So each location had a banner, 2,500 RAT cards, and a WinMaster sign insert. And they started advertising on the first day that the promo was available. All of the assets that Suds created them were a PayStation upsell screen, banner, the WindMaster insert, a RAT card, a digital menu board ad, a monument sign ad, a social post, a web slider, and then of course sending out an e-blast, a text, and an app push notification. All of this just ensured that we hit every marketing channel possible. Okay, and let's talk results. So TurboTide ended up selling 145 high tide plans, which is their second from the top at $299 for a total of $43,355. They sold 25 Turbo Tide plans, which is their top plan, at $399 for a total of just about $10,000. Their grand total of revenue was $53,330. Talk about a nice revenue boost at the end of the year. They were really excited about this.
Okay, and then here are a couple tips on how to make an annual membership promo shine. Number one, keep the offer clear and simple. During the holidays, like Becca was talking about, people are bombarded with info and they really do only have a little bit of attention to give to you in your promo. So dial in the offer and be precise in wording it on all assets. Number two, round out the numbers to make the offer more appealing. And in this example, the actual value of a high tide annual plan with three free months is $315. But $299 is so much more appealing to consumers. Okay, Becca's going to wrap us up with a recap and some key takeaways for you guys.
Becca:
Thanks, Hailey. All right, we've gone through some pretty great promotions, but if you're going to walk away with anything, I want it to be these four things. Start early. The best campaigns are planned weeks or months in advance. Have a clear plan ahead of time. What is your promotion? What is the hook? What's going to reel those customers in? What will it look like? What imagery will you be using? And what assets will you be creating? When do they need to be finished by? All very important questions. Keep your design clean and on brand. If you don't feel like you have a strong brand, reach out to us. We love to help with that. And tap into that seasonal urgency using color theory and the feelings that come during this time of the year. And remember to have a mobile first mentality, super, super important. And finally, make sure your team is confident talking about the promotion. Do these things and you'll have an amazing season. You can do it.
All right, we're gonna be moving into the Q&A portion for today. We've already had a few great questions come in during the session that Hailey and I would love to answer for you. I think the first one I want to answer is this one. "When it comes to the holidays, What should my biggest focus be? Selling more gift cards, gaining new members, or just driving overall wash volume?" That's a great question. The holidays are one of the few times a year where you can kind of do all three, you can push all three. Gift card sales, memberships, and wash volume, they can all grow at once. If I had to pick one to prioritize, I'd say gift cards are a huge star. They're super easy to market. They're easy for customers to buy. And they often bring in new customers who redeem them later. But if you can, don't stop there. ⁓ Pairing your gift card, promo with a membership discount, or the washbook sale, ⁓ that just gives people more ways to spend, which people appreciate.
Hailey:
Okay, my turn to take a question. All right, I found one here that I'm gonna answer. So this person's asking, "How early should I really start planning my holiday promotions to get the best results?" Well, honestly, the earlier the better. Kind of like we've been mentioning, ideally you wanna start one to two months in advance and this is giving you time to get your creative and your promotions all ready to go. And you have to take into consideration anything that you need to get printed, making sure that you have that ahead of time and just scheduling all of the marketing assets. And we just don't want to be rushing. So really early planning makes the campaign smoother and more effective.
Becca:
I'm less stressed. Everybody likes to not be stressed. These are good questions. I'm going to take another, actually, I'm going to combine two that I really liked. "If my budget is pretty tight this year, which marketing assets should I prioritize first? And what are some fun or unique holiday themes that work well?" If your budget is tight, first of all, that's okay. Focus on the assets that give you the biggest reach for the lowest cost. So on-site signage is actually huge. Road banners, flyers at the pay station, ⁓ anything customers see in person is gold. Then if you can add one or two of those digital touch points, usually an email or a strong social post, those channels are inexpensive and targeted and give you the most bang for your buck. And for themes on the fly, that can be a little hard, but remember to try and tap into the emotions of the season. Like we said earlier, look at your branding and ask yourself, are you a serious, more upscale brand? Are you playful? Do you have a mascot like Petey that you can utilize in your promotion? Like Rainforest. Some fun ideas for Christmas time could be: Santa's shortcut or making spirits and your car bright. You could pair that with an image of Christmas lights shining off of a beautifully clean car. That's kind of a fun visual ⁓ to go along with gift cards, no wrapping required, highlighting just kind of the ease of that kind of gift. People love easy during the holiday seasons. I know that I do things like that. For a haunted tunnel, ask yourself who your target audience is. Is it families? Will you go extra scary or will you keep it more tame for little kids? You could do a witches brew theme. I've done that one before where like you're cooking up a monster deal or maybe an AI gone rogue could be kind of fun with your lights in the tunnel, things like that. Hopefully that got some of your creative juices flowing a little bit. It's fun to come up with themes.
Hailey:
Okay, so just looking at the time here, we do have time for one more. So I found one that I'm going to answer. This person's asking, "Do you have any other ideas on how to get my staff excited and involved in promoting holiday offers?" Okay, so I'm glad this person asked this. So your staff can make or break the campaign because a lot of the times conversion is happening at the pay station. So we want to give your CSA's ownership. So like AutoPride did, decorate the lobby, set up a gift card display, and overall just make it fun. It is a fun time of year. And then just train them with a sales script so that they are comfortable pitching the promo. And then as far as another idea, one that I didn't share is... have a little competition so that whoever actually sells like the most gift cards at the end, they get a bonus, like just that one person and just have just some fun competition with it because we find that when staff buy in, customers can feel that and they get excited too.
Okay, so that is going to be all the time we have for questions, but we do see that there are more questions on here that we didn't get to. And as Becca mentioned in the beginning, we'll be sure to answer all of your questions and we're going to send them out in a follow-up email that will also include a link to this webinar.
Alright, so we have shared a ton of holiday promotion info with you. And if you have that itch to start working on your next holiday promo this year and you'd like some professional help, we wanted to let you know that Suds has a few openings this season. We're also offering an exclusive limited time discount for webinar attendees, which that's you guys. So come and get 20% off your next holiday campaign or any of our services. Be sure to secure your spot today by scanning this QR code on the screen to learn more about Suds and then request that consultation with our team. And I know that I can speak for everyone here at Suds. We look forward to working with you and creating what's next. So thank you so much, you guys, for joining this webinar with Becca and I, and have a great rest of your day.
