Lightning Fast Turnaround!
Lightning Fast Turnaround!
The holiday season usually means longer hours, more orders, and tighter deadlines. When your team is focused on getting packages out the door, it’s easy to let the small touches slide.
The challenge is that your customers are seeing more packages than ever. They’re comparing your unboxing experience with every other brand that lands on their doorstep. Something as small as a “thank you” sticker can make your shipment feel more personal and intentional without slowing down your packing line.
Stickers are an easy way to say “we notice you” at scale. Applied in seconds, they can reinforce your brand, encourage reviews, and turn a routine delivery into a small branded moment.
Major retailers have conditioned consumers to expect fast, efficient delivery. However, small and medium-sized businesses have an advantage that giants like Amazon struggle to replicate: the human element.
When a customer opens a package and sees a carefully applied thank you sticker, the dynamic changes. The transaction shifts from a simple exchange of goods for money to a personal interaction. It signals that a real person packed the order and appreciates the business. This connection is powerful! It increases the perceived value of the product and significantly boosts the likelihood of the customer sharing their purchase on social media or returning for a second buy.
Custom printed boxes and branded tissue paper are excellent branding tools, but they require significant storage space and high upfront costs. Stickers, by comparison, offer high-impact branding with a minimal footprint and a much lower barrier to entry.
A single roll of custom stickers can be used across your entire product line. Whether you are shipping a small, padded envelope or a large, corrugated box, the same sticker works. This eliminates the need to order different branded packaging materials for various SKU sizes.
Compared to other marketing channels, the cost per impression of a sticker is pennies. For that small investment, your brand logo and a message of gratitude are the first things the customer sees.
During the holiday rush, time is money. Stickers are incredibly fast to apply. There is no folding complex boxes or taping elaborate wrapping. A quick peel and stick action seals the deal, adding a premium finish without slowing down your fulfillment line.
While a generic “Thank You” is better than nothing, a strategic design can achieve much more. When designing your stickers for the holiday season, consider these approaches.
You do not need to redesign your entire logo to be festive. A thank you sticker is the perfect place to introduce holiday elements. Using seasonal colors like deep reds, greens, metallics, or icy blues can make the package feel like a gift, even if the customer bought it for themselves. However, ensure the design remains consistent with your core brand identity.
A sticker is prime real estate for marketing. Rather than just saying “Thank You,” consider adding a gentle call to action.
During the holidays, many consumers make a conscious effort to shop small. A sticker that explicitly says “Thank You for Supporting Small Business” taps into this sentiment and reinforces the personal connection.
Where you place the sticker dictates how the customer interacts with it. There are three main strategies for placement.
Placing a sticker on the outside of the box or poly mailer serves two purposes. First, it acts as a tamper-evident seal, adding a layer of security. Second, it brands the package before it is even opened. If you choose this route, durability is key. The sticker must be able to withstand friction and weather during transit.
If you wrap your products in tissue paper or kraft paper, using a sticker to seal the wrapping is a classic, upscale move. It creates a “gift” experience. Because this sticker is protected inside the box, you have more flexibility with materials, such as using a matte paper finish or gold foil for an elegant look.
Many businesses include a packing slip or a postcard. Affixing a sticker to this document draws attention to it and prevents it from being discarded immediately. It adds a pop of color to an otherwise boring piece of paper.
Choosing the right material for your stickers is just as important as the design.
Yes. The holiday season is when you will likely acquire the most new customers. First impressions are critical for turning these one-time holiday shoppers into year-round loyalists. The relatively low cost of a sticker run is easily justified by the increase in brand perception and customer retention.
The most common sizes for packaging stickers are circles with a 2-inch or 3-inch diameter. A 2-inch sticker is subtle and works well for tissue paper seals or small envelopes. A 3-inch sticker offers more visibility and is better suited for the outside of shipping boxes or large mailers.
Yes, but you need to choose the right finish. If you plan to write on the sticker (for example, to add the customer’s name), you should opt for a matte finish or a paper-based sticker. Glossy vinyl or high-gloss UV coatings are difficult to write on with standard pens and often require a permanent marker to prevent smudging.
For fulfillment efficiency, rolls are almost always the better option. It’s much faster for a packer to peel a sticker off a roll than to peel the backing off an individual die-cut sticker. Rolls keep your packing station organized and reduce waste.
A simple starting point is to estimate your expected number of holiday shipments, then add a buffer of 10 to 20 percent. If you expect 1,000 orders between November and December, ordering 1,100 to 1,200 stickers helps account for test applications, packing errors, and last minute spikes in volume. If you use thank you stickers year round, you can order a larger quantity with a non seasonal design and supplement with a smaller holiday themed batch.
Both finishes have advantages. Matte tends to feel more premium and is less reflective in photos and videos, which can be useful if you encourage customers to share unboxing content. Gloss finishes make colors appear more saturated and can stand out more in person, especially on kraft or white boxes. The best choice depends on your brand aesthetic and how customers interact with your packaging.
Thank you stickers are not a complicated marketing tactic, but that is part of their strength. They’re simple to design, quick to apply, and easy to integrate into existing packing processes, whether you’re shipping ten orders a day or hundreds.
In a season when customers are surrounded by generic packaging and automated messages, a small, consistent expression of appreciation stands out. With thoughtful design and the printing from The Bumper Sticker, custom stickers become a reliable way to add a personal touch to every holiday shipment, without adding strain to your team or finances.
