Your promotional calendar is probably built around four big moments: winter sales, summer sales, Black Friday, Christmas. That's the French calendar, and it only works for France.
Every market has its own shopping peaks, and some are bigger than Black Friday in their home country.
China's Singles' Day (11.11) generates twice the volume of Black Friday worldwide. The Dutch Sinterklaas (December 5) matters more than Christmas for gift-giving in the Netherlands.
Spain's Reyes Magos (January 6) triggers a buying peak between December 26 and January 5, exactly when French brands are on pause.
And during Ramadan, shoppers in the Gulf buy between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., when your email campaigns scheduled for 9 a.m. land in an inbox nobody is checking.
Ignoring these dates doesn't mean "missing a promo." It means being absent at the exact moment local shoppers are in buying mode
… and showing up two weeks later with a Black Friday campaign in a market that has already spent its budget.
The table below covers ten regions, thirty countries and twelve months of key events to build into your international strategy.
