Merry and Bright: Holiday Marketing Tips for Engaging Existing Customers
Courtney Syrop, Andrea Julaton, Paige Oltman, and Sabrina Jordan contributed to this post.
It’s no surprise that the earlier you start thinking about the holiday season, the smoother the sailing will be come crunch time. As holiday shopping keeps creeping earlier, advertisers need to put less pressure on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and get in front of the consumer earlier to be top of mind in the purchase journey.
While holiday sales are a great time to gain new customers, activating your existing consumers during this season is crucial; since they’re already familiar with your brand and have demonstrated interest, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases and generate value for your brand over time.
But even the most satisfied customers are feeling the effects of a difficult economic moment, with the rising rate of unemployment and the struggles of paying off credit card debt limiting their discretionary funds. According to eMarketer, consumers are being careful with their spending while looking for deals or trading down from the higher-end brands they’re used to buying.
If you want to reach this valuable existing audience, you need to be creative. That’s why our experts have put together tips and tricks you can use to reactivate your existing customer base and get them converting through the end of the year.
Everything old is new again: targeting existing customers during the holiday season
Thanks to the constant barrage of marketing messages during the holiday season, it can be a hard time to break through the noise with customers who aren’t familiar with your brand. Targeting and retaining your existing audience is a great way to get a better bang for your buck when it comes to holiday marketing.
Focusing on returning customers can lead to higher conversion rates and increased customer loyalty, and you can even upsell or cross-sell products, driving more revenue from your current customer base. It’s also often cheaper to reacquire existing customers rather than engage with new ones.
With returning customers, you already have a track record of their buying behavior and preferences that can help inform your strategy on how best to approach and appeal to them to get them to purchase again. Satisfied existing customers also create buzz through word of mouth and can influence friends or family to make a purchase.
To target this audience, start by taking a look at your lapsed customer list and reinvigorating it. Existing customers who haven’t bought in twelve or eighteen months are a high-value cohort waiting to be reactivated. Deploy ads speaking to this group and reactivate the customer file to bring those old customers back to the top of the active customer pile.
If you’re unsure of the best way to capture your customers’ attention, try testing out different messaging and creative early so you can apply those learnings throughout your holiday marketing campaign.
Source: Crocoblock
As you plan this year’s holiday campaigns, you should also be laying the groundwork for a strong relationship with your customers next year. In these major shopping moments, you have a chance to add long-term value to your customer file by collecting audience data.
If you want to take what you learn in 2024 and apply it to 2025, you need to prepare your campaigns to properly collect data in advance. To have a good look at conversion attribution, for example, you’ll need to implement UTMs correctly and set up a good site experience for your customers.
You should also be asking for as much first-party data as you can get during this pivotal time, whether that’s through interactive content like a holiday-themed quiz or offering a discount in exchange for email addresses. You can then use that data to build an ongoing conversation with those customers in the future.
By setting yourself up for success with your strategy ahead of time, you can focus on any last-minute optimizations or strategic shifts that come your way during this busy time of year, rather than scrambling to implement measurement or experiment with creative in the midst of the rush.
Communication is key: engage with customers directly via email
While the holiday season is known for inboxes as stuffed as stockings hanging on a mantle, email marketing is a great way to quickly become top of mind for a customer without being highly intrusive.
The most obvious benefit is that it’s a low-cost way to re-engage with an audience that has shown interest in your brand/product before (including lapsed customers who haven’t purchased in the last twelve or eighteen months). It can also be highly personalized–you can send tailored messaging to groups of your customer base to make your marketing as specific and interesting for them as possible, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Email can also be extremely efficient in targeting your existing customers, giving you advantages like:
- High ROI: Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, with a high return on investment (ROI).
- Automation: You can automate email campaigns to deliver timely and relevant messages, especially during the busy holiday season.
- Measurable Results: Email marketing provides detailed analytics, enabling you to track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to assess campaign effectiveness.
Source: Guy Harvey
You can also integrate your email campaigns with the rest of your holiday messaging. If you’re using paid media channels as a way to remarket, you can tailor your messaging by segment the same way you do with email if your customer list is large enough. That way your marketing messages will be consistent throughout the funnel.
Most of all, remember that you need to be careful when re-engaging with your audience, especially with email: there’s a fine line between being persistent and being a pest.
Deck the halls: leverage the power of holiday sales the right way
With a tough economic environment, consumers will be looking for deals in 2024: 59% of customers will switch products for a cheaper option, and nearly one in five consumers say they can’t afford to be loyal anymore, according to eMarketer. That means you’ll need to work harder than ever to retain your existing customers this holiday season.
That’s where promotions come into play. It’s no surprise that sales are a major part of the holiday shopping rush since a well-executed offer can help attract old and new customers alike. To win in a competitive market, you’ll need to plan your promotions strategically to appeal to your target audience and make the buying process as frictionless as possible.
Many brands get fancy with their holiday promos through tiered promo calendars or deals that go live on different days, but the best way to reach your customers with a sale is to keep it simple.
While these flashy deals might seem like a good way to get attention in a crowded field, overcomplicating your sales can do more harm than good. If you’re constantly changing up your discounts, you risk confusing your customers and leaving them feeling like they lost out on deals, rather than excited to make a purchase. Instead, lead with your best offer, promo, or discount, and keep it locked to give your customers the best and most consistent experience.
Simple doesn’t have to mean unsophisticated. If you’re looking to cater to different segments with different offers, you can do that without confusing your overall messaging. Try leveraging personalized content like customized gift guides based on customer data like past purchases or browsing history. This can help you retain your existing customers by showing them you know what they need, while the overall shopping experience is still convenient and uncomplicated.
Source: AE
To take your offers, promos, and gift guides to the next level, you can integrate them into interactive content like countdown timers, scratch cards, quizzes, and digital advent calendars. Interactive content keeps your customers engaged and creates an immersive experience that will stick with them well after they’ve checked the last gift off their holiday shopping lists.
No matter what tactics you try this year, it’s key to keep your existing customers in mind in your overall holiday strategy. It’s easy to get distracted by focusing on acquiring new audiences, but you should never lose sight of your valuable repeat customers–after all, they’ve helped you succeed the rest of the year. With the right planning, your brand can appeal to old and new customers alike, so your Q4 is merry and bright.
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