Life After December: Turn Holiday Leads Into Lifetime Customers

One-purchase wonders are great. Lifetime supporters are better.  

If you do holiday promoting right, brand awareness and activity boosts during the holiday season. On average, holiday content  ad impressions typically increase by 50% during the holiday season, click-through rates rise 100% and direct traffic increases by 150%. That means we are getting a boatload of new traffic, all just for these few months of spending.

How do you keep these new additions to your holiday leads list engaged past December? 

This is an age-old question that the world’s leading companies ask every holiday season. Fancy promotions and huge budget aside, gaining repeat customers comes down to three things:

• Segmenting your holiday leads to create a custom strategy.
• Giving them an incentive to continue communication with your business.
• Show them why you two should be in it for the long haul.

Click here to download the complete guide to timing your holiday campaigns.

Segment your holiday leads for specific campaigns and targeting 

The totality of your traffic come the holiday season is not necessarily “holiday traffic.” Understanding the difference between your typical year-round audience segment and your holiday audience segment is the first step in creating a personalized post-holiday strategy. Your segmenting strategy needs to be fluid throughout the season; the message for holiday early-birds will be very different from your message for the holiday stragglers. No matter what stage you are at in holiday shopping, there is an opportunity to create a lasting relationship.

Segmentation is a necessary pre-holiday campaign housekeeping duty. When setting up your holiday campaigns, make sure to send your holiday leads to a custom list on Hubspot, Mailchimp, or wherever your company houses leads. This simplifies the process to reach out in January with the info you may not want to offer your general audience.

In this opt-in by Nashville Pedal Tavern, a Nashville-based party bike, was to stimulate gift card sales for over the holidays, while also stating holiday hours. This opt-in offers valuable holiday-related business information while still offering a festive Call To Action. This campaign added 247 new leads to their holiday list to leverage after the holidays.

Segments to monitor for post-holiday campaigns:

• Individuals that opted into any holiday-related lead capture
• People that purchased a product through your holiday-specific campaigns
• Individuals that purchased products highlighted in your holiday promotions

Offer a discount on a second purchase 

Because you have this nice shiny new segmented audience, you can now offer custom discounts and offers! Discounts on a second purchase stimulate reengagement and incentivize customers to become repeat customers. Send a message of gratefulness to the new customer, and offer the discount as a gift of a new friendship.

Example: “Did we just become best friends?! To honor our new relationship, here is a 20% discount.”

Tip #1: Offer the discount with an expiration date for the near future to add a sense of urgency to the offer. Find out who your real friends are!

Tip #2: Track success and A/B test the discount. The variables to test are endless – CTA, the offer format, the copy… A/B test this season to have next season’s strategy in the bag. Forward-thinking for the win.

Include brand values, mission, and vision to connect past a gift purchase 

Your holiday customers now know you are good for a gift, but do they know you’re good for ? Use content that connects these new customers to your values and priorities as a brand.

Send them a link to who you are as a company to create an emotional connection past the holidays. This can be a blog that introduces your beliefs or an email that lists out your mission statement and vision statement. No matter what it is, put your heart on your sleeve for the new customer to see. A holiday campaign will stimulate one-time purchases, but an emotional connection to your cause will lead to continuous support.

Promote excitement for the New Year

Promote ‘looking to the next year’ updates and teasers. This is an all-inclusive effort that is relevant for all segments of your target market because after the holidays there is the inevitable ‘holiday hangover’ slump. Respect the slump, but then start pumping your audiences up for the new year! Plan accordingly to have new and exciting content to promote in January. New product launches are a great reason to celebrate in New Year because everyone is in the ‘new year new me’ mood. If you don’t have any new products or product features in the pipeline, shiny new online content or promotions are a great option as well.

Keeping track of and leveraging holiday leads can feel like herding cats. But when you plan, the goals become much more realistic. Looking for a little help with your holiday strategy? Reach out to our team!