Will Customer Data Make or Break Your Holiday Season?

It may seem early to think about the retail holiday season, but now is the perfect time to start planning for the busiest time of year. Despite concerns about rising interest rates and inflation, the National Retail Federation (NRF) reports that U.S. retail sales grew 5.3 percent during the 2022 holiday season. Many experts anticipate this growth trend will persist.

Given the significance of fourth-quarter sales, acting early will make your business stand out from competitors and help you have a successful holiday season. It will also give you more of a chance to test and learn what works as you build toward the holiday season. This is critical at a time when personalized experiences are king. Truly understanding your customers is the difference between ho-ho-ho and just ho-hum.

By finding and focusing on your most valuable audiences and learning the intricacies of their needs, desires and behaviors, you pave the way for creating bespoke experiences that resonate. This leads to an impressive return on investment and sets you up to build loyalty and boost retention through the holidays and beyond.

The treasure trove of first-party customer data at your disposal offers unparalleled potential for business growth. By using this information, you can craft a roster of new look-alike audiences that resemble your most valuable customers. It’s like having a crystal ball that reveals future loyalists, ensuring that your marketing dollars are allocated wisely.

Make sure to invest the time and resources to truly know your customers now and reap the rewards of effective campaigns that leave the competition in the dust.

Study Previous Campaigns

Many brands rely on the holiday season for the bulk of their annual sales, so preparing early and thoughtfully can make all the difference. This requires marketers to start analyzing their historical customer data well before “Elf” starts playing nonstop on TV and candy canes arrive in the grocery store.

Start by reviewing data from the 2022 season and asking questions like the following:

• Which channels performed well, and who interacted with them?
• How can we optimize our channel budget and allocation?
• What products sold well, and what sorts of people bought them? Were these repeat customers or new ones?
• Was it a smaller number of customers with high lifetime value or people who are likely to be one-time buyers?

To ensure future holiday campaigns are successful, collect comprehensive data from previous campaigns, study it and make any necessary adjustments.

Invest in the Right Tools

While retailers are likely using customer data from several sources, a purpose-built tool can help organize the information and make it usable.

A customer data platform (CDP) can serve as a retailer’s long-term memory for every customer, giving them a deeper understanding of trends on an individual level and across their customer base. The key is to choose a solution that tracks offline interactions with customers as well as digital ones, enabling businesses to take advantage of insights right away. It's important to select a CDP that starts with building a unified customer data foundation so retailers can have the most accurate customer profiles to power campaigns with no waste or duplication.

Know Your Customers

Audience testing is key to discovering customer preferences and shopping habits. This type of testing may include launching an experimental marketing campaign, such as a product promotion, loyalty program or new brand messaging, or implementing new channels.

Once you’ve done audience testing, you’ll really get to know your target audience and be able to figure out which sales and marketing tactics work best for them. But don’t stop there! Make sure you keep tracking results over time so you’re ready to create awesome customer experiences and campaigns to drive holiday sales.

The secret to winning the holiday season is right under your nose — it’s your customer data! Dive into previous campaigns, find out what worked, and learn from them. Get yourself some top-notch tools, like a customer data platform (CDP), to help organize that precious data and make it work for you.

The more you know about your customers, the better you can tailor their experiences. Therefore, get to know your customers like your business depends on it (because it does), and crush those holiday sales targets while leaving your competitors in the pixie dust. It’s not too early to say cheers to a prosperous holiday season!

Megan McDonagh is the chief marketing officer for Amperity, a leading customer data platform that empowers businesses to unlock the full potential of their customer data.