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Planning A Holiday Loyalty Campaign: Part 3
Strategy

Planning A Holiday Loyalty Campaign: Part 3

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Planning a holiday loyalty campaign may seem stressful. But if you have the right guide, planning and executing your campaign will be as easy as counting to three! If you’re in the early stages of planning your holiday campaign or simply need a quick nudge in the right direction, we highly recommend you check out our previous articles, How To Plan A Holiday Loyalty Campaign Part 1, and Planning a Loyalty Campaign Part 2. If you’re already caught up to speed, let’s dive in!

LAUNCHING YOUR HOLIDAY SALE & MAINTAINING INTEREST THROUGHOUT

As we stated in our previous article, How To Plan A Loyalty Campaign, your holiday season is comprised of five individual holidays, namely, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year's. After all of your marketing work up until the launch, you'll want to approach each of these holidays with their own holiday-specific campaigns. Within your loyalty program dashboard, be sure to craft different, holiday themed graphics and tailor each promotion uniquely.

Engage your loyal customers with these specifically tailored holiday campaigns and offer even more buying incentives, such as contests and raffle drawings for big-ticket items or services that are unique to the holiday. For example, if you're a pet retailer, you could create a gamified points-earning incentive geared towards giving away an adorable pet Santa outfit that your customers might like to redeem for their dog. Or if you own a bakery, you could devise a contest around giving away a Happy New Year's cupcake. Make sure that the prize is exclusive to both your loyal customers and also the holiday, meaning that your shoppers won't be able to buy it at your store.

If you maintain consistent social media posting throughout your holiday season and keep contacting your loyal customers throughout your sale with new holiday-specific items and incentives, then you will keep engagement high and your sales strong.

RETAIN NEWLY ACQUIRED CUSTOMERS AFTER SALE ENDS

Even though your promotional efforts kept the emphasis on your loyalty rewards program customers, if you had adequate signage in your retail store regarding sales that were exclusive to members, then chances are that you signed up quite a few new members throughout the holiday season.

If you recall the statistic we shared earlier in this article, you'll remember that it's harder to retain a newly acquired customer than it is to keep a longstanding one, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

You can greatly secure your chances of increasing the lifetime value of your newly acquired customers if you maintain consistent contact with them via your loyalty rewards program and keep the incentives going for at least one solid month after the New Year.

A clever trick to increase the lifetime value of the customers you acquired during your holiday promotional sale is to offer special loyalty incentives, such as double or triple points promotions that will be available for redemption at your retail store's next holiday sale.

It's also an extremely good idea to reconnect with customers who shopped during the sales period, but didn't actually join your store's loyalty rewards program. Contact these shoppers to make them aware of your loyalty program and explain the easy and fun process of earning and redeeming points if they become members. Taking the time now to implement marketing efforts that are directed at non-members is a great way to combat the post-holiday sales slump. You can even offer your loyal customers a special promotion that's unique to the off-season.

If you're still with us, you've come a long way! But just because the holiday season has come and gone, doesn't mean that you have to wait until next year to implement the strategies you've learned. Using a countdown-to-launch calendar as a lead-in to every holiday year-round is a great way to keep enthusiasm high among your loyal customers no matter what time of year it is. If you do, you can structure a shorter countdown window, however, one that can be executed within a single month. Following mini-launch calendars for lesser celebrated holidays like Valentines Day, 4th of July, and even Columbus Day can help to generate buzz and sales, and help you get the most out of your customer loyalty rewards program.

Need specific holiday marketing ideas for your customer loyalty rewards program? Here are 12 more creative ways to make your loyalty campaign a success during the holidays!

  • Create another landing page on your website dedicated solely to your holiday promotion and allocate points to your loyal customers who visit & share the content to their social media accounts.
  • Run a special incentive campaign that rewards loyal customers with points when they post on social media using a specific hashtag, such as #HappyHolidayswithBrand or #TisTheBrandSeason
  • On the checkout webpage of your e-commerce site, add a "join loyalty program" button and highlight the fact that loyal members receive points that can be applied immediately towards their checkout cart.
  • Reward loyal customers with points when they share their holiday wish list that's compiled on your e-commerce site. If you don't have a holiday wish list system on your site, build one now. If you're a retailer that doesn't have an e-commerce site, create a holiday wish list hashtag on social media that your loyal customers can use.
  • Using the data that your loyalty program has compiled, identify, segment, and email your loyal customers by groups, such as average order value, location, or preferred products to alert them to specific points-earning opportunities that they will likely act on.
  • Segment your loyal customers even further by points-standing and show them benchmarks including how many more points they need to earn in order to be eligible for special holiday items and services.
  • Send points statements to your loyal customers in the form of emails or concise SMS texts to encourage them back into your retail store.
  • Use your program data to identify your most loyal customers, i.e. the biggest spenders, and then throw them a holiday party, inviting them to your store where they can apply points towards big ticket items. You can even hold a raffle drawing and give away one special item as a thank you.
  • Give your loyal customers early and exclusive access to your holiday discounted items so that they have first pick among all shoppers.
  • After the holidays, you can push sales by reminding loyal customers of the points they've accrued over the holiday season and suggest items they can apply their earned points towards in the New Year.
  • Use your holiday season data and analyze which shoppers responded to your promotional strategies and how your loyal customers interacted with the points-earning incentives you implemented. With this information, you can recreate campaigns during your off-season on for your next holiday sale.
  • Send out a post-holiday thank you email to all of your loyal customers that includes social media images they posted with your promotional hashtags. This will strengthen your relationship with them and help to solidify your brand in their hearts.

Loyal~n~Save is a fully-customizable customer loyalty rewards program that comes chalk-full of gamification, personalization, exclusivity, and strong branding methods to assist your marketing efforts and help take your business to the next level. Our loyalty strategists are available to discuss your retail marketing needs and how a customer rewards program specifically tailored to your store can grow your business, so contact us today.

This article was written by Loyal-n-Save, an omni-channel customer loyalty solution for retailers looking to increase customer retention and new customer acquisition.
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Douglas Nolan
Written by Douglas Nolan

He believes in solving real problems with realistic technological solutions that stand the test of time. Seeing his clients struggle to retain consumers, Douglas decided to help his clients by offering affordable and top-class loyalty solutions. Doug loves transforming the lives of his employees by assisting them to develop a solid blend of TQ (Technology Quotient) & SQ (Spiritual Quotient) to excel in their professional & personal lives.

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