Holiday Marketing Strategy: How to Plan, Set Goals & Measure Success

The holiday season can be one of the most important marketing periods of the year. But successful holiday marketing doesn’t start with a Black Friday email, a seasonal social post or a last-minute promotion.

It starts with understanding what you want to accomplish, who you’re trying to reach and how you’ll measure whether your efforts are working.

And the timeline has changed. Holiday shopping increasingly starts well before Black Friday, giving marketers more opportunity to build awareness, engage existing customers and test their approach before the busiest weeks arrive.

That doesn’t mean every brand needs to launch its holiday promotion in July. It does mean that holiday marketing is no longer a single moment on the calendar.

A strong holiday marketing strategy connects the work you do before, during and after the holiday rush. Here’s how to approach it.

What is a Holiday Marketing Strategy?

A holiday marketing strategy is your roadmap for the season ahead, plan for how your business will use marketing channels, customer data, content, promotions and other resources to achieve specific goals. And much like Scrooge’s journey through Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, the strongest holiday strategies take a look at where you’ve been, where you are and where you want to go.

Depending on your business, those goals might include:

Increasing holiday sales or revenue
Acquiring new customers
Increasing average order value
Growing your email or SMS audience
Re-engaging existing customers
Increasing brand awareness
Driving traffic to a website or physical location
Increasing donations or event registrations
Building relationships that continue beyond the holiday season

The important part is to decide what success looks like before the holiday season gets busy. Looking back at what worked, paying attention to what’s happening now and planning for what comes next can help you set more realistic goals and make better decisions along the way.

After all, the holidays may come and go, but the relationships you build with customers can have an impact long after the decorations come down.

Holiday Marketing Strategies: Begin by Changing Your Ways

Like Marley arriving with a warning for Scrooge, consider this your reminder not to approach the holiday season simply because it’s the way you’ve always done it. The holidays are too important to add a few festive touches to your existing campaigns, increase your ad spend and hope something sticks. Before you decide what to send, post, promote or advertise, take a step back and decide what you actually want your holiday marketing to accomplish.

That’s where a properly considered objective comes in.

A campaign designed to increase revenue will look different from one focused on acquiring new customers, growing your email list, or strengthening relationships with existing customers. Start with the larger business objective, then determine which marketing goals can help you get there.

Make Your Goals Specific and Measurable

Looking back at last year’s holiday performance can give you a useful starting point, but your goals shouldn’t simply be a repeat of what happened before. The more specific your objectives are, the easier it becomes to understand whether your strategy is working and make adjustments while there’s still time to do so.

For example, instead of: Increase holiday sales.

Try: Increase holiday-season revenue by 15% compared with last year while maintaining our target customer acquisition cost.

Or: Acquire 2,000 new email subscribers by December 15 and generate at least 20% of holiday revenue from those subscribers within six months.

You don’t need to measure everything. Choose the metrics that will help you understand whether you’re moving toward your goals and give your team enough information to change course when needed.

Look at Last Year’s Holiday Marketing Performance

If your business has history, you’ve got a valuable resource to look back on. This information is essential because it will inform you how your previous campaigns performed, what a reasonable conversion rate looks like, and how much money you might need to spend if you want to base your objectives on your previous year’s success.  

Before deciding what to do differently, take some time to understand what happened.

Look at:

Which campaigns generated the most revenue or leads
Which channels performed best
Which products or services generated the most interest
When customers started engaging
Which offers performed well
Which audiences converted
Where customers dropped out of the journey
Which campaigns generated repeat business
What didn’t perform as expected

But don’t simply compare this year’s goals with last year’s numbers.

The market changes. Your audience changes. Your products, pricing, and competitive landscape change. And consumer behavior continues to evolve. Your historical data gives you a benchmark. It shouldn’t become a constraint.

Make Sure Your Data Tells the Same Story

Holiday performance can look very different depending on where you’re looking.

Your analytics platform might attribute a conversion to paid search. Your CRM might show that the same customer had received several emails beforehand. Your customer might tell you they first discovered your brand through social media.

That’s why it’s important to establish how your organization will measure and attribute marketing performance before the holiday season begins.

You don’t necessarily need a perfect attribution model. You do need a consistent way of evaluating performance.

Make sure the teams responsible for paid media, email, CRM, social, ecommerce, and analytics understand which metrics they’re responsible for and how those metrics fit into the larger business goal.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: Understand Your Holiday Audience

Your holiday audience may not behave exactly like your audience at other times of the year.

People may be shopping for someone else. They may have different budgets. They may be looking for products they wouldn’t normally purchase. And they may be more motivated by convenience, shipping deadlines, giftability, or promotions than they are during the rest of the year.

Take the time to understand those differences.

Consider Segmenting Your Audience

Instead of treating every holiday shopper the same, consider the information you already have about your customers.

Depending on your business, useful segments might include:

New customers
Repeat customers
High-value customers
Customers who purchased during last year’s holiday season
Customers who haven’t purchased recently
Customers interested in a particular product category
Customers who have browsed but haven’t purchased
Gift buyers
Loyalty members
Geographic or location-based audiences

First-party customer data becomes particularly valuable during the holiday season because it allows you to make your communications more relevant without relying entirely on broad audience targeting.

Current holiday marketing guidance increasingly emphasizes segmentation, personalization, and retention rather than simply increasing the number of promotional messages.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Plan for an Earlier Holiday Shopping Season

One of the biggest changes marketers need to account for is timing. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are still important, but they aren’t necessarily the beginning of holiday shopping.

Many consumers are researching and purchasing well before those events. That means your holiday marketing calendar should include more than the peak promotional period.

A useful framework is to divide your holiday strategy into four phases.

1. Build Awareness

Focus on reaching potential customers, before peak shopping begins, growing your audience, and helping people discover your brand. Depending on your business, this could include:

Paid search and social campaigns
Organic social content
SEO content
Video
Influencer or creator partnerships
Lead-generation campaigns
Email and SMS list growth
Retargeting audiences

The goal isn’t necessarily to make an immediate sale. You’re building the audience and awareness that your later campaigns can convert.

2. Build Consideration

As shoppers begin researching and comparing, help them understand what you offer and why it might be right for them. Consider:

Gift guides
Product comparisons
Reviews and testimonials
Educational content
Product demonstrations
FAQs
Personalized recommendations
Early-access offers
Loyalty communications

This is also where your website and other owned channels become important. If someone discovers your brand through an ad, social post or search result, you need somewhere useful to send them.

3. Convert During Peak Periods

Once shoppers are ready to purchase, your marketing should make the decision as straightforward as possible. That might mean:

Clear offers
Personalized promotions
Product recommendations
Retargeting
Abandoned-cart messaging
Email and SMS campaigns
Paid search
Social advertising
Simplified checkout
Clear shipping information

Not every business needs to compete by offering the deepest discount. Value can take many forms, including bundles, free shipping, loyalty benefits, early access, gifts with purchase or convenience.

The right approach depends on your margins, audience, and business model.

3. Retain and Re-engage

The holiday season doesn’t end when the order is delivered. A new customer acquired in November or December can become a valuable long-term customer if you give them a reason to return.

Think about:

Post-purchase email
Product education
Cross-sell and upsell opportunities
Loyalty programs
Review requests
Referral programs
Personalized recommendations
New-year offers
Re-engagement campaigns

The goal is to turn a seasonal transaction into an ongoing customer relationship.

Don’t Overlook AI-Assisted Shopping

Holiday shopping is increasingly happening across more than traditional search engines and retail websites. Consumers are using AI tools to research products, compare options, find gift ideas, and narrow their choices.

For marketers, this creates another reason to focus on clear, useful, and trustworthy content. Make sure your website can answer the questions shoppers are likely to have:

What is this product or service?
Who is it best for?
How does it compare with alternatives?
What does it cost?
What are the important features or limitations?
When will it arrive?
What is your return policy?
What do existing customers think?

This isn’t about creating content specifically for AI. It’s about creating useful information that works for people and is clear enough for search engines and AI-powered discovery tools to understand.

The Takeaway

If there’s one lesson to take from Scrooge’s journey, it’s that there’s always an opportunity to change course, but it’s better not to wait for three ghosts to show up before you do.

Think of it as your own version of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come: learn from what happened, make the most of what’s happening now and use those lessons to build what’s next.

At emfluence, we help businesses connect the strategy, technology, data and marketing channels that make those relationships possible. If you’re looking for help building a holiday marketing strategy, or making sure your existing plan is ready for the season, we’d be happy to talk at expert@emfluence.com.  

Holiday Marketing Goals: A Practical Checklist

Before launching your holiday marketing campaigns, make sure you can answer these questions:

Goals

What does success look like?
Which business objectives are our marketing goals supporting?
Which KPIs will tell us whether we’re on track?

Audience

Who are we trying to reach?
Which customer segments matter most?
What do we know about their holiday behavior?

Offer

What are we promoting?
Does the offer make sense for our customers and our margins?
Do we have enough inventory or capacity to support it?

Timing

When do our customers start researching?
When do they typically purchase?
What deadlines do we need to work backward from?

Channels

Which channels will reach our audience?
What role does each channel play?
Are our messaging and offers coordinated?

Measurement

Are our analytics and conversion tracking ready?
Can we connect campaign performance to business outcomes?
How will we evaluate new versus returning customers?

Retention

What happens after the holiday purchase?
How will we turn seasonal shoppers into long-term customers?

If you can answer these questions before the holiday rush begins, you’ll be in a much better position to make thoughtful decisions when the season gets busy.