Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages during the holiday season, especially through email, a veritable constellation of offers.

Inboxes typically start to get flooded during the BFCM weekend, but with the holiday season extended and some shoppers crossing off their lists as early as October, consumers will become overwhelmed by brand messages earlier than ever. 

Future Commerce’s latest New Modes Report found that 55% of consumers will even unsubscribe from brands they like if they are too heavy-handed, so brands need to be thoughtful and intentional with their approach. 

During their K:BOS user event, experts from Klaviyo brought in key clients and partners to share their holiday marketing success stories and offer tactical advice as they head into another Q4.

Diversify Your Email Strategy

Emily Shea, Principal Customer Education Specialist at Klaviyo, and Jemma Sears, Digital Marketing Manager for Kulani Kinis, shared insights on how brands can design deals and offers that stand out and resonate with consumers based on their needs and behaviors. 

Of course, there is the general blanket offer, such as 30% off sitewide, which is typically available during critical holiday milestones like BFCM. However, Shea and Sears shared a few alternative ideas that can help brands diversify their approach based on their goals and target audiences: 

• Daily deals, which can be available to all visitors or a specific audience within the brand’s database, and feature timely deals for key products.
  
  
• Mystery discounts that encourage consumers to submit a unique promo code to reveal a special discount rate on their final cart.
  
  
• New product drops that are first promoted and available only to VIP or highly loyal customers.
  
  
• Donation incentive emails that promise a donation of a specific dollar amount or percentage of a transaction to a specific charitable organization.
  
  
• Product bundles that offer discounts when consumers buy all products together.
  
  
• Curated shopping lists and recommendations that make shopping a bit easier based on a specific trend, person, or style.
  

Kulani Kinis employed a combination of approaches to test various incentives and messages with their target audiences. In addition to a 20% site-wide discount, the brand introduced an extra tier of 30% off a select set of products for 24 hours a day during the sale. This essentially was a rotating discount that launched every day, and then they added a “draw four” digital game to determine whether a gamified experience, combined with discounts, would drive more revenue. 

“The previous BFCM, we did just a 20% discount, and we analyzed the daily trend of sales,” Sears said. “The launch was great, exploded with a bang, and then there were peaks and troughs throughout that sales period. We added on that 30% discount to try and mitigate the troughs and maintain a steady momentum throughout this sale period.” 

Kulani Kinis adopted an omnichannel approach to orchestrating these campaigns across email, social, SMS, and other channels to educate consumers early, remain top of mind during BFCM, and further nurture relationships after the peak holiday shopping period. First, they promoted the sale to VIP customers 48 hours ahead of its launch and then, 24 hours ahead, ran a special competition where consumers could win their entire wish lists. The brand experienced 20% growth over the period, with website sessions doubling and the overall conversion rate resting at 2.35%. 

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Drive Acquisition and Data Capture with On-Site Forms

While 47% of BFCM sales come from existing customers, the holiday season is prime time to build your audience and capture first-party data. Forms are an effective way to achieve this, but brands should ensure that the messaging, visuals, and execution of these forms minimize friction and maximize completion rates. 

“For all of your forms, you want to make sure that you are looking at the submitted rate,” explained Chanel Phelps, Senior Customer Education Specialist at Klaviyo. “And for any of your pop-up forms, you want to make sure you compare your numbers to a benchmark.” 

If forms are underperforming, there is a clear opportunity to tweak or refine your offer, messaging, or timing. In cases where results exceed benchmarks, those are the approaches you should double down on. 

Phelps and Brina Skof, Head of Marketing Automation at Loop Earplugs, shared some key tactics to test: 

• Multi-step forms that guide users through the information collection process. Skof noted that adding a discount incentive within the multi-step process encouraged consumers to continue along the journey and ultimately boosted both the sign-up rate and conversion rate.
  
  
• Form teasers that allow consumers to revisit and expand forms to complete at their leisure.
  
  
• Exit intent forms that are triggered when consumers attempt to leave a site, and typically include last-chance offers and incentives. 

• SMS-only forms that are delivered to email subscribers so you can expand your customer records and have a more intimate channel to reach highly engaged consumers. Loop Earplugs currently uses SMS as well as RCS to connect with shoppers through basic text messaging and rich messaging via WhatsApp.

Skof added that she has used AI form optimization, which suggests different form variations and essentially optimizes the experience for her consumers. 

Phelps recommended publishing at least three types of forms to continuously test and optimize their effectiveness. As brands run special deals and sales through the holiday season, they can also use banner forms that include these timely messages and drive urgency.

Grow Your High-Value Customer Base Using Lookalike Audiences 

Brands can use lookalike audiences to identify shoppers who share similar traits with existing customers but are new to the brand. TikTok, Meta, and Google can all help brands not only acquire customers, but also acquire the right customers who share similar interests, preferences, and behaviors with their most valuable customers. This makes the money spent on acquisition have better long-term ROI. 

“Instead of spending your ad dollars just doing a broad ad for everyone, you can get really specific with creating a lookalike audience and really target a specific audience,” Phelps explained. “And the thing that's really important here is that sometimes we often see brands stretch themselves too thin. You want to prioritize the right channels for your brand, especially for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You do not have to be on every channel.”

Put your money towards the right channels by examining last year’s return on ad spend (ROAS). Use this framework to prioritize where to spend your time and money, then build lookalike audiences within these channels. Through mindful testing, Loop Earplugs discovered that Google CPC performed best for the brand, yielding conversion rates exceeding 50%. Although the brand tested TikTok, Skof found it delivered a subpar ROAS and was best used as an experimental channel. 

Some tactical tips for developing lookalike ad campaigns include: 

• Create lookalikes based on VIPs and recent purchasers. This will help you ensure you’re engaging lookalike audiences that will yield the most revenue potential for your brand.
  
  
• Include a strong lead magnet. An ad’s call-to-action can profoundly influence whether a campaign is a success or failure. Phelps refers to this as the “lead magnet,” or the offer that attracts prospective customers and draws them into your branded eCommerce experience.
  
  While discounts, BOGO deals, and free gifts are obvious, brands can also offer more creative options, such as consultations, quizzes, and personalized routine-building solutions, which can help consumers discover key products and collections.
  
  
• Build a lead ad welcome flow. Design a series that nurtures new contacts after they engage with an ad and fill out their information. 

Harness the Power of UGC Across All Channels

Social media has completely rewired how our brains consume and recall information. Rather than gravitating towards overly polished creative, 75% of consumers say they prefer to see customer photos and videos. It’s easy to understand why: user-generated content (UGC) feels more authentic, real, and contextual to how products will play a role in their lives once they click “purchase.” 

Brands can collect a rich trove of content by running UGC campaigns that offer unique benefits and incentives in exchange for consumers sharing ratings, reviews, and even photos and videos of themselves using the products. By promoting the campaign and a unique hashtag across email, social media, text, and the website, brands can create a content engine that fuels campaigns for months or even years to come. 

Content can be reused and reimagined across organic and paid channels, ultimately helping to minimize the creative squeeze that many teams feel, especially during the holiday season. But most importantly, UGC can enrich product detail pages and have a profound impact on revenue. In fact, products with five reviews have a 270% greater purchase likelihood than products with no reviews.