Unlocking holiday success: Customer engagement must-haves for peak season

There are planners, and there are planners—retailers who, by trade and training, are already thinking about the holiday season.

Between the trends uncovered in our 2025 Retail Customer Engagement Review, the buzz at Shoptalk 2025, and the global, macroeconomic headwinds impacting retailers, there’s a lot to unpack. As the holiday planning season approaches, retail marketers must strategically prepare their customer engagement efforts to maximize sales and enhance experiences for customers who keep raising the bar. With our ears to the ground and our fingers on the pulse, here’s what to keep top of mind heading into the holidays.

Embrace omnichannel engagement for customer-centric retailing

Why it matters: Customers expect a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, whether online, in-store, or through mobile apps. That also means a seamless marketing and messaging experience across channels like email, SMS, and in-app messaging to support them on their shopping journey.

According to our 2025 Retail Customer Engagement Review, retailers who sent messages using one channel saw a 2.2X increase in 90-day retention compared to those who sent no messages at all. Retailers who sent messages over two channels vs. one saw a 78% increase in 90-day retention. In peak season, time is of the essence when connecting with customers, while still building the foundation for a longer-term relationship.

Actionable strategy:

• Plan to engage customers across multiple channels, and do so for more than just promotional offers. For example, share useful customer-centric tips on setting up wishlists that are shareable, where your customers can engage with you. Develop a cohesive omnichannel strategy that integrates your marketing efforts, ideally from within a single platform for maximum visibility and efficiency.
• Use tools that allow for consistent messaging and branding, ensuring the look, feel, tone, and voice of the messages are consistent across channels. Your customers see your brand across multiple channels and expect it to feel cohesive.
• Use those tools to understand how and when customers are engaging with your brand, being mindful of their preferred channels based on their levels of engagement. Then use those preferences to further engage with them throughout the holiday season.

Prioritize next-level personalization

Why it matters: Personalization enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty, making it a key driver of engagement.

Shopping experiences across channels and devices have gotten more interesting, more personalized, and more complicated without the right personalization and channel strategy to support those seamless shopper journeys. We’ve gone past the novelty of addressing a customer by their first name in an email. Using data to personalize shopping experiences is the foundation of the new-and-improved Braze x Shopify integration, which includes triggered messages and dynamic content.

Regardless of the platform, using customer data to surface relevant products and send messages with confidence is critical when it matters most—when stress levels are high, messages from brands are plentiful, and patience is lower for brands misreading a shopper’s signals.

Actionable strategy:

• Leverage customer data to create tailored experiences, such as personalized product recommendations and targeted promotions.
• Use segmentation to identify customer preferences and behaviors, allowing for more relevant messaging—a new customer coming in from an Instagram ad can and should be on a different journey than someone who has been subscribed, engaged, and purchasing for years. Your customers are unique and want to be treated as such.

Leverage real-time engagement

Why it matters: Real-time engagement helps capture customer attention and drive immediate action, especially during the busy holiday season. Retailers deserve some kudos for segmenting customers based on past behavior and engagement—41% of retail brands said they do this, which was 9 points above average in our retail survey. But only 27% sort on a real-time basis as new inputs are collected. Again, in the busy holiday season, spending maximums, shopping carts, and attention spans change quickly, especially if the products or content aren’t resonating with your customers.

Actionable Strategy:

• Implement real-time messaging strategies, such as push notifications and in-app alerts with countdown timers, to inform customers about flash sales and limited-time offers. Drive a sense of urgency in the critical holiday season by letting customers know when they’re running out of time to purchase, for example, when your shipping cutoff is coming up.
• Use analytics to monitor customer behavior and adjust your messaging accordingly—brands that demonstrate active listening can have the edge on competition.

Enhance loyalty programs

Why it matters: Effective loyalty programs can encourage repeat purchases and foster long-term relationships with customers. As we overheard at Shoptalk 2025, loyalty is about more than a product, it’s a consumer behavior. We know how important customer lifetime value (LTV) is for retailers, based on our 2025 survey, and loyalty is the first step in earning that level of commitment from customers.

Actionable Strategy:

• Revamp your loyalty program to offer exclusive rewards, early access to sales, or bonus points for holiday purchases. Get inspired with our new guide, Melting Points: Locking in Loyalty, on building lasting connections beyond the transactional and points-driven world of the everyday loyalty program.
• Promote your loyalty program prominently in your marketing communications to drive sign-ups and engagement, learning from some of the best: Canadian Tire Corporation increased their personalization velocity, resulting in higher engagement rates with their loyalty program, Triangle Rewards. Quickly adjusting and deploying targeted campaigns proved a game-changer, according to Martin Kriz, Associate Vice President of Digital Marketing Technology and Innovation at Canadian Tire.

Invest in AI-driven tools

Why it matters: AI can be a time-saver and a solution when time and resources are scarce. It can be deployed across plenty of marketing activities, but it should be deployed thoughtfully alongside the other tools in the tech stack. AI is critical to drive efficiency across channels and account for consumer preferences at scale this holiday season.

Actionable strategy:

• Explore AI-driven tools that can help automate customer interactions and provide insights into consumer behavior. Retailers in our 2025 survey were particularly concerned that their messages weren’t landing in the wild—here, AI can be a solution to analyze customer sentiment or test their strategies before going to market with a big campaign.
• Leverage AI in reporting to help learn faster and make your strategy more nimble, which can help provide customers with more personal and segment-specific content.

Conclusion

As the holiday season approaches, retailers must prioritize customer engagement to drive sales and create memorable shopping experiences. By embracing omnichannel engagement, prioritizing personalization, leveraging real-time data, enhancing loyalty programs, and investing in AI-driven tools, brands can position themselves for success in both the short term and the long term. Now is the time to prioritize these initiatives, ensure you have the right tools in place to execute, and test and learn ahead of the holiday season.