Successful Holiday Marketing Campaigns: Transforming this Season’s Data with the Help of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Last update: 20 February 2024 at 04:14 pm
5.00/5The holiday season is upon us once more.
Businesses worldwide are trying to capitalize on the influx of shoppers taking to stores and ecommerce platforms to purchase gifts for loved ones.
While the holiday shopping season is the busiest period for retail companies, it’s also the time when competition is the stiffest. Businesses always look for anything to give them a leg up over their competitors.
That’s why so many businesses of all sizes are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) systems to create a winning advantage in their marketing efforts this holiday season.
In this article, we’ll discuss how you can implement AI for successful holiday marketing campaigns and have your most profitable season yet.
How can AI help your holiday marketing?
Incorporating AI to create your best holiday marketing campaigns is a growing trend in the digital marketing landscape.
Businesses use AI to create more seamless, personalized, and efficient holiday ad campaigns.
Here are just a few ways AI platforms can do that:
Personalized Promo Codes
AI can analyze customer data and behavior to generate personalized promo codes. This can help businesses appeal to individual customers based on preferences and past purchases.
Dynamic Pricing
AI algorithms can adjust real-time pricing and promo code values based on demand, inventory levels, and other factors. This can help businesses optimize discounts and promo code offers.
Recommendation Engines
AI-driven recommendation engines can suggest products or services to customers along with applicable promo codes, encouraging more purchases. Since brands use promo codes during the holiday season to boost conversions, AI-driven recommendations can help shoppers (and businesses) make the most of these deals.
Businesses can also partner with online coupon sites to generate even more buzz around discount codes.
For instance, get inspired by Henry Meds. It offers several discounts with different codes on dedicated coupon sites to encourage more sales:
Source: Hot Deals
In the following section, we’ll show you some additional ways you can implement AI into your holiday campaigns. Follow these tips to own the holiday season and leave your competitors in the dust.
How to implement AI in holiday marketing campaigns
AI can be a massive game-changer for a business trying to win the holiday shopping season with successful marketing campaigns.
Implementing AI systems across your organization will create a far more efficient customer journey with personalized campaigns based on hard data.
Here are a few ways AI can become your difference-maker this holiday season.
Inventory management
AI’s predictive analysis capabilities can help guarantee you never over or under-prepare for the holiday season regarding inventory management.
Nothing can derail even the best holiday campaigns faster than an inventory shortage.
Conversely, ordering too much inventory that far exceeds demand can put a harsh financial strain on your business and eat into profits.
AI takes the guesswork out of inventory management.
Thanks to predictive analysis based on real user behavior data, AI systems can accurately predict which products will be big sellers for the holiday season. It’s then a simple matter to make automatic adjustments to your inventory as needed.
In other words, you no longer have to trust “gut feelings” or wild hunches.
AI uses real data gathered from real customers all over the world. It uses this data to accurately gauge interest in certain products and the overall need for them. By predicting these trends, you can better prepare for the holiday rush for successful marketing campaigns.
Audience targeting
Sometimes, the audience you set out to serve isn’t the audience you attract.
AI can help you figure out who your holiday shopping audience is.
That includes where they’re from and what they want from the companies they do business with.
Source: Search Engine Journal
You can also use AI to segment your audience based on demographic information, behaviors, and pain points. Then, you can launch multiple holiday marketing campaigns for each customer segment in your audience.
These segments might need different messaging or ads pushed out over different marketing channels. For example, a younger audience might feel drawn more to ads on Instagram or TikTok, while an older audience prefers Facebook or Google Ads.
AI can figure this out and segment your audience in the blink of an eye.
This task would take a human marketer hours or even days to accomplish. And even then, you run the risk of mistakes popping up due to human error.
TL;DR: AI guarantees accurate segmentation for a tremendous holiday season.
Behavior analysis
As businesses gear up for the holidays, leveraging AI in marketing strategies can boost sales and provide invaluable financial insights. Some of these core insights come from behavioral analysis.
Source: @ghalenandini, Medium
AI systems can examine shopper behaviors, detailing how they like to shop during holidays and their budgets.
AI can accurately score your leads by diving deep into the behaviors of those who purchase from you and those who never convert. This can help you focus more heavily on those with the highest likelihood of conversion.
High-value customers should always get priority. That means receiving targeted, personalized conversion-minded marketing materials.
Someone who hasn’t shown a substantial likelihood of immediate conversion should be further back in your sales funnel. The materials they should receive differ significantly from hot leads, such as guides and helpful content.
You can also use AI-driven analytics to identify customersinterested in consolidating holiday expenses. By doing so, you can offer targeted promotions or information on credit card consolidation services, adding value to the customer experience.
If you offer products in addition to consolidation services, you can also use AI to pinpoint the best budget-friendly products according to your audience’s needs.
Predictive modeling for Successful Holiday Marketing Campaigns
While it’s true that the future is always in motion, AI can predict emerging trends.
This includes industry shifts and user behavior over time.
Like a poker player with a “tell” or a boxer telegraphing punches, customers show you what’s coming next through shifting behaviors over time.
AI platforms can examine these behaviors and use them to create predictive models. By understanding how behaviors change, these systems can accurately determine the direction of the industry and how the audience’s wants and needs can shift.
For instance, examining holiday shopping trends year-to-year with AI systems can help you prepare holiday marketing ideas for the present and future.
Create content
In holiday marketing, content is paramount.
And crafting holiday-themed content is a cornerstone of any successful seasonal campaign.
Holiday-themed content might include festive blog posts, heartwarming videos, seasonal landing pages, and captivating social media posts.
This content creates a sense of connection and engagement with your audience and capitalizes on the holiday spirit, drawing customers into your brand’s warm embrace.
However, the real magic lies in ensuring this content surfaces when potential customers search for it.
This is where AI-powered tools like SurferSEO shine. With the power of AI, SurferSEO can give you the insights you need to optimize your holiday blog content.By following its keyword recommendations, you can produce content that encourages higher rankings in search engine results, drives organic traffic, and boosts campaign visibility.
Image provided by Ioana
Artificial intelligence can also help you write successful holiday marketing content. For instance, you can use an AI text generator as a writing assistant to craft compelling copy for your holiday marketing campaigns to make them successful.
AI systems like Simplified AI and ChatGPT have become highly proficient at generating marketing copy. Tell the system what you want, and it’ll generate content within seconds. Just make sure to give it proper copywriting prompts to produce text in line with your tone and style.
Then, sift through what it creates and use it as a launching point. Make edits as needed and create the perfect content for your audience.
*Pro-Tip: Keep a list of tried-and-true AI engineering prompts in a central copywriting support folder your writing team can use. This can help your team save time teaching AI writing assistants what to do and how to write.
Customer support chatbots
The holidays can be a trying time for customer support departments.
It’s a time when customers call in more frequently — and with more problems.
This can add strain to (and burden) your support team. It also creates longer-than-average wait times, which puts an emotional strain on your customers and can lead to dissatisfaction and abandonment.
Thankfully, this is another area where AI can make a significant difference.
Some AI technologies offer chatbots that can serve as customer support agents — 24/7. These bots can field simple requests and answer questions that might clog up your phone lines.
It ultimately frees your support staff to handle more complex issues requiring human intervention.
Source: Drift
AI chatbots can also become more intelligent over time.
The system reviews customer interactions and uses that data to converse with them more effectively. This might include using the proper terminology and de-escalating situations before they become disasters.
To sum up, using an AI chatbot for holiday customer support can help your business:
- Improve support staff’s job satisfaction.
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Create a 24/7 customer support solution
- Lower hold times
- Answer frequently asked questions (and store them for future marketing use)
- And more
Fraud detection
Fraud is a major issue plaguing companies around the holidays.
Thankfully, AI systems can help give you an extra security boost by identifying fraud attempts and stopping them before they cost you ample (in terms of money and reputation).
Cybercriminals are constantly upgrading their attacks, finding new weaknesses to exploit — especially during the holidays when online buying activity is at an all-time high.
That’s why updating AI systems regularly is crucial to remaining on the cutting edge of fraud detection. This can help stop malicious actors in their tracks.
Specific AI systems can run a fraud detection algorithm to identify dangerous situations and transactions. They work around the clock to keep your customers safe.
Additionally, AI can examine your current security setup and probe it for weakness, using the same modern avenues of attack that cybercriminals utilize. Genius.
Create personalized offers
One of the AI advantages in successful holiday marketing campaigns is the ability to personalize the user experience and offer relevant recommendations.
Personalized marketing is something that customers demand in the modern retail world.
AI systems can generate personalized offers for holiday shoppers with recommendations based on their purchase history or past behaviors.
Source: Voucherify
For example, someone has already purchased a remote control train set and a remote control car. In this case, the system might recommend remote-control airplanes and helicopters to the shopper.
The AI identifies the customer’s interest and alters the entire shopping experience around this information. You can even generate personalized holiday gift guides for each shopper.
However, this requires access to user data from various sources, such as social media platforms, email providers, or online shopping sites.
Marketers can use OAuth, an open-standard authorization protocol, to obtain this data securely and efficiently. It allows users to grant limited access to their data without exposing their credentials. OAuth enables users to log in with one platform, use tokens to access data and perform actions in other applications.
For example, users can log in with Facebook and allow a marketing application to access their profile, friends list, or likes. This way, the marketing application can use the data to create customized offers and suggestions based on preferences and interests. OAuth is a powerful tool that can help marketers transform data into a season of success.
Another way to grab data to provide tailored shopping recommendations is using an AI-guided selling marketing strategy.
This marketing strategy typically involves using interactive quizzes, polls, and filtering systems you can add to your website to uncover contextual insights. For instance, the AI can learn which stand mixer color or the perfect gift bundle to suggest to a shopper.
TL;DR: With the power of AI, you can share better holiday deals and use enhanced personalization in your marketing strategies this holiday season.
Wrap up
Christmas can be a magical time for families to create memories and spread holiday cheer.
It can also be a magical time for businesses, creating a foundation of success to build on in the new year. Whether you’re running a holiday marketing campaign for a large enterprise or a small business, this is true.
By trusting in the power of AI during the festive season, you can encourage enhanced customer satisfaction, efficiency, and more holiday sales.
To review, AI can help you streamline core processes and create effective holiday marketing campaigns by:
- Managing your inventory
- Targeting your audience
- Analyzing buyer behavior
- Running predictive analysis
- Creating holiday content for customer engagement
- Running customer support chatbots
- Detecting instances of fraud
- Suggesting personalized offers for loyal customers
Follow the actionable advice from above and enjoy your most profitable holiday shopping season.
Happy holidays!
