Every holiday season comes with annual traditions, from gift-giving to decorations to family meals.
But for marketers, the annual tradition has higher stakes: trying to identify new holiday shoppers and retain them over the long term.
The holiday shopping season is unique on the retail calendar. Thousands of shoppers will engage with your brand for the first time, either buying gifts for friends and family or enticed by seasonal discounts.
Each of those shoppers represents an opportunity. With the right engagement strategy, you can retain holiday shoppers and convert them into loyal customers who provide consistent revenue for years to come. The key? Picking up the customer data clues that reveal who to target, how often to engage them, and what messaging and offers will keep them coming back.
Here are four strategies for retaining new holiday shoppers in 2026 and beyond.
Filter out the one-and-done shoppers
No matter what you do, some holiday shoppers truly aren’t destined to become loyal, long-term customers. While you should never give up on a customer entirely, your first goal should be to separate the likely one-and-done buyers from those with more potential for long-term loyalty.
Here are three data-centric ways to segment your holiday shoppers based on long-term potential:
Are they buying for themselves?
A customer who is clearly buying a gift for someone else is less likely to continue shopping throughout the year. Gift buyers often behave differently than core-year customers, so identifying when a purchase is likely intended for someone else can help you calibrate expectations for long-term value. Signals such as category mismatch, browsing patterns, or gender-prediction insights can indicate a gifting scenario. While no single signal is definitive, together they help refine segmentation and guide more intentional follow-up.
Did they sign up for further engagement?
The easiest way to identify shoppers with long-term potential is to engage them in a loyalty or communications program. Customers who sign up for an SMS, email or loyalty program are raising their hand for future outreach. If some shoppers are on the fence about engaging, you can entice them with a one-time offer of loyalty points or a discount code to get them over the line.
In which category did they make a purchase?
Category choice can help predict long-term value. If you're a luxury clothing brand, shoppers who only engage with lower-price or non-core categories may indicate lower CLV potential.
These signals shouldn’t cause you to write off a customer forever. However, customers that show obvious signs of being one-off holiday shoppers should be filtered into a different path for engagement. Reach out to them next autumn and work to convert them for next year’s holiday season - a customer who makes an annual purchase is still more valuable than one who buys once and never returns.
Determine the right engagement cadence
Regardless of what they buy or what their data indicates, every new customer should be brought into some sort of first-time buyer journey. This shouldn’t be an immediate discount offer; instead, you should engage them with messaging about the brand’s identity and values. Customers who respond positively to that outreach - by signing up for a loyalty program or clicking through to your website - are demonstrating their openness to a more frequent cadence. Customers who don’t engage with your initial outreach may be better served with less frequent outreach tied to your seasonal sales strategy.
You can also tailor your engagement based on the category (or categories) in which the customer made a purchase. Provide value to the customer with information on how to care for their new product, or by suggesting complementary items in adjacent categories. Every touchpoint should provide you with a new signal on whether to continue engaging or to slow down your cadence.
Not sure how to determine the right cadence? Try experimenting with A/B frequency tests on specific customer segments. You may find that reducing the frequency of your outreach has no impact on revenue or even increases long-term revenue - that should be a signal that your brand can safely scale down the frequency of its communications.
Elevate the highest-value shoppers
While it’s important to filter out the shoppers who are less likely to return, it’s equally important to identify and elevate the customers with the highest potential CLV.
Look for shoppers who are engaging with your core categories - and, when possible, identify those who appear to be buying for themselves. While not predictive on its own, this signal can complement other behavioral indicators to help identify customers with higher long-term potential.
At a basic level, these shoppers are worth keeping in the fold with more aggressive loyalty and discount offers. If your customer data strategy is more mature, you can ensure these customers are identified for customer service priority as well. If a potential high-value shopper experiences a service issue, your colleagues will know they need to reach out proactively to resolve the issue and keep the customer satisfied.
Embrace real-time personalization
The good news for retailers? It’s easier than ever to deliver personalized messaging and convert holiday shoppers into long-term customers. Dynamic content powered by genAI marketing tools allows you to personalize your outreach in real-time based on customer data signals.
Real-time personalization (RTP) from Amperity accelerates each customer relationship, driving up retention of your new holiday shoppers. By shortening the amount of time between signal and reaction, retailers can demonstrate how well they know each customer and build the trust that leads to loyalty.
Want to learn more about how you can use RTP to engage and retain your new holiday customers? Download our solution brief or reach out to schedule a demo.