3 Ways Marketers Can Plan Now to Leverage AI for Holiday Season Campaigns

By Haleigh Beckman, Director of Product Marketing, Listrak

AI is a major buzzword but are retail marketers ready to strategically leverage AI this holiday season?

When used properly, AI can help marketers scale their programs, reduce costs and become more profitable, which is never more important than during the high-stakes holiday season. According to a 2024 forecast from eMarketer, “The Cyber Five, which includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Sunday, and Cyber Monday, made up 16.2% of total US holiday retail ecommerce sales in 2023.

While Generative AI, which analyzes patterns and structures in existing dataset to generate new content, gets much of the buzz, there’s big opportunities to leverage Predictive AI, which analyzes data to make predictions about future events, and Prescriptive AI, which recommends actions or decisions to optimize outcomes

Here’s how:

• Tap into Predictive Analytics to Discover Purchase Intent: One of the most compelling ways marketers can use AI to their advantage is with data analysis through Predictive Modeling. Predictive Analytics can help marketers discover who is most likely to purchase. Q4 typically brings retail’s biggest discounts of the year, and some subscribers may be hunting for promos as they shop. With Predictive AI, marketers can target groups based on this coupon affinity when delivering incentives as part of broadcast or automated email campaigns to maximize profit margin.
• Supplement Full-List Campaigns with Targeted AI Segmentation: Supplement full-list campaigns with targeted one-time sends using AI Segmentation. Effectively targeting campaigns stretches investment to maximize ROI, and AI Segmentation provides a great cost savings opportunity, allowing brands to exponentially increase Rev/Send metrics while subsequently yielding substantial savings in messaging costs. BFCM campaigns in particular should go to as many subscribers as possible, but consider also sending campaigns to the ‘most likely to’ audiences in between. Capitalize on those who are most likely to purchase to reach your revenue goals, and those who are most likely to click to reach your engagement goals. If you’re wary of sending too much, use your Unsubscribe Rate in the preceding months to gauge if you are.

• Use AI to Streamline Email and Text Campaigns:  Automation has proven to yield a high return with both email and SMS, so combining already-known effective triggers with AI-suggested send times and body copy can take things to the next level without much effort on the marketer’s side. Use AI to build email and text campaigns faster.  Load up your emails with recommended SKUs based on what your contacts are browsing, abandoning, or purchasing, and share additional dynamic blocks personalized based on what they’re most interested in. Consumers have higher personalization expectations than ever before, so use first- and zero-party data wherever and whenever possible, especially in transactional emails.

While the weather’s still warm, now is the time to demystify AI and develop a strategic plan for how to leverage these powerful tools for cross-channel marketing campaigns ahead of the crucial Black Friday / Cyber Monday and holiday season.

When used properly, AI can really help you improve efficiency and scalability of cross-channel marketing campaigns. If you’re not leveraging AI tools yet, get started testing and iterating so you can be firing on all cylinders for Q4 and the holiday season.