By Jodie Thiel, SheerID
For years, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have dominated the marketing calendar, shaping entire budget cycles and dictating creative strategy. The industry treats this stretch as the unquestioned peak of consumer attention.
But what if the most powerful moment for long-term loyalty doesn’t happen during the holiday frenzy at all? Increasingly, smart marketers are recognizing “Q5” – the quiet stretch between Christmas and mid-January – as one of the most undervalued windows for meaningful customer relationships.
While brands fight for share of wallet during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Q5 offers something far more valuable: the space to build trust, affinity, and durable connections.
Why Black Friday Is a Loyalty Mirage
Black Friday’s gravitational pull creates an irresistible race to the bottom. When every brand slashes prices at once, differentiation evaporates. Consumers, conditioned to expect blanket discounts, behave transactionally: they hunt deals, not relationships. The result is a spike in revenue that looks impressive on a dashboard but does little to strengthen the brand long term.
There’s also a hidden cost. When loyalty is built primarily on price, it’s fragile. It undermines brand affinity by teaching customers to wait for the next markdown. Even worse, it erodes trust in everyday pricing, forcing brands into repetitive discount cycles that are increasingly unsustainable. For all of the holiday hype, it rarely produces the kind of customer who sticks around for reasons beyond savings.
What Q5 Actually Looks Like
From December 26 to roughly the second week of January, consumers shift from holiday hyper-mode into a period of browsing, reflecting, and resetting. People are home more. They have gift cards to spend. They’re mentally preparing for new self-care routines or setting intentions for the year ahead, and they’re unusually open to trying new brands.
New data shows that this isn’t just anecdotal. According to one study from Snapchat, roughly 60% of consumers keep shopping in the post-holiday period. Moreover, Q5 marks a shift in shopper motivation. Rather than buying gifts for others, many consumers begin focusing on themselves – whether that’s beauty, fashion, electronics, or wellness. Many shoppers are also returning presents that weren’t a good fit– which provides brands with an opportunity to provide a fun IRL experiential touch point that could land them loyal customers or a never-returner.
In parallel, long-form video and social discovery increasingly shape shopping journeys. As outlined by YouTube, more shoppers rely on video content to discover products, validate brands, and inform purchasing decisions. Brands should amp up content on social platforms in Q5 to court consumers that are eager to try the next best thing.
When the holiday inbox overload dies down and inboxes declutter, Q5 becomes one of the rare advertising moments that’s attention-rich but pressure-light.
The Real Opportunity: Personalized Engagement
Q5 provides an opportunity to move beyond discounts and think about all the ways companies can build loyalty. This is increasingly important as consumer expectations from brands have evolved– especially among Gen Z who crave community and experiences that foster a sense of belonging.
Specifically, brands can create tailored offers for specific groups– like students or nurses– that cut through the noise and speak to the identities of these audiences. These offers stand apart from generic promotions because they are intentional and create a sense of earned value.
This opens the door to true engagement: personalization that consumers trust and welcome because it respects who they are. Once brands verify audiences, they can also create more tailored experiences. For instance, a consumer tech company might give verified audiences like military members early access to new SKUs. A retailer might invite verified students to attend exclusive pop up events and activations.
Nordstrom’s “Pop-In” events are a great example of this. The retailer has partnered with brands like Nike and luxury apparel brand Bode to host a series of community events tailored to specific audiences. At the Nike pop-up shop, they offered a full end-to-end customized experience for dedicated runners: customized displays and furniture, special access to high-end running shoes and apparel and activations like group runs, recovery workshops and styling sessions.
Gift-card spending adds another layer of opportunity, as shoppers explore with newfound purchasing power. Audience-based offers meet them at exactly the right moment – when they’re open to forming new loyalties and receptive to value that feels personal rather than promotional.
How Brands Should Tackle Q5
- Allocate dedicated budget for Q5. Treat the post-holiday stretch as a distinct micro-season. Because competition and CPMs tend to drop after Christmas, this window provides one of the most cost-efficient buying opportunities of the year.
- Leverage holiday data to drive personalization. Use Q4 data like gift purchases, browsing history, new customers, and gift-card redemptions to craft messaging that resonates with how people might think and behave at the start of a new year.
- Design messaging for new-year mindsets. Q5 is a time when people are resetting habits, thinking about goals, or planning self-care, wellness, or home improvements. Brands should tailor offers and messaging that speak to those priorities- not hard-sell discounts, but values-based, audience-aligned, or utility-centered messaging.
- Tap into social discovery and video shopping. Platforms like Snapchat already show heightened consumer activity in Q5, with users turning to social discussion, shared ideas, and creator content (gift guides, recommendations, influencer and peer reviews) instead of traditional ads.
- Track loyalty, not just conversions. Black Friday is when the consumer is buying for others, Q5 is when the consumer is buying for themselves. This is the loyalty you want to land. Use repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value, and engagement as success metrics.
With the right approach, Q5 becomes marketing’s hidden engine for sustainable year-long growth – a moment when the right offer, to the right person, delivered in the right context, can spark genuine loyalty.
Black Friday may generate headlines, but Q5 generates loyalty. And when retention beats acquisition every time, the brands that lean into this overlooked window will be the ones that start the year stronger, steadier, and closer to the customers who matter most.
