How to Turn Your Holiday Data Into Year-Round Sales

Need to Know 

• Fifty percent of holiday shoppers will try out new brands, and 40% will return to familiar retailers during the holidays, creating ample opportunities to collect customer preference and behaviour data.
• Gathering and interpreting your first-party and zero-party data is essential for understanding your customers. You can enhance the knowledge you gain from these data types using tools like heat mapping and surveys to better dive deeper into your audience motivations, boost conversions and improve eCommerce experiences.
• Effective segmentation and tailored experiences can increase your brand’s customer loyalty and conversion rates. Bringing together your brand’s online and in-store data can help you create personalized and seamless omnichannel experiences, no matter where your customers are shopping.

About 50% of holiday shoppers will make purchases from new brands,¹ while 40% will buy from retailers they’ve shopped with before.²

Peak seasons create opportunities for retailers to capture data from high-intent, first-time customers, and loyal returning ones. This data can help provide insight into customer preferences on an individual and audience level, from their product preferences to the ads and promotions different groups are most likely to engage with.

With the correct tools and knowledge to capture and interpret your holiday data, you can use these insights to group your audiences into segments and find new ways to turn shoppers into loyal, returning customers.

Keep reading to learn how to leverage data from holiday traffic increases to build marketing and sales strategies that drive revenue year-round.

How can I gain insights about my customers using holiday sales data?

You can take advantage of the influx of customer data during holiday and peak seasons by gathering and examining it using your analytics and Business Intelligence tools.

With the demise of third-party cookies, first-party and zero-party data have become more important than ever for retail brands that want a deeper understanding of how their customers navigate and interact with them.

First-party data is pulled from customer interactions across brand channels, such as when they visit your website, interact with your newsletter, mobile app, loyalty program, or shop your brand’s in-store sales.

Tools like heat maps can help you further aggregate your first-party data, revealing how users engage with specific elements on your app or website so you can make conversion-driving adjustments. Warm colours on the heat map indicate high engagement, while cooler tones highlight areas with less interaction.

Zero-party data is shared by customers, and can include information such as their email preferences, product reviews, and personal details, providing valuable insights that can help with customer segmentation. Surveys and polls are effective tools for gathering additional zero-party data regarding customer experiences with your website, purchases, or products.

Together, these types of data can help you create a comprehensive view of your customers so you can tailor your eCommerce experience and marketing strategies to their individual preferences, boosting conversions and loyalty.

How can I use my holiday data to build better customer experiences?

1. Identify and address barriers that could be preventing conversions.

You can use your holiday data to reveal potential areas of improvement in your eCommerce experience.

For example, around 70% of eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned yearly,³ making this a significant area of focus for many brands.

Your data could show that many shoppers abandoned their carts at the same stage in your customer journey, or initiated site searches without adding items to their carts.

In these cases, your data can act as a clue that points to improvements that can help decrease friction and move customers through to making a purchase. You may address these issues by speeding up your checkout process, restructuring shipping costs, or implementing AI search improvements that return more accurate results.

Usability testing with small groups of users can help you refine these improvements to make sure they genuinely improve user experiences before releasing updates to your website or app.

2. Use your peak season data to understand your customer preferences and build more personalized journeys.

Over 70% of modern customers expect customized experiences as part of their eCommerce journey.⁴

As a result, personalization has become an essenial element of the omnichannel retail experience. But modern eCommerce personalization is much more than just calling your customer by their name.

Every time a consumer shops with your brand, personalized touches can boost their likelihood of making a purchase. In fact, more than 80% of global shoppers said that feeling recognized by a brand has a direct impact on their buying decisions.⁵

Segmentation is the categorization of customers based on shared characteristics, like the device they are using, their location, purchasing behaviour, age, gender, and preferences.

Using your holiday data to build detailed buyer personas will give you a clearer understanding of your core audience segments, and help you further customize your messaging and offerings to meet the specific needs of different types of customers.

When done well, segmentation can be highly effective for driving sales — for example, email campaigns that use segmentation have over 60% higher order rates than those that don’t.⁶

But if your customer data is outdated or inaccurate, personalization can have the opposite effect.

For example, your email platform may deploy an abandoned cart email or text message to remind shoppers to purchase their items — but if there is a long delay between browsing and the reminder, or if they’ve already purchased the item in-store, it can lead to frustration and diminish trust in your brand, making your personalization efforts feel impersonal or irrelevant.

Your success will depend on how up-to-date your customer data is, the infrastructure that houses your data, and the level of data maturity across your operations.

3. Use your learnings to make seamless connections between your in-store and digital experiences.

The separation between in-store and online shopping has almost disappeared completely, as customers now see both as integrated parts of a seamless shopping journey.

Shoppers now expect seamless, consistent interactions across all sales and communication channels, and omnichannel personalization is the key to delivering this unified experience.

Whether your customers are shopping online, on mobile, or in-store, personalizing their interactions to their preferences can create a unified experience throughout their journey.

To connect your web, mobile, and brick-and-mortar channels, you’ll need to integrate platforms that unify browsing behaviour, customer preferences, and Point of Sale (POS) data. This interconnected approach will allow you to deliver more convenient, personalized experiences across every omnichannel touchpoint.

How can Northern help you find insights in your holiday data?

Though customer data from holiday and peak seasons is vital for creating sales and marketing strategies that boost revenue, many eCommerce stores still struggle with managing and maturing their data.

Working with retail experts can help build your data maturity and find the right infrastructure to connect it with the rest of your eCommerce systems is an investment that will drive sales from new and returning customers. Connect with our eCommerce team today to get started.

Looking for more tips on how to leverage your holiday and peak season data to boost sales and improve customer experiences? Download our eBook of proven eCommerce best practices and insights to learn more about our experts’ proven strategies.