For the holiday shopping season this year, we’re expecting to see some seriously interesting and (hopefully) innovative marketing campaigns. A batch and blast email campaign is not going to cut it when companies like Best Buy alone have sent 1.265 billion holiday emails in year’s past. Just imagine how tuned out the average user becomes during the height of the season with all of these messages. Fortunately for marketers, getting creative and strategic can define and guide your brand to major revenue growth during the holidays.

Here are some of the tactics to help brands stand out, engage users, drive sales and ultimately win during this year’s holiday marketing season (and after, too!)

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1. View the holidays as the ultimate re-engagement opportunity. Since shoppers are more motivated to purchase during the holidays, it is the perfect time to engage those users who have lost their connection with your brand. Target those disengaged users and offer them a special sale unique to them, like an extra percentage off or another incentive to purchase; also think about telling them about what’s new since they last visited or purchased (new brands, shipping policies, etc.). Remember, it’s always easier to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, so your efforts on this group will not go unanswered.

2.  Incentivize profile completions to target customers later on. Customer profiles are a powerful tool to get to know your customers and personalize each user’s unique experience with your brand. Holidays bring many first time customers, so make sure to collect as much information as possible so that subsequent marketing efforts later in the year can be that much stronger. For many customers, they are unlikely to hand out information for no reason, so adding incentives to users to complete a profile, like free shipping or an extra 10% off, can help accelerate that data aggregation – and pay off in the long run with engaging, personalized content.

3. Drive Black Friday/Cyber Monday purchases with advance incentives for Christmas. This tactic boosts revenue in two ways: generating immediate conversions and ensuring that customers come back again. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases, add an incentive for customers to use during a designated period in December. To protect your AOV, think about setting price floors (e.g. spend $150 or more on Black Friday/Cyber Monday, get 20% off a purchase during a week-long period in December.)

4. Speak directly to your mobile audience. It’s obvious now that your emails and site must be optimized for mobile. But with an estimated 16 percent of holiday sales projected via mobile devices, sending out mobile-centric campaigns targeted to those users can increase their motivation to purchase. A great suggestion for these campaigns would be special product sales catered just for mobile users, making it feel like an exclusive must-have buy.  And don’t forget – cart abandonment can be quite high on mobile devices, so make sure you’re tracking and re-targeting accordingly!

5. Reward your “power users”! It should go without saying that successful marketing is not just about new customer acquisition, it’s also about preserving the relationship with customers you already have. Take your loyal purchasers, your “power users”, or even just prior customers (e.g. someone who bought on Black Friday) and reward them in your December sales. Since these customers are already engaged with your brand, consider a social media based sale (e.g. “Like us” on Facebook today to gain access to an exclusive product sale and then post Facebook unique offers not found anywhere else.) Nurture these valuable relationships, and we guarantee it won’t go unnoticed by your customers.