The holiday season is a critical time for brands. In the US, online holiday sales reached $240 billion in 2024, indicating that the digital space is where much of the festive magic takes place. The best holiday marketing campaigns strike a balance between emotional resonance and strategic personalization, along with omnichannel reach, to foster loyalty and drive revenue. Customers with strong connections to a brand are five times more likely to buy again and four times more likely to recommend it to their peers.
In this blog, we’ll explore the key elements of successful holiday marketing and delve into 15 standout holiday marketing campaigns, featuring creative examples that marketers can learn from.
What Makes Holiday Marketing Campaigns Successful?
Standout holiday marketing campaigns typically include the following elements. Each of these helps a campaign connect with consumers during the busy holiday period.
- Emotional Resonance: Holiday ads that start poignant and end on a joyous note tend to resonate deeply. Emotional narratives with stories that reflect kindness, family, and generosity tend to elicit a strong response from the audience.
- Seasonal Storytelling: Closely related to emotion is the practice of seasonal storytelling. It utilizes traditions, rituals, and shared themes, such as togetherness and hope, to transform promotions into memorable holiday experiences.
- Brand Alignment: Holiday campaigns should authentically reflect brand values, building trust. Forced or contradictory messages confuse customers and weaken brand credibility.
- Channel Mix: Successful holiday campaigns employ an omnichannel strategy that encompasses email, SMS, push notifications, social media, and web messages to deliver coordinated and seamless customer experiences. 28% of e-commerce holiday sales now happen on mobile, so optimizing ads and checkout for phones is critical.
- Real-Time Personalization: Customer data, including purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics, enables the delivery of personalized coupons, gift recommendations, and dynamic content.
15 Time-Tested Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns to Inspire You
From heartwarming storytelling to data-driven personalization, these 15 holiday marketing campaigns from major brands showcase how they capture attention and create lasting festive connections.
1. Gamification and Streak Retention: Duolingo’s Festive Streak Freeze and Holiday Quests
Holidays pull people away from their phones, and habit apps feel it first. Duolingo’s defense is building a streak-like mechanic into the product. A Streak Freeze, bought in the in-app shop with gems, protects a user’s streak on a day they miss. That matters when travel and family plans break routine. Each freeze, streak count, and reward gives lapsed learners a visible reason to come back and start again.
Takeaway: Use event-triggered Journeys in CleverTap to track daily streaks and habit milestones. When a user is close to breaking a streak, send a rich push notification, or offer an in-app badge or reward to keep them active through the festive season.
2. Automated Referral Incentives: Revolut’s Festive Friend Referral and Cashback Drops
Referral asks land best when users are already active, and Revolut runs in-app referral promotions where existing customers earn cash credited to their account once an invitee signs up, orders a card, and makes qualifying purchases.
Some versions add a bonus reward if that invitee refers to someone else. Placing the invite inside the app during heavy spending gives users a reason to share while a card is already in their hand.
Takeaway: Use CleverTap to segment users with high transaction volumes during festive periods, then trigger referral nudges through in-app messages or WhatsApp. Reward the referrer once the invitee signs up or completes a first card transaction, and reward the invitee too if your unit economics allow it.
3. In-Game Live Events: Epic Games’ Fortnite Winterfest
Winterfest is Fortnite’s annual holiday event. The 2025 edition launched on December 18, 2025, and ended on January 5, 2026. Its centerpiece was the Winterfest Cabin, where players could open one free gift a day, and there were 14 in total. Epic also changed the rules wherein, unlike past years, gifts no longer stack, so a missed day means a missed gift. That turns a giveaway into a reason to log in daily for the length of the event.
Takeaway: Use CleverTap to send time-sensitive in-app messages or push notifications when users hit a session milestone or enter a segment during a live event. Remind players about limited-time drops before they expire, especially when a missed day means a lost reward.15 Time-Tested Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns to Inspire You
From heartwarming storytelling to data-driven personalization, these 15 holiday marketing campaigns from major brands showcase how they capture attention and create lasting festive connections.
4. User Generated Content (UGC): Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke for the Holidays Campaign
In the 2025 revival of Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign, the brand focused on community-driven storytelling by printing QR codes on limited-edition festive cans. When scanned, these codes unlocked a digital hub where fans were invited to create and upload content—holiday greetings, short videos, and even fun Coke-inspired memes.
The best submissions were featured across Coca-Cola’s official channels, driving massive UGC participation worldwide and turning everyday Coke moments into shareable social stories.
The campaign blended offline product interaction with digital participation, rolled out across 120+ countries, and reignited emotional brand loyalty by giving consumers a platform to express themselves during the holidays.
Takeaway: Encourage user-generated content to boost authenticity and organic reach. Use QR codes, microsites, or branded hashtags to invite users to submit stories, videos, or reviews. Then amplify top UGC through emails, push notifications, or in-app features to build social proof and deepen emotional connection with your community during holiday marketing campaigns.
5. Limited Time Holiday Deals: American Holidays
These types of holiday campaigns center on limited-time deals and exclusive offers designed to tap into the festive buying mindset. They work because they blend urgency with emotional appeal, prompting customers to act fast while associating the purchase with celebration and reward.
American Holidays, a transatlantic travel company, offers special holiday packages with clear monetary savings and value-added perks, such as complimentary meals or upgrades. It helps communicate a sense of exclusivity and tangible benefit while reducing decision friction for travelers.
Takeaway: Drive urgency at scale using CleverTap Journeys with countdown timers, offer expiry reminders, and behavioral triggers. Segment users by purchase intent and send targeted discount nudges via push, SMS, or email to recover drop-offs and increase conversions.
6. Product Launches to Support Holiday Marketing Campaigns: Starbucks’ Holiday Cup Designs
Starbucks’ 2024 holiday cup collection leans heavily into holiday branding and visual cues to spark joy. The designs mix festive tones of cranberry red and vibrant jade green with soft pastels, playing up familiar holiday aesthetics with a twist.
The new cups feature elements like ornament-inspired charms, peppermint motifs, and a “siren wave” trim nodding to Starbucks’ iconic logo. Cups include badges where baristas can write personal messages, adding warmth and a tangible connection.
Takeaway: Use location-based segmentation and behavioral triggers in CleverTap to notify nearby customers of limited-edition drops or in-store experiences. Amplify seasonal launches with personalized visual campaigns across in-app, web pop-ups, and push notifications.
7. Push Notifications with Rich Media: RailYatri
Rich push notifications combine visual elements, such as images, GIFs, and short videos, with text to make the alert far more engaging. They work because users are naturally drawn to visuals, which help messages stand out and convey emotion or context quickly.
RailYatri, a premier travel portal for train passengers, ran a clever Independence Day push campaign targeting users who were traveling on the same day. They sent these users a personalized food coupon, combining relevance with tangible value. The message, enhanced with vibrant visuals and Independence Day theming, not only resonated emotionally but also drove exceptionally high click-through rates thanks to precise segmentation and thoughtful timing.
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Takeaway: Leverage behavioral segmentation and real-time triggers to identify users in specific contexts, like active travelers or recent purchasers. Use rich push notifications to include images, emojis, or offers tailored to the moment.
8. Festive Offers and Discounts: Amazon’s Great Indian Festival
Holiday sales and discounts tap into heightened purchase intent during the festive season, when customers are actively looking to spend and gift. Deals combined with emotional cues like celebration and togetherness create urgency and excitement, driving faster purchase decisions.
Amazon’s Great Indian Festival is held every year as part of its Diwali marketing campaign. It brings massive discounts across categories, exclusive bank offers, no-cost EMIs, and early access for Prime members. It works because it combines anticipation marketing with personalized deals and exclusive access, giving users multiple reasons to buy now.
Takeaway: Use RFM segmentation in CleverTap to target high-value cohorts with exclusive previews while sending price-drop or stock alerts to bargain hunters. Automate cart reminders and personalized nudges to maximize festive revenue across channels.
9. Supporting a Social Cause: WestJet’s Christmas Miracle
WestJet’s Christmas Miracle, also known as Parents’ Wishlist, brings surprise and delight to the holiday season. The airline fulfills children’s holiday wishes, with help from partners like CFL, Coke, and TELUS, granting everything from game tickets to tech gifts. On its site, guests are invited to explore stories of these surprise gifts, paired with visuals of families, travel, and hopeful anticipation.
What makes this Christmas promotion campaign stand out is how stunning acts of giving become the centerpiece and not deals and discounts. This Christmas marketing campaign’s heartfelt surprises generate strong emotional reactions, spurring organic social sharing and media coverage.
Takeaway: Build emotional loyalty using CleverTap Journeys to trigger surprise-and-delight campaigns for high-engagement users. Automate personalized thank-you messages and encourage viral sharing via push and email to expand reach organically.
Build Christmas campaigns that convert. Get inspired by our guides on Christmas advertisement examples and the best Christmas marketing campaigns.
Build Christmas campaigns that convert. Get inspired by our guides on Christmas advertisement examples and the best Christmas marketing campaigns.
10. Holiday-themed Website: Lego’s Makeover
Temporarily transforming the look, feel, and content of your website to align with a holiday or season is effective because it fosters an emotional connection, boosts engagement, and provides an immersive experience for holiday-related purchases. Visually themed sites feel fresh and relevant, prompting users to explore more and stay longer.
Lego applies a makeover during the Halloween marketing season on its site by swapping in seasonal imagery, including pumpkins, autumn colors, spooky atmospherics, featuring Halloween-themed product collections, such as Halloween sets and gifts, as a prominent category, and creating special content, such as decoration ideas and themed build inspiration. It uses the website to align product merchandising with the holiday.
Takeaway: Use dynamic segmentation and web personalization with CleverTap to display tailored seasonal content and product recommendations. Test themed homepage variations with A/B testing to identify layouts that maximize engagement and conversions. Use themed designs and witty copy in Halloween email sends to bring customers back to the website for a consistent experience.
11. Digital Gift Cards via Email Marketing: 1906’s Christmas Email
Send digital gift cards or electronic vouchers that users can buy or send instantly via email or in-app, often with a personal message. They work well as holiday marketing campaigns because people are looking for easy, flexible gifting options, something quick to buy, meaningful to receive, and convenient to use. They help brands lock in future purchases when recipients redeem them.
1906 New Highs sent a Christmas email offering gift cards in a sleek, tasteful design, focusing on gift-giving without being overt. The email highlights the gift card as a thoughtful option, uses clean visuals and a gentle tone, making it feel both elegant and easy. This subtle positioning helps reduce friction for customers who might be unsure about what to gift while reinforcing the brand’s premium image.
Takeaway: Use CleverTap to target high-intent gift shoppers with browse history segmentation and trigger email or WhatsApp journeys for abandoned gift card purchases. Personalize send times and designs based on recipient behavior to lift conversions.
Launch high-converting email campaigns this holiday season. Learn how to build strategies for4th of July email marketing, Black Friday email marketing, Cyber Monday email marketing, and Thanksgiving email marketing.
Launch high-converting email campaigns this holiday season. Learn how to build strategies for4th of July email marketing, Black Friday email marketing, Cyber Monday email marketing, and Thanksgiving email marketing.
12. Inclusive Holiday Marketing Campaigns: Old Navy’s ALL-idays
Old Navy’s ALL-idays campaign celebrated diverse holiday traditions through inclusive storytelling and product offerings.
The brand introduced skin-tone Santa pajamas and launched a virtual Santa BOOT camp to train individuals from various backgrounds to portray Santa Claus, reflecting the multicultural makeup of the U.S. By showcasing families of different races, abilities, and family structures, Old Navy highlighted the importance of representation and relatability in holiday marketing.
Takeaway: Reach diverse audiences using CleverTap’s advanced segmentation based on region, preferences, and demographics. Deliver personalized mobile-first campaigns that reflect cultural moments and boost emotional connection at scale.
13. SMS and WhatsApp Marketing: E-Commerce Festive Deals
SMS and WhatsApp marketing are direct, personal channels that allow brands to reach users instantly with short, actionable messages. They work during holidays because they cut through the noise of email and social media, providing timely offers, reminders, or alerts right on the user’s phone.
Blinkit used SMS to send flash festive discounts, highlighting limited-time deals with clear CTAs like “Get UPTO 15% off!” Similarly, lifestyle stores leveraged WhatsApp messages to showcase curated holiday collections, share festive lookbooks, or send personalized discount codes. These messages work because they are conversational, visually engaging, and reach users on a channel they check multiple times a day.
Takeaway: Trigger time-sensitive offers through CleverTap’s SMS and WhatsApp campaigns based on user actions like category views, wishlists, or cart additions. Use journey-based automation to deliver follow-up reminders and boost conversions in real time.
14. Holiday Bundles: Flamingo Estate’s Themed Gift Sets
Holiday bundles package multiple related products into one curated set, often with a discount compared to buying each item separately. They work because they simplify the gift decision, increase average order value, and create a perceived deal by bundling.
Flamingo Estate’s selection of themed gift sets, each presented with clear visuals and a straightforward discount offer, is a perfect example. The design is clean and festive, making it easy for recipients to browse and select the perfect gift. By highlighting the value and convenience of the bundles, the campaign effectively drives conversions during the holiday shopping period.
Takeaway: Use CleverTap to build cross-sell bundles for users based on purchase history and affinity categories. Automate journey re-engagement for users who click but don’t buy, using personalized bundle suggestions or price incentives.
Learn how to design the best and most effective December newsletter campaigns to win customers via email marketing.
Learn how to design the best and most effective December newsletter campaigns to win customers via email marketing.
15. Personalized Data Insights: Spotify’s Holiday Wrapped
Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign transforms user listening data into personalized year-in-review experiences, fostering high engagement and social sharing. By presenting individual listening habits through dynamic visuals and curated playlists, Wrapped taps into behavioral psychology, leveraging principles like social comparison and nostalgia to create a sense of identity and community among users.
This data storytelling approach not only enhances user experience but also drives viral marketing, as users eagerly share their Wrapped results on social media platforms.
Takeaway: Leverage CleverTap’s analytics and AI-powered insights to turn user behavior into personalized campaigns. Highlight milestones or year-in-review summaries across email, in-app, and social to deepen user loyalty and inspire organic sharing.
With CleverTap, learn how to build specific campaigns for each holiday. Here are some guides of 4th of July marketing, Thanksgiving promotions, Cyber Monday marketing, and December marketing.
With CleverTap, learn how to build specific campaigns for each holiday. Here are some guides of 4th of July marketing, Thanksgiving promotions, Cyber Monday marketing, and December marketing.
How CleverTap Helps You Build Successful Holiday Marketing Campaigns
CleverTap’s all-in-one engagement platform enables marketers to execute all of the above holiday marketing campaigns with greater ease and scale. Here’s how:
Personalized Segmentation: CleverTap collects customer data and uses real-time behavior to build rich user profiles. You can create detailed segments based on demographics, past purchases, app activity, etc., and then target each segment with holiday offers tuned to their interests.
Omnichannel Orchestration: CleverTap supports push notifications, SMS, email, in-app messages, and more. You can design a multi-step journey that sends messages across these channels in sequence.
Suppose a user abandons a cart with a gift item. In that case, CleverTap’s Journey Builder can trigger a personalized push reminder after an hour, followed by an email with the item’s photo and price after a specified delay. The platform’s Campaign Orchestration tools let you automate these flows so you engage holiday shoppers at the right moment on their preferred device.
A/B Testing and Optimization: The platform’s experimentation features let you test different aspects of your holiday marketing campaigns, including messages, subject lines, images, and timing. You can set up A/B tests and control groups to see which creative drives more clicks or sales.
As results come in, CleverTap’s Analytics show you what works best, allowing you to optimize on the fly. This helps maximize engagement for campaigns like festive email blasts or holiday push series.
Automated Holiday Flows: The Journey Builder feature enables you to quickly set up automated campaigns, such as holiday greetings, coupon alerts, or loyalty reminders.
For example, you might launch a New Year campaign that sends themed offers to subscribers, or schedule a Black Friday marketing email blast for past buyers. Using triggers, time delays, and customer actions, CleverTap helps you deliver holiday cheer at scale. Each message can be personalized by using the user’s name or mentioning their past purchase as variables to amplify impact.
Real-Time Insights: CleverTap offers analytics and dashboards to track the performance of holiday campaigns. You can track open rates, conversions, and revenue by segment and channel, so you know which tactics to double down on. Clever AI can even surface insights from customer feedback or sentiment during the holiday rush.
Build Holiday Campaigns That Customers Remember
The strongest holiday marketing campaigns do more than promote seasonal offers. They combine timely messaging, relevant personalization, memorable creative, and the right channel mix to create experiences that feel useful and worth engaging with.
By using customer behavior and real-time insights to guide campaign decisions, marketers can make holiday communication more relevant throughout the season while improving engagement, conversions, and long-term loyalty.
CleverTap helps brands orchestrate personalized holiday campaigns across channels, respond to customer behavior in real time, and continuously optimize each interaction.
Explore Our Complete Holiday Marketing Blogs Hub
Planning your seasonal campaigns? Access our end-to-end guides for every holiday on the calendar:
Halloween: Halloween Marketing & Promotion Ideas | Halloween Email Marketing Ideas
Diwali: Diwali Marketing Ideas
Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving Promotions & Marketing Ideas | Thanksgiving Email Marketing Examples
BFCM: Black Friday Marketing Ideas | Black Friday Email Marketing | Cyber Monday Marketing Ideas | Cyber Monday Emails
Christmas & Holiday Season: Christmas Marketing Ideas | Christmas Promotion Ideas | Christmas Advertisement Examples | Best Christmas Campaigns | Holiday Marketing Ideas
New Year & Year-End: December Marketing Ideas | New Year Marketing Campaign Ideas
Last updated on October 7, 2026
