Competition for attention is fierce during the holidays, and your messages have to stand out in busy inboxes and phone lock screens.

A main challenge for brands is to differentiate themselves with some of the best deals on the market while preserving perceived value and bottom line during economic volatility.

According to Klaviyo’s 2026 state of the holiday buyer research, 43% of global shoppers are most likely to buy gifts for Christmas Day because of the availability of deals or discounts. 27% shop for Christmas Eve for the same reason.

To help you generate buzz, improve customer engagement, and drive end-of-year sales, here are 7 Christmas marketing ideas for email, text messaging, and social media.

1. Build data-backed Christmas campaigns with an AI marketing agent

Perhaps you have years of customer data to draw from for your Christmas campaigns. When all that data lives in one CRM, a built-in AI marketing agent can analyze it, along with your product catalog and performance data, to find where your Christmas revenue opportunities lie.

Let’s say you ask your AI marketing agent, “Which segments and flows should we focus on between Cyber Monday and Christmas?” From there, it might surface a group of BFCM subscribers who haven’t made a first purchase, or a December flow that underperformed last year. After identifying the opportunity, the AI agent can build the campaign or flow itself.

Here are some prompt ideas for Christmas marketing campaigns:

“Find customers who bought gifts in December last year and browsed our site in the last 30 days but haven’t purchased this year. Build that segment, then draft an email and text message featuring the products each person viewed, with our Christmas shipping cutoff in the first line.”
“Find subscribers who signed up during BFCM this year and haven’t made a first purchase. Feature any top Christmas bestsellers they may have browsed in the last year, and draft a 3-message welcome series with a first-order offer that expires December 20.”
“Plan a VIP early-access campaign for our Christmas collection. Build the audience from our champions segment from recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) analysis, plus anyone who spent over $300 in Q4 last year. Draft an email announcing 48-hour early access, a day two text reminder for VIPs who engage most by text, and a last-call email that leads with each person’s next best product.”

Christmas marketing example: Saranoni uses a Black Friday code to sell stocking stuffers early

In this Christmas marketing example, luxury blanket brand Saranoni uses a Black Friday promotion to kick off Christmas shopping. On November 25, they sent an email offering 25% off stocking stuffers with a Black Friday promo code featuring small, giftable products like socks and mini blankets.

The team at Saranoni could have used an AI marketing agent to work out timing and what to promote. An effective prompt might ask the AI agent to build a segment of customers who bought lower-priced gift items during the sale and to draft a follow-up campaign in December.

Subject line: Small gifts, big smiles—25% off stocking stuffers!

2. Personalize Christmas emails and texts with segmentation

Segmenting your audience is essential for creating a more meaningful connection with your

If you’re not sure where to start, your Christmas segmentation might mirror your BFCM segmentation:

Engaged subscribers: These are people who opened or clicked a message in the last 30–60 days. Some holiday shoppers go quiet for most of the year, so consider adding people who engaged during last year's BFCM and December sends.
VIPs: These are your most loyal customers, defined by customer lifetime value (LTV), number of purchases, average order value (AOV), brand ambassadors, etc. They may be ready to shop for Christmas sooner.
Previous Q4 purchasers: These are people who converted on holiday emails or texts in previous years. You can use AI-generated next best product analysis to send them personalized product recommendations based on what they bought last year and browsed this year.
Predicted high-value and at-risk customers: Predictive analytics uses AI and machine learning to estimate how trends in your customer data today are likely to play out in the future. Predicted high-LTV customers may not need a discount at all to purchase, whereas an at-risk segment may need a win-back offer before the holidays.

If you’re using an AI marketing agent built into your CRM, you can also describe the segments you’d like to reach with more complexity in a prompt. AI can generate the segments, so you don’t need to manually put them together in your marketing automation platform.

Christmas marketing example: Chelsea Peers gives loyal shoppers early access to their Christmas collection

In this Christmas marketing example, sleepwear brand Chelsea Peers gives subscribers early access to their Christmas pajama collection. The email encourages shoppers to buy their favorites before they sell out.

This email would be a good fit for VIPs and previous Q4 purchasers. VIPs get a perk that makes them feel like insiders, and previous Q4 purchasers who bought holiday pajamas last year are likely to want this year's version.

Subject line: Your first look: Christmas starts here🎄

3. Promote curated Christmas gift guides for your core personas

Christmas gift guides make life a little easier during a stressful time of year. They give

If you have a customer experience hub on your site, you can use customer wishlists to personalize your gift guides. For example:

A personalized wishlist guide: Send each shopper a message featuring the items they saved, along with gift sets and accessories that pair well with those products.
A “most wished for” guide: Feature the products saved most often across your entire customer hub.
Price-drop alerts: When a wishlisted item goes on sale, send an automated email or text message to everyone who saved it.

Christmas marketing example: Gym+Coffee shares their top 10 gift picks

In this Christmas marketing example, apparel brand Gym+Coffee features their top-selling items in a gift guide, with quick links in the email to shop. They also include an option to buy a gift card, which speaks to the shopper who doesn’t know what to get for their loved ones.

With a customer hub, the brand could further personalize this campaign based on their customer data. For example, each

Subject line: The Most Gifted

4. Offer a bundle to last-minute Christmas shoppers

According to Klaviyo's 2026 BFCM consumer research, 44% of global shoppers make their last holiday purchase in December. In the US, that jumps to 60%.

Shoppers in a rush may not have time to browse a gift guide, but they may jump at a well-crafted bundle. According to the same research, 27% of consumers say they're looking for bundle or multi-buy offers this holiday season. That rises to 30% among millennials and Gen Z.

Send your bundle to a segment of last-minute shoppers, like:

Customers who buy during flash sales
Customers who buy from final reminders
Customers who have asked your AI customer agent about holiday shipping cutoffs

For the VIPs in these segments, tuck a free stocking stuffer into the bundle, or double loyalty points through Christmas Eve.

WithAI-powered channel affinity, you can also send your bundle offer via the channel your customers engage with the most. This is especially important for last-minute customers who prefer text messages, to make sure your bundle offer reaches them before it’s too late.

Christmas marketing example: Loop Earplugs pairs gift sets with a clear shipping deadline

In this Christmas marketing example, earplug brand Loop offers 30% off gift sets as part of a "gifts that won't get returned" holiday email. For last-minute shoppers, the most useful line is the P.S.: "Order before 19 December with express shipping to get your gifts under the tree in time." Pairing a firm deadline with ready-made gift sets means a last-minute shopper can take care of many of their gifts in one order.

Subject line: Gifts that won’t get returned 😉

5. Run an omnichannel Christmas campaign across email, texting, and WhatsApp

Email is still where most shoppers want to hear from brands. According to Klaviyo’s 2026 State of the Holiday Buyer Report, shoppers prefer email for marketing messages in every country surveyed, from 52% in Singapore to 73% in the UK.

An omnichannel Christmas marketing plan might have email at its core, but the rest of your marketing mix should be determined by where each of your customers engage the most and what each channel allows you to do. For example, for customers who engage a lot on WhatsApp, you may want to offer a more interactive shopping experience with a product photo carousel and tap-to-buy links.

Here’s how you can run an omnichannel marketing campaign this Christmas without oversaturating your list:

Consolidate your channels in one CRM. When your emails and mobile messages are drawing from the same customer data, it’s much easier to orchestrate a personalized omnichannel campaign.
Build Christmas campaigns once, across channels. Ahead of time, plan and schedule your launch, shipping deadline reminders, and last-call offers as one campaign across channels, so timing and offers stay consistent.
Send messages on customers’ preferred channel first. If someone never clicks on your emails but buys a lot from text messages, don’t waste time by emailing them first. Channel affinity can automate this process by using a customer’s recent engagement history to send messages based on where they’re most likely to act.
Match the channel to the moment. Email suits gift guides people want to browse. Text messages and push notifications suit time-sensitive news, like a flash sale or the last day to order for Christmas delivery.

Holiday marketing example: Jimmy Joy gives WhatsApp subscribers early access and exclusive discounts

During BFCM 2025, plant-based meal replacement brand Jimmy Joy used email to build deal awareness across their full list, and WhatsApp to offer an exclusive 30% discount. The team excluded WhatsApp

Jimmy Joy started building their WhatsApp list months earlier. They used pop-ups and dynamic email blocks to invite email subscribers to join WhatsApp, which gave them a small, engaged list before peak season. The WhatsApp campaign drove nearly half the revenue of email under the same attribution window, despite a much smaller

“I really see WhatsApp as that extra personalization layer on top of email,” said Otto Mouton, commercial director at Jimmy Joy. “You want to be in touch with your most valuable customers, who trust you not to abuse WhatsApp as a spam channel. The reward for that trust is that you give them additional perks.”

The same approach can work for Christmas. Grow your non-email channels over the summer and fall, then save your earliest access and best offer for the

6. Answer Christmas shipping and gift questions with an AI customer agent

In December, shoppers ask a lot of questions. They want to make sure they’re choosing the right gifts, ordering on time, and getting the best possible deal.

All of those questions land on customer service teams when they’re already stretched thin. “Where is my order?” (WISMO) questions spike around the holidays, and each reply takes time away from a more complicated, sensitive exchange.

An AI customer agent can answer many of those questions on its own, and shoppers are open to this autonomous service. According to Klaviyo's 2026 state of the holiday buyer research, 54% of consumers would trust an AI assistant to recommend a gift, and 68% are willing to share personal information with AI assistants.

Imagine a shopper on December 15 asking your AI customer agent whether a sweater will arrive by Christmas. The AI customer agent checks your shipping deadlines, tells them the last day for standard delivery, and suggests express shipping.

A week later, the same customer texts the AI agent to ask where the order is. The AI agent pulls the tracking details and replies in the same thread. If the package shows as lost, it escalates the conversation to a human on a shared helpdesk with full context, so the brand can send a replacement without asking the customer to start over.

To get similar results this holiday season, set up your AI customer agent before the holiday rush to handle questions about:

Shipping deadlines and order tracking
Gift recommendations based on customer history, budget, or interest
Returns, exchanges, and gift receipts
Loyalty points and discount codes

Christmas marketing example: Happy Wax recommends gifts with an AI customer agent

Natural wax melt brand Happy Wax uses a customer hub as a personalized on-site home for customer rewards, referrals, and subscriptions. Through the hub, customers are also connected to an AI customer agent.

In this Christmas marketing example, a shopper asks for Christmas gift ideas for an aunt who wants to stay cozy through the winter. The AI agent suggests 3 options, and product cards make it easy for the shopper to add one to their cart.

By implementing a self-service customer hub, Happy Wax reduced order tracking tickets by 75%. "We wanted to simplify the experience for our loyal customers,” says Rachel Fagan, VP of marketing at Happy Wax. “It's now a central part of our customer retention strategy."

Happy Wax

7. Grow your email and text message lists from holiday social engagement

December is a busy month for brand social accounts, but algorithms decide who sees your posts. A follower who engages with you on Instagram today may never see your Christmas shipping deadline post next week. But once they give you their email address or phone number, you can reach them directly via lists you outright own.

To grow these lists, you can use CRM-native social marketing to collect email, text message, and WhatsApp opt-ins straight from Instagram DMs, comments, and tags. This is one of the best ways to transfer ownership of your audience from algorithms to your brand.

Here are a few ways to grow your owned lists from social this Christmas:

Ask followers to DM a keyword like "GIFTS" to get your holiday gift guide, and send an automated reply that invites them to
Run a Christmas giveaway that followers enter by joining your email or text message marketing list.
Give followers who sign up via DM early access to a holiday product drop.

Marketing example: Lingua Franca grows their email and text message lists with an Instagram giveaway

Premium sweater brand Lingua Franca has more than 250,000 Instagram followers. The brand ran a sweater giveaway with Hotel Chelsea following one of Taylor Swift’s album launches that mentioned the hotel. They used the viral opportunity to turn social media followers into email and text message

Lingua Franca launched the giveaway within hours of the album release and posted it to their Instagram feed and Stories. Followers who DMed “POET” got an automated reply asking for their email address to finish their entry, then a second reply with a button to join the list.

Over 1,000 followers subscribed directly from the Lingua Franca Instagram DMs in under a week. New

Lingua Franca Instagram

Make Christmas 2026 personal with Klaviyo B2C CRM

Christmas shoppers start early, finish late, and expect every message to feel like it was meant for them. Klaviyo, the autonomous B2C CRM for ambitious consumer brands, can help you plan and personalize your Christmas campaigns.

Put these Christmas marketing ideas into action with:

Composer: Describe the Christmas campaign you want in plain language, and Klaviyo's built-in AI marketing agent builds the segment, drafts the copy, picks the channel and timing, and stages it all for your review.
Customer Agent: The built-in AI customer agent answers product, shipping deadline, and return questions 24/7, and Klaviyo saves what shoppers share as customer data for future campaigns.
Customer Hub: Give shoppers one place on your site to wishlist items, track holiday orders, check their loyalty balance, and find their Christmas offers.
Helpdesk: Bring every customer conversation into one inbox, so your AI and human support team can resolve holiday questions with the shopper's full history.
Social: Collect subscribers across channels from comments, tags, and shares on your holiday posts.
RCS, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging: Send gift guide announcements, daily deal reminders, and shipping deadline alerts straight to shoppers' phones.

Power better customer relationships all year long with Klaviyo.