AI-Driven Holiday Engagement: 7 Steps to Peak Season Performance

Quick answers

Question: How does AI improve holiday marketing performance?  

Answer: AI makes unified data actionable at scale, analyzing customer behavior, predicting their needs, and adapting in real time. AI formulates rapid decisions and executes personalized experiences that are optimized to drive conversions and loyalty. 

Question: When should marketers start preparing for peak season? 

Answer: For any peak-season shopping event (like Cyberweek, El Buen Fin, Singles’ Day, Amazon Prime Day, etc.), marketers should begin preparing at least three months ahead of the event. Preparations include scoring audience engagement, optimizing segmentation, warming up the audiences with messages, testing discounts, and progressive profiling. 

Question: What customer segments matter the most during the holidays? 

Answer: Customer segments that perform strongest during the holidays can vary significantly among industries and brands, so marketers should strategize by 1) looking at historical data and 2) applying AI.  Historical holiday engagement can act as a basis for current testing and optimization, while marketers also use predictive AI and audience scoring to identify additional strong-performing segments. 

It’s the Tuesday before Cyber Week. Your inbox has 47 unread messages, your CMO just asked for an updated forecast by EOD, and your inventory team is flagging that the hero product in Friday’s campaign messaging is suddenly low on stock. Sound familiar? 

Every enterprise marketer knows that feeling: the slow-motion avalanche of peak season, where one disconnected system or untested send can erase months of planning. I’ve witnessed brilliant campaigns underperform not because the creative was wrong, but because the data, the timing, or the channels weren’t talking to each other. 

Remember: The brands winning the next big holiday season aren’t working harder than you. They’re working earlier and letting AI do the heavy lifting on the decisions that used to keep marketers up at night. 

SAP research found that 21% of consumers already use AI to guide purchase decisions, but among Gen Z, that number jumps up to 43%. Also, 20% of customers have switched from a brand they were loyal to due to their use of AI. 

Don’t panic. Instead, prepare. Preparation and understanding of the new, modern shopper mindset are key to being the go-to brand during the next peak season.  

Modern shoppers expect your brand to deliver:  

• Personalized experiences across channels that tell a consistent, coherent message about your brand’s value 
• Real-time responses to their behaviors, taking a situationally aware approach that recognizes both their history and current context  
• Seamless transitions between browsing, buying, and support 

Meeting these expectations and showing up when and where the customer is shopping is mission-critical for holiday success. Marketers must move beyond reactive tactics and stay one leap ahead by using AI-driven orchestration that activates data, decision-making, and execution in one breath.  

Whether you’re gearing up for Cyber Week, El Buen Fin, Singles’ Day, back-to-school, or family-themed holidays, the playbook is the same. And the preparation comes down to orchestrating real-time, data-driven experiences at scale. 

So, I’ve put together the essential pre-holiday checklist I wish I’d had years ago. Let’s break it down step by step. 

Step 1: Unify your customer and operational data 

Having AI without data to power it is like having a remote-control car without a battery. You aren’t going to get far. And with 54% of brands saying they can’t access and use real-time data, the struggle is real. 

To get started, ensure your data ecosystem is connected, including both customer and operational data: 

• Customer profiles (purchase history, preferences, engagement) 
• Inventory and supply chain data 
• Pricing, promotions, and order status 
• Consent and channel permissions 

Disconnected systems create blind spots that prevent real-time personalization and limit AI performance. A unified system that includes both customer and operational data enables your campaigns to reflect real-world business conditions, such as stock availability and shipping timelines. 

Step 2: Use predictive AI to anticipate customer needs

44% of consumers say brand interactions feel less personal and more generic than before. Get ahead of what your customers want before the holiday season is here by applying predictive AI to:  

• Forecast your customers’ next purchase, so you can deliver more accurate and relevant messages and product recommendations.  
• Identify which customers need incentive and which don’t. Also, get an accurate read on how much of an offer is necessary so you don’t over-discount and eat into your margins. 
• Align promotions with inventory and demand. Promoting stock that isn’t there at the critical time of holiday need is a sure-fire way to leave customers feeling burnt, so make sure your marketing campaigns align with operations. 

Only with AI can you accomplish all of this at scale and power more relevant, timely campaigns.  

Step 3: Prioritize segments that will make the greatest impact 

Remember: Don’t spread yourself too thin. You’re a busy marketer, and you need to focus your time and energy on the customer segments that will have the strongest outcomes during the holiday season.  

Prioritize high-value segments based on behavioral and financial signals like:  

• Customer lifetime value (CLV) 
• Recency and frequency of purchases 
• Price sensitivity 
• Category affinity 
• Channel engagement 

Got that data together? Great! For the next step, use AI to score customers dynamically and identify key segments, including:  

• VIP customers 
• High-intent shoppers 
• At-risk or churn-prone audiences 
• First-time buyers 

Tip: Run your segments through predictive models and use those insights to guide both marketing and operational planning. Plus, take a deeper dive into segments with our Deck the Carts holiday readiness guide. 

Step 4: Warm up your audience early 

I can’t stress enough how important it is to engage your audience before the peak season rush is upon you.  

Sudden spikes in email volume can damage your deliverability or even cause email providers to completely cut off your sending. 

All your preparation? Poof, gone, wasted, because email service providers think your massive wave of email looks suspicious and refuse to deliver any of it.  

Avoid this pitfall: Start gradually increasing engagement at least three months before peak season, focusing first on high-value audiences. This builds trust with inbox providers, lets you test customer responses, provides you with more data, and ensures your messages reach customers when it matters most. 

Step 5: Test and optimize your campaigns 

Pre-holiday is the ideal time for experimentation, so when the holiday is in full swing, you know what works and what doesn’t.  

Test your: 

• Discount strategies and customer price sensitivity 
• Messaging and creative variations 
• Send time and frequency 
• Product recommendations and dynamic content 

Tip: AI is great for a lot of this testing, but don’t let it be the only way you test. Experience the journey for yourself by playing the role of the customer to uncover and address friction points.  

Step 6: Design for omnichannel journeys, not the campaign 

Your goal is to create a consistent, personalized experience regardless of where the interaction happens. High-performing brands orchestrate connected omnichannel journeys across email, SMS, mobile, web, paid media, and conversational channels. 

When you… 

• Align messaging across channels to tell a singular brand story 
• Control frequency to avoid fatigue 
• Use behavior-triggered automation to make messages relevant 

…you transform isolated touchpoints into customer experiences that feel consistent and give customers the justification they need to keep coming back for more. 

Step 7: Implement real-time triggers and automation 

Shoppers will move quickly from browsing to purchasing (or abandoning), and your response time will determine whether you win or lose the sale.  

By listening to customer signals and responding in real time, you can guide their journey to an outcome that satisfies them and boosts your bottom line. 

Optimize your triggers: 

• Reduce cart abandonment triggers from hours to minutes 
• Activate browse abandonment automations, personalizing them based on their category searches 
• Rescore customers based on new searches and purchases  
• Based on updated scores, update customer segmentation in real time 

All of this is made possible at scale with, you guessed it, AI. 

The Home Depot’s Hot Sale strategy shows what’s possible when AI, data, and omnichannel engagement come together. The brand partnered with SAP Engagement Cloud to unify data and deliver more relevant, connected journeys. The Home Depot team captured customer preferences via progressive profiling and used those insights to power personalized campaigns across channels.  

The result:  

A whopping 8x conversion during the Hot Sale! 

To hear more from Mauricio about this story, check out the complete webinar.

Brands are already setting themselves up to win the next holiday season, and these brands won’t rely on guesswork. Instead, they’ll: 

• Unify their data 
• Use AI to guide decisions 
• Orchestrate journeys across channels 
• Respond to customers in real time 

For the next big holiday season (whenever that may be for your brand), show up ready with the right tools for optimizing customer engagement. Learn how SAP Engagement Cloud can help your brand combine customer insights with operational data for better engagement, higher conversion, and stronger loyalty.