Your holiday promotions have run. The deals have ended. Now, brands have a chance to sit back, relax, and start to think: how do you get all your holiday shoppers to come back and shop throughout the year?
This is when it all comes down to brand loyalty. According to SAP, about 60% of customers will switch brands based on price alone. That’s why it’s up to you to keep your audience engaged not only when they’re in the market, but just browsing and researching for future purchases. For advertisers, ringing in the New Year is all about thinking through how to keep shoppers engaged all year long.
Here’s a list of tips and tricks straight from Pacvue’s advertising experts to make sure that you stay top-of-mind with shoppers throughout 2025.
Here’s how:
1. Reach shoppers beyond retail media networks.
While lower funnel onsite traffic peaks during tentpole events, investing in upper funnel tactics to reach customers is a healthy long-term strategy to stay top of mind with shoppers. Your brand should be in front of them before they’re ready to buy – so that when they are, they think of your brand first. That’s a big deal, considering 66% of consumers technically start their search for products on Amazon.
During Black Friday, we saw more brands than ever start to invest in Amazon DSP as a way to connect their own customer and e-commerce data to Amazon’s retail media data. This means you can start to target audiences off-site who are most likely to buy later down the line – and the customers who abandon shopping carts on Amazon, but are still in the market as they browse.
Romina Dichio, Retail Media Search Manager at Pacvue says, “DSP retargeting is a powerful tactic to help brands reconnect with previous site visitors while continuing to build upper-funnel awareness in the post-holiday period. By pairing DSP campaigns with targeted incentives and deals, you can incentivize repeat purchases and build brand loyalty.”
Leaning into re-targeting methods can also help re-capture customers who were shopping during peak holiday periods and may need a restock. “Retailers like Instacart can specifically target new customers to their platform with their display offerings, helping broaden brand awareness across all categories,” shares Retail Media Manager Veronica Slater. “Since we tend to see an increased volume of new entry across retailers during the holiday period and new year, these retargeting tactics are a great way to capture those customers.”
2. Reach your off-site audiences with video and display ads.
On retail media networks, it’s all about Sponsored Product ads. Off-site ads give you a new format to showcase your product: specifically with display and video ad formats. You can use Amazon Marketing Cloud to build audiences who:
- Viewed your product
- Viewed a competitor’s product
- Search for specific categories
- Have made similar purchases
By building your audiences through AMC and then reaching them off-site, you can start to tap into potential new buyers and give them different ways to learn about your brand.
Ari Sperber, Sr. Retail Media Search Manager at Pacvue says, “Discounts are constant, and we know consumers are feeling overwhelmed. 74% of shoppers have abandoned a shopping cart in the last three months. With this, brands seeing success are advertising beyond the noise of onsite SERPs and winning across the web, on streaming, and more.”
3. Experiment with AI for Product Pages & Ad Creative.
At Pacvue, we’ve been working all year to make it easy for brands to integrate AI with advertising technology. Every brand is at a different stage when it comes to using AI, but one thing is for sure: AI-powered advertising is all about scalability and agility.
Here are some ideas to kick off the New Year with AI:
- Test AI-generated creative to come up with new ad creative concepts
- Use an AI chatbot to understand general reviews & sentiments about your brand and competitor brands
- Experiment with retailer AI chatbots to see where your brand might be recommended within the chat ecosystem
- Audit your product detail pages and see where AI might help produce new copy and creative opportunities
Want to know more about how AI can help you optimize your advertising for 2025? Learn more about how to leverage AI for retail media promotion here.
4. Build Loyalty with Seasonality Campaigns.
The biggest shopping season of the year might be over. But there is always something on the calendar for consumers with micro seasonal campaigns: New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, Prime Day, Back to School – there’s always a way to connect with consumers to stay top of mind.
If you’ve seen a lot of new shoppers in December, make sure to create an outreach strategy for them to keep them engaged all year long. The Pacvue team recommends:
- Retargeting ads for holiday customers who browsed but did not convert
- Promoting complementary products to customers
- Segmenting audiences based on their preferences, demographics, and shopping behavior
- Reward loyal customers with early access to future sales, sneak peeks, or exclusive events
- Audience-specific coupons for key vendors and sellers
Sr. Retail Media Search Manager Max Faucher says, “Customers who you first acquired with deals may still be price conscious. Test audience-driven coupons for vendors (bullseye coupons) and sellers (brand-tailored coupons) to run moderate discounts that will only appear to the customers you’re looking to build loyalty with.”
5. Use Your Customer Data to Go Omnichannel.
In a noisy retail world, every brand should focus on the best places to reach their customers. Some shoppers might be browsing websites. Others are following on social media.
But do you have email addresses for your new-to-brand customers? Are you able to reach them with SMS campaigns? Do you see specific activity across your mobile app? You can explore creating coupons or promotions targeted to different channels.
Retail Media Search Manager Alyssa Schafer says, “Keeping shoppers engaged after the holiday shopping rush requires brands to tailor their strategies to focus on personalized ads, value-driven interactions with customers, and consistent communication.”
By creating customized touchpoints for these audiences with a seamless experience across your online, mobile, and in-store channels, you can start getting engagement across the entire marketing funnel – and the entire year.
