The marketer’s guide to stress-free holiday campaigns

The pressure (and the potential) of holiday marketing

For marketers, the holiday season doesn’t begin in December; it starts six months earlier, when no one’s quite ready to think about snowflakes or gift wrap. Planning holiday campaigns this far in advance is a balancing act: you’re expected to anticipate customer behavior, align your team, and prep your tech for one of the busiest (and most profitable) times of the year.

Most marketing departments are lean, with nearly half (46%) having just 5–10 people and 21% being run by a single marketer. Add in the complexity of shifting budgets and increasing customer expectations, and the workload can feel overwhelming.

With teams stretched thin, prepping early for the holiday season sets you up for less stress and better results. That’s where automation and AI can make a real difference. These tools take care of repetitive, time-consuming tasks like predicting customer behaviors, refining segments, optimizing send times, or adapting content for different audiences, so you can focus on strategy and creativity.

However, even with these powerful tools at their disposal, marketers still face significant hurdles. While 83% of marketers say they’re optimistic about hitting their goals, that optimism is often tempered by messy data, resource constraints, and siloed teams. The difference between those who thrive and those who struggle comes down to one thing: how well they prepare their people and their tech ahead of the holiday rush.

Turn messy data into meaningful segments

In our latest report, The secret lives of marketing teams, 86% of marketers say they experience issues with data confidence. From inconsistent formatting and siloed systems to simply not knowing which data to use to improve a campaign, it’s clear that data causes headaches for marketers everywhere. 

This is where AI takes the pressure off. Instead of spending hours digging through your data, building complicated, granular segments, AI segment templates build customer cohorts based on eRFM insights (engagement, recency, frequency, and monetary data). This means, with just the click of a button, you can identify and target your most high-value customers, and those most in need of nurturing. And it doesn’t stop there.

This is the season of the sale, and you can close even more by tapping into AI’s predictive analytics to inform your campaigns. Using predictions like the next likely order date, you can reach customers with targeted campaigns at the optimal time for conversion during the holidays.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a data scientist to put all of this into action. AI-assisted templates help you turn messy data into clear, actionable audiences. Instead of second-guessing which fields to use or worrying about inconsistent formats, you can rely on AI to surface the groups that matter most, leaving you and your team free to focus on campaign ideas.

Benefits of AI-assisted segmentation

• Target campaigns based on real behavior, not hunches
• Personalize content without creating endless lists of audiences
• Save hours of manual work, so your team can focus on strategy

Segmentation isn’t just a pre-campaign chore; it’s the foundation of meaningful personalization. And with AI, it doesn’t have to eat up your time.

Deliver relevant messages at scale

When the holiday season hits, marketers are under pressure to be everywhere at once: email, SMS, web, retargeting. With small teams, it can feel impossible to keep up. It doesn’t help that 40% of marketers admit they don’t use their marketing tools to their full potential, so when the busiest time of the year arrives, it’s no wonder marketers feel overwhelmed.

The one tool that should never be left underused is your automation platform. Building one-off, batch-and-blast campaigns is time-consuming on a normal day. During the holidays, it becomes unsustainable. Automated flows keep campaigns running in the background, engaging customers at the right moments, while you focus on creative strategy and last-minute pivots.

But efficiency is only half the story. Automation and personalization go hand in hand: automation ensures messages are delivered at the right time, while personalization ensures they land with impact. A timely abandoned-cart reminder, a loyalty discount, or a replenishment nudge can feel far more personal than simply dropping a first name into the subject line.

As the pressure builds, tapping deeper into your automation tools gives you the support you need. Think of your automation platform as an extension of your team. But one that never sleeps, never panics, and always delivers messages right when customers are ready to hear them.

Essential automation flows to build before the holidays

• Welcome series: make a great first impression with new subscribers
• Cart abandonment:  recover high-intent shoppers before they drift away
• Browse abandonment: remind customers of products they viewed but didn’t add to cart
• Post-purchase: build loyalty with thank-yous, product care tips, or upsells
• Win-back campaigns: re-engage lapsed customers with personalized offers after sales are over to keep revenue rolling in

Automation isn’t just about working faster or smarter. It’s about creating personalized, relevant experiences at scale without adding to your workload.

Optimize campaigns as you go

 Holiday shoppers behave differently from your everyday customers: they browse more, buy faster, and expect super relevant experiences. To keep these new shoppers engaged, your campaigns need to adapt in real time, reacting to audience behavior as it happens. That’s where AI comes in: it helps you adjust messaging, timing, and creative on the go, boosting engagement and driving results.

In fact, 44% of marketers say AI has already made them more effective, proving that it’s not just a subject line generator but a real driver of campaign performance.

Testing is no longer limited to manual A/B subject line experiments. With AI, you can generate multiple subject line variations instantly and run split tests to see what resonates best with different segments. This means you spend less time guessing and more time learning and applying those insights at speed.

Optimization isn’t just about tweaking a subject line, either. With AI campaign translation, you can expand your reach into new markets quickly, without the delays of traditional translation workflows. That’s time saved and opportunities gained, especially when international customers are hunting for the perfect holiday deal.

AI insights go beyond clicks and opens; they predict when a customer is likely to buy next. Instead of waiting until January to see what worked, you can make changes mid-season and see results right away.

Ways to optimize with AI this holiday season

• Split-test AI-generated subject lines to boost engagement
• Leverage predictive insights (e.g., next likely purchase date) to target high-intent customers
• Use AI translation tools to launch multilingual campaigns faster and reach new markets
• Identify underperforming campaigns quickly and adjust before peak days hit

AI doesn’t just make optimization possible; it makes it easy, turning complex, time-consuming tasks into quick wins you can scale.

Get your team and tech ready

Holiday campaigns may run for just a couple of months, but the prep often starts far earlier to make sure the right technology is in place. That means Marketing can’t go it alone. Collaboration with IT and Finance is crucial if you want the systems, integrations, and budget approvals ready before the holiday rush.

During our research for ‘The secret lives of marketing teams’, marketers said IT and Finance are among the hardest departments to collaborate with. Yet these are the teams that hold the keys: IT keeps your systems running smoothly, while Finance ensures the budget is available for new tools or expanded usage. Without them on side, holiday readiness can stall before campaigns even leave the planning board.

Marketers also need to frame success in a way that resonates with Finance. While ROI is important, it isn’t the top metric for most marketing teams. According to our research, engagement and brand awareness lead the way. That means Finance teams need to see the bigger picture: investments in the right tools don’t just drive immediate conversions, they also fuel long-term growth by strengthening brand trust and customer loyalty.

The good news is alignment doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to be intentional. Building relationships with IT and Finance early gives you a smoother path to the tech you need and fewer last-minute surprises.

Practical steps to align with IT and Finance before the holidays

• Share your roadmap early: give IT and Finance visibility on planned campaigns and seasonal spikes
• Frame martech requests in their language: focus on security, scalability, and ROI rather than just “nice-to-have” features
• Involve them in tool evaluations: IT can assess integrations, while Finance can weigh cost vs. return
• Set shared success metrics: tie campaign outcomes (like revenue or efficiency gains) back to both IT stability and Finance goals

Aligning early with IT and Finance is the fastest way to secure the tech foundation you need for a truly successful holiday season.

Turn holiday pressure into opportunity

Holiday marketing will always come with pressure: small teams stretched thin, data that doesn’t always play nice, and customers with higher expectations than ever. But those challenges aren’t roadblocks; they’re opportunities to explore new tech and ways of working.

Here’s how you can turn today’s marketing challenges into tomorrow’s competitive edge:

• AI-assisted segmentation turns messy data into clear, actionable audiences
• Automation and personalization tools free your team from manual tasks while making every message feel more relevant
• AI-powered testing and optimization keep campaigns fresh and effective throughout the season
• Early alignment with IT and Finance ensures you have the tech and budget foundations in place well before the first festive campaign goes live

With preparation that combines automation, AI, personalization, and collaboration, you’ll do more than just survive the holiday rush; you can thrive in it. By letting your tech take on more of the heavy lifting, you’ll deliver campaigns that scale, stay relevant, and drive results without burning out your team.