Unlocking holiday sales: Maximizing e-commerce strategies for consumer demand & business growth

Magic Tu, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Appier

The holiday season represents a peak sales period for e-commerce. However, in a rapidly evolving market with ever-changing consumer demands and fierce competition, businesses must maximize results with limited budgets, identify effective customer acquisition strategies, and achieve sustainable growth.

Appier, a frontrunner in AI solutions, utilizes AI-driven data analytics and strategic insights to help brands and e-commerce platforms understand consumer needs, optimize promotional strategies, and stand out during the competitive holiday season. Magic Tu, SVP of Appier Global Sales, shares key promotional insights from years of experience to empower marketing and advertising professionals to achieve exceptional results.

Three key questions for building a winning strategy

When crafting a holiday sales strategy, Tu emphasizes the importance of revisiting the brand's core value and addressing three fundamental questions:

1. Why should consumers purchase from me?
2. Why are consumers not purchasing from me?
3. How can I encourage repurchases?

Answering these questions clarifies consumer motivations and pain points, laying the foundation for a focused and effective strategy.

Cross-border e-commerce: A strategic scenario

• Insights: Why purchase vs. Why not purchase?
  In cross-border e-commerce, consumers are drawn to platforms due to product uniqueness, brand diversity, and competitive pricing. However, barriers such as international transaction fees, high shipping costs, complex logistics, long delivery times, and cumbersome return processes often discourage purchases.

• Pre-holiday phase: Addressing purchase barriers
  To mitigate these challenges, cross-border e-commerce platforms can introduce solutions, such as 'free shipping zones' or 'express services" not only reduce festivals. For instance, free shipping on minimum orders, local dispatch options, and hassle-free returns for defective items significantly enhance confidence shopping experience.
• Warm-up phase: Amplify purchase incentives
  As the holiday season begins, the 'warm-up phase' reinforces the reasons consumers should buy. Platforms emphasize their unique advantages, such as early access to exclusive deals, welcome discounts for first-time shoppers and site-wide free shipping. These initiatives aim to attract new and returning customers, build anticipation and drive initial engagement.
• Sales peak phase: Strengthen incentives for consumer purchase
  During the 'sales peak phase,' platforms intensify efforts to maximize purchase incentives through aggressive promotions and strategic ad placements, including lowest-price guarantees, cashback offers, free returns and doorstep pickup services, exclusive discount codes and promotional giveaways. The communication goal is to make cross-border shopping as seamless and straightforward as local purchases.
• Post-holiday phase: Driving repurchases and long-term loyalty
  In the 'repurchase phase,' platforms focus on driving customer loyalty and repurchases through two key approaches:
  • Creating demand: To increase shopping motivation, recommend related or complementary products (e.g., moisturizers, storage solutions).
  • Reminding demand: Timely nudges for product repurchase (e.g., face masks, coffee).

These strategies effectively address initial purchasing barriers while building a foundation for sustained customer membership and revenue growth.

Image: Analysis of overseas cross-border e-commerce advertising strategies

Building core strategy with consumer insights

Addressing the three core questions aims to gain a deeper understanding of consumer motivations and consistently reinforce those connections. In a competitive market, brands must establish a precise and memorable positioning, whether through value for money, product uniqueness, delivery speed, or exceptional after-sales service.

Key communication focus across four phases of the holiday sales cycle:

1. Pre-holiday phase: before the holiday sales begin, to attract new customers and address why consumers might hesitate to purchase.
2. Warm-up phase: once the holiday sales begin, the key strategy is to reinforce why consumers should choose this platform, emphasizing unique value propositions to attract new and returning customers.
3. Sales peak phase: during the peak sales period, the emphasis shifts to maximizing these incentives, driving conversions, increasing average order value and boosting overall revenue.
4. Repurchase phase: in the final phase, the focus is on creating and reminding demand, encouraging repurchases, and strengthening brand loyalty to ensure long-term customer retention.

Consumer experience: beyond the transaction
In the digital age, the consumer journey begins long before the actual purchase. From the first ad impression to receiving a coupon or searching for relevant apps, every touchpoint contributes to the overall experience. This requires brands to establish consistent, long-term communication instead of focusing solely on one-off ad campaigns or transactions.

Key success factors

The key to successfully encouraging new customers to make repurchases lies in ensuring that the content of early advertising communication aligns with the actual first-time purchasing experience and that the overall shopping process is smooth and seamless.

For example, concise and impactful banner ads during the morning commute can leave a strong impression about the upcoming shopping festival. Pushing social media ads can capture attention and highlight key promotional offers at lunchtime. In the evening, leverage video ads to communicate multiple incentives, such as welcome discounts for new customers, order value-based discounts, and payment perks. Businesses can significantly enhance consumer motivation and drive purchasing actions by consistently delivering the right message at the right time on the right platform.

On the other hand, a seamless shopping experience directly impacts customer satisfaction. This includes whether consumers can easily find their desired products, complete the checkout process smoothly, and access convenient return and exchange services. This is especially critical for categories with higher purchasing complexity, such as apparel. A refined and user-friendly experience can effectively reduce shopping barriers, improve overall satisfaction, and further drive repeat purchases and long-term brand loyalty.

Data integration for a seamless consumer experience
Many brands still face challenges with fragmented data across websites, apps, instant messaging tools, and CRM systems. To achieve a 360-degree consumer view, AI must connect these data points, optimize every consumer touchpoint, and create a consistent data ecosystem. This ensures that every advertising investment addresses purchase barriers, strengthens incentives, and drives measurable returns.

Looking Ahead
Appier is committed to unlocking the value of data, bringing technology closer to commercial applications, and enabling brands and e-commerce professionals to create a genuinely consumer-centric, all-encompassing experience with intuitive, user-friendly marketing tools.

About Appier
Appier is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to power business decision-making. Founded in 2012 with a vision of democratizing AI, Appier’s mission is turning AI into ROI by making software intelligent. Appier now has 17 offices across APAC, Europe, and the U.S., and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Ticker number: 4180). Visit www.appier.com for more information.