Getting Your Loyalty Program Ready for the Holidays

Holiday loyalty planning is the work of preparing a loyalty program for the year's peak season: getting systems and offers ready before traffic arrives, turning seasonal shoppers into members, engaging existing members through a crowded few weeks, and keeping the new members once the season ends. For many consumer and retail brands, the holidays bring more traffic and more first-time buyers than any other period, so they are the program's best chance to grow, and the time when weak preparation is most visible.

There is a catch. Members who join for a one-off seasonal deal or to buy a gift have the weakest reason to come back, which puts them at particular risk of lapsing once the season ends. That is why the real measure of a holiday season is not how many members joined in December, but how many are still active in the first quarter. Getting a program ready for the holidays means preparing for both the rush and what comes after it.

This guide is written mainly for consumer and retail brands, for whom late-year holidays are a genuine peak. B2B channel programs often peak at fiscal year-end instead, and other categories have their own seasons; the same principles apply to whenever a program's peak occurs.

For brands whose peak falls at the holidays, the season concentrates opportunity into a few weeks. More new customers come through the door, more existing members are shopping, and intent to spend and to give is high. A program that is ready can enroll, engage, and learn from more people in that window than at almost any other time.

The value of getting those customers into the program is real. Deloitte's 2026 loyalty research found that 80% of the loyalty program members it surveyed say they get more from a brand because of its loyalty program; that finding comes from people who are already members, so it describes what a program can offer the holiday joiners it keeps, not what every seasonal sign-up will experience. The same research found that 89% of Gen Z and 87% of millennial program members are willing to share personal information for tailored offers, which suggests a short preference question at enrollment is worth asking, provided the program then uses the answers and, in California, explains the terms in a notice of financial incentive.

The pressure is just as real. Every brand is competing for the same attention, volumes strain systems and staff, and members forget programs they are not reminded of: in Forrester's June 2022 data snapshot, 38% of US online adults said that in 2021 they often forgot to use loyalty programs they had joined, 15 percentage points more than in 2019. A new member who hears nothing after the holidays has little to keep the program in mind by February.

Holiday readiness is decided in the months before the season, not the weeks during it. A simple timeline keeps preparation on track.

Operations deserve the same attention as marketing. Before the peak, check that:

• Systems can handle the load: enrollment, earning, and redemption should be tested at the volumes the season is expected to bring, not at normal traffic.
• Fraud monitoring is in place: high-value seasonal offers attract duplicate accounts and abuse, so set limits and watch for unusual patterns.
• Customer service is briefed: front-line and support staff should know the holiday offers, the enrollment pitch, and the answers to common questions.
• Returns are handled in the rules: some holiday purchases come back as returns in January, so decide in advance how points earned on returned items are reversed, and tell members. Decide too whether points are earned when a gift card is bought or when it is spent, so the same dollars do not earn twice.

The holidays bring a wave of shoppers who are not yet members, and turning them into members is the season's first opportunity; keeping them is the real prize. The mechanics are the same as any enrollment, made effortless and rewarding, but the volume and timing are different. Invite shoppers to join at the moments they are already engaged, at checkout, on the receipt, or in the order confirmation, keep the sign-up short, and tie it to a holiday incentive with a clear, immediate benefit.

Gifts add a wrinkle. Many holiday buyers are shopping for someone else, so the person paying is not always the person who will use the product. Treat the buyer and the recipient as two different opportunities: reward the buyer for the purchase, and give the recipient a reason to join, for example through an insert or a gift receipt with an enrollment offer. Let the recipient join on their own terms rather than enrolling them from contact details the buyer provided.

Promotions can work as an enrollment engine. Gerber's Feeling Gerber Good promotion, a 40-day content-led sweepstakes in which viewers who finished a daily mom-and-baby wellness video could register or log in to MyGerber to enter, saw one-third of entrants create new MyGerber accounts and more than 70% opt in to future communications (metrics disclosed by Brandmovers). It was not a holiday campaign, and entry ran through a MyGerber account, which is part of why accounts followed; a holiday enrollment drive can borrow that design by making program sign-up the way to enter.

Not every holiday joiner will stay, and some will join only for the discount. That is normal; the aim is to make the offer worth taking for shoppers who might become regular members, not to maximize sign-ups at any cost.

Beyond acquisition, the season is a chance to deepen engagement with existing members, using mechanics suited to the moment.

Gifting is the mechanic most specific to the season: rewarding members for giving, and making it easy to share rewards or refer friends, turns holiday generosity into program growth. If members can transfer points or gift rewards to others, set clear terms for who can receive them, how long they last, and what happens if they are not used. Limited-time bonuses and short holiday challenges keep members engaged through a busy few weeks, as long as the offers are honest about their deadlines.

On BLOYL™, Brandmovers' loyalty platform, the promotions builder runs sweepstakes, contests, instant wins, and bonus events alongside the loyalty program, so a seasonal campaign can run on the same platform as the program it feeds.

Seasonal promotions carry legal obligations. Instant wins and sweepstakes are chance promotions regulated by state law; where buying something earns a chance to win, brands typically offer a free way to enter as well, and federal law requires mailed sweepstakes to state clearly that no purchase is necessary to enter and that a purchase will not improve the chances of winning (39 U.S.C. § 3001(k)); the state rules apply however the promotion is delivered. California adds a privacy step: the California Attorney General warned in 2022 that a program offering discounts or perks for consumers' personal data must explain its material terms in a notice of financial incentive before anyone signs up. Official rules and state registration are covered in the legal guide to sweepstakes and contests. This is general information and not legal advice; confirm requirements with qualified legal counsel before launch.

For brands whose peak falls at the holidays, the season is a loyalty program's biggest opportunity, but only for those that prepare for it and plan past it. Get ready before the rush, turn the season's shoppers into members, engage them with mechanics suited to the moment, keep promotions within the rules, and, above all, have a plan to keep the members the season brings. Judge the result in the first quarter, not in December, and the holidays become a lasting addition to the program rather than a spike.

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