Seasonal campaigns work best when they do more than promote a moment.
The strongest seasonal strategies share a few traits:
Why Seasonal Campaigns Matter for Loyalty
Seasonal periods create natural attention spikes.
Customers are already in a planning mindset.
They are looking for inspiration, ideas, and timely offers.
That makes seasonal campaigns one of the easiest ways to earn consideration.
But loyalty is not created by urgency alone.
Loyalty is created when the seasonal experience feels meaningful, frictionless, and worth repeating.
Seasonal marketing is not just “holiday marketing.”
It is aligning your message and experience to a predictable moment when behaviour shifts.
That moment can be cultural.
It can be calendar-driven.
It can be weather-driven.
It can also be tied to how customers live and shop across the year.
Seasonal marketing performs best when your campaign feels like a natural extension of your brand.
Forced seasonal work is easy to spot.
It can drive short-term clicks, but it rarely creates long-term loyalty.
Seasonal moments often carry meaning.
Customers use them to celebrate, reset, plan, and connect with others.
When a campaign helps customers express something they care about, it becomes memorable.
That memory becomes a reason to return.
“Driving loyalty and retention without relying on discounts requires creating emotional connections, exclusive experiences, and personalized value.”
— Chris Galloway, EVP Strategy & Design, Brandmovers
Seasonal traffic can bring in new audiences quickly.
The real win is what happens after the first purchase.
Your campaign should be designed to create a second action.
That might be a second purchase.
It might be enrolment.
It might be participation in a challenge.
It might be a follow-up offer tied to a clear next step.
“To turn first-time shoppers into loyal advocates, brands should focus on personalized onboarding, early wins (for the member), and encouraging ongoing engagement.”
— Chris Galloway, EVP Strategy & Design, Brandmovers
Seasonal loyalty grows when customers know what to expect.
Consistency creates anticipation.
Anticipation creates repeat engagement.
Repeat engagement creates loyalty.
That does not mean repeating the same creative every year.
It means repeating a recognisable seasonal “signature” that customers learn to look forward to.
Start with relevance.
If the seasonal moment does not connect to your product, your audience, or your values, it will feel like noise.
Map your year around moments where customers already need help, inspiration, or motivation.
Then pick the few you can execute well.
Seasonal campaigns fail when they try to do everything.
Pick one primary goal:
Everything in the campaign should reinforce that goal.
Seasonal success is rarely one message.
It is a sequence.
That sequence should carry customers from awareness to action to follow-up.
It should include reminders, progress cues, and reward moments.
It should also work across channels without becoming repetitive.
Seasonal loyalty is stronger when customers are rewarded for participating.
This can include purchase-linked earnings.
It can include challenges and milestones.
It can include limited-time unlocks.
It can include member-first access.
The key is making the value exchange clear and easy.
Personalisation does not need to be complex to work.
Start with small, high-impact inputs:
Then make the experience feel tailored.
Keep the customer in control.
Keep the messaging helpful.
“To educate customers about your loyalty program without overwhelming them, integrate messaging into natural touchpoints across the customer journey.”
— Chris Galloway, EVP Strategy & Design, Brandmovers
Seasonal moments are ideal for engagement mechanics.
Gameboards, instant wins, and challenges give customers reasons to return during the season.
Community mechanics like photo contests and UGC also work well because customers are already sharing seasonal moments.
The best campaigns do not just “broadcast.”
They invite participation.
This is where loyalty is won.
Seasonal buyers often disappear if the brand goes quiet after the moment ends.
Your post-season plan should include:
Seasonal campaigns perform better when they give customers a reason to return repeatedly during the window, not just shop once. DiGiorno needed a high-impact seasonal promotion that could drive sales and sustained engagement during National Pizza Month.
Brandmovers built a month-long promotion designed to maintain momentum across the entire seasonal period. The experience used a gamified gameboard structure that encouraged repeat participation and created a sense of progression over time. Purchase-linked engagement mechanics reinforced the connection between customer action and reward value, helping turn a seasonal moment into a sustained interaction cycle.
Key elements included gamification that rewarded repeat actions, instant-win style engagement that maintained interest across multiple visits, and mechanics that supported ongoing participation throughout the month. The approach was built to extend engagement beyond a single purchase event, which is a common failure point in seasonal campaigns that rely only on limited-time discounts.
The result was increased retail sales and sustained engagement tied directly to the seasonal moment. For marketers, the lesson is clear: seasonal loyalty improves when the experience is designed as a repeatable journey, with progression and incentives that keep customers active across the full campaign window.
URL: https://www.brandmovers.com/31-days-of-digiorno-case-study
Seasonal loyalty is not only driven by offers. It is also driven by participation, community, and brand interaction that feels natural to the moment. Fresh Express needed to increase brand engagement during the summer by creating a campaign that customers would actively join, not just view.
Brandmovers launched a photo-based UGC contest designed to encourage consumer participation during the seasonal period. The campaign used a simple behaviour prompt that fit the summer moment and made it easy for customers to contribute content. By making the seasonal experience interactive, the campaign created repeat touchpoints and a stronger emotional connection than a single-message promotion.
The promotion structure supported participation at scale while reinforcing brand presence during a time when consumer attention is close but fragmented across many seasonal competitors. UGC mechanics also created a compounding effect: each participant became a distribution channel, extending the campaign’s reach through authentic customer content rather than relying solely on paid impressions.
The outcome was increased consumer participation and improved brand engagement tied to the summer window. For marketers, this reinforces a key seasonal principle: community-driven mechanics can turn seasonal attention into loyalty by creating shared experiences customers want to repeat.
URL: https://www.brandmovers.com/fresh-express-summer-of-caesar-photo-contest-case-study
Brandmovers helps organisations turn seasonal campaigns into loyalty-building systems that increase repeat engagement, strengthen emotional connection, and drive measurable customer value beyond the seasonal window.
With over 20 years of expertise and the BLOYL™ enterprise loyalty platform, Brandmovers designs promotions, loyalty mechanics, and personalised engagement journeys that convert seasonal participation into long-term customer relationships.
Request a demo to see how Brandmovers can help your organisation apply these strategies in practice.