Endear Shows How Retailers Can Keep Holiday Shoppers
Retail CRM firm Endear says personalised outreach can help brands retain up to 70% of seasonal shoppers and convert holiday traffic into long-term loyalty.
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More than 202 million consumers shopped during the five-day holiday weekend from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday 2025, a record, according to the National Retail Federation. Yet while foot traffic reached new highs, retailers face a familiar problem: as many as 70 per cent of seasonal shoppers may be lost by spring.
To address that challenge, Endear, a retail customer-relationship management platform, has released the Endear Post-Holiday Playbook, a data-driven guide designed to help brands convert one-off holiday buyers into loyal, repeat customers.
The report draws on insights from more than 100 million SMS messages and 2.2 million clienteling interactions sent during Black Friday week 2025. Endear found that personalised, two-way communication significantly outperforms traditional mass marketing. Customers who received tailored outreach from store associates were 30 times more likely to make a purchase than those who received generic email or SMS blasts. Those efforts helped generate a 22 per cent year-on-year increase in clienteling-driven revenue.
“The biggest mistake in retail is treating the holiday season as a finish line,” said Leigh Sevin, co-founder of Endear. “The real opportunity begins after the sale—turning seasonal shoppers into lifetime customers. Retailers that focus on strategic, one-to-one outreach, thoughtful returns strategies, and ongoing engagement are far more likely to see long-term growth.”
Also Read: Crunch Time For Retailers As Holiday Shopping Days Approach
A Practical Road Map for Retention
Endear’s playbook outlines a series of steps aimed at helping retailers maintain momentum after the peak shopping period:
- Segment and prioritise customers. Group shoppers into categories such as first-time buyers, VIPs, and high-value customers to enable targeted outreach.
- Use returns as opportunities. Encourage exchanges over refunds, simplify policies, and follow up on returns to drive additional sales.
- Send personalised follow-ups. Check in with customers about recent purchases and schedule regular touchpoints to strengthen relationships.
- Measure and optimise. Track engagement and sales metrics to refine communication strategies over time.
As competition intensifies and acquisition costs rise, Endear argues that relationship-driven retail is becoming a critical differentiator. The company says its platform is now used by thousands of stores and has helped generate more than $1 billion in attributed sales.
“Managing post-holiday outreach used to be chaotic,” said James Bishop, director of retail at AG Adriano Goldschmied, Inc. “Endear makes it simple to segment customers, follow up, and actually see which actions drive repeat purchases. It has helped us turn our store locations into effective sales channels long after the holiday rush ends.”
