The holiday season is one of the most lucrative and competitive times of the year for app marketers. With users in the mood to browse, buy, travel and celebrate, it’s a golden window to capture attention, installs and drive engagement.
As shoppers embrace giveaways, experiences, self-improvement and more, this period offers the best opportunity to connect your app with seasonal behaviors—but success depends on how effectively you plan and execute.
By developing tailored mobile user acquisition strategies and creative campaigns that resonate with the festival mindset, you can solidify visibility, fuel app installs, and turn short-term peaks into long-term growth.
In this blog, we’ll explore how to create high-performing seasonal campaigns that resonate with the festive spirit and keep your app top of mind during the busiest shopping season of the year.
The key path
- Adapt creatives and messaging to seasonal moods and trends.
- Use limited-time offers to drive urgency and engagement.
- Upweight marketing budgets to take advantage of peak seasonal activity.
- Leverage user-generated content (UGC) to increase authenticity and reach.
- Optimize Apple search ads and custom product pages to maximize visibility.
Upgrade your creations to match the season
To stay competitive and maximize results, your creative approach must reflect the holiday spirit. Consumers are actively looking for seasonal inspiration, so aligning your visuals, copy and value proposition with the period can dramatically increase engagement.
1. Seasonal visuals
Incorporating festive design elements like colors, typography and imagery helps your app feel relevant and timely. Use holiday cues that create an emotional connection, ensuring brand loyalty and balance.
Pair this with seasonal messaging that gets attention, whether it’s highlighting limited-time features, discounts, or ways your app can enhance the holidays. Well, these creatives indicate that your app is current, relevant and part of the seasonal excitement.
2. Thematic messaging
Adapt your tone and messaging to reflect the joy and energy of the season. Phrases like “get in the holiday spirit” or “make gift giving easy this year” can help your campaign feel conversational and relevant. If you’ve added new features or updated your app for the holidays, make sure they’re clearly displayed in your ad copy and store listings. It’s a great way to let customers (new and returning) know you have fresh and relevant content, products and deals for the season.
3. Create value for customers
Ask yourself how your app adds value during the holidays. Whether it’s helping customers manage gift lists, discover deals, or stay organized, discuss the benefits. The goal is to make your app useful, not just festive.
4. Limited time offer
Special promotions and time-sensitive deals are powerful conversion drivers. Use clear CTAs “Limited Time Offer” or “ends soon” to create urgency. In your visuals, spotlight seasonal product or app features as well as these offers.
For example, Mixbook – an online photo book and personalized gift creation platform – ran a campaign to get paid off with a 50% holiday offer during the holiday season. The combination of festive imagery and a compelling presentation helped achieve brand capture with high intent when purchase intent peaked.
Source: Mixbook Facebook Ads
Top up your budget for seasonal campaigns
The holidays are not a time of evenly distributed spending. Competition is high, but so is opportunity, meaning strategic budget allocation is key.
Focus your spend on where you can get the most impact and focus on high-performing channels and audiences rather than spreading budget thinly. A good approach might be to prioritize one or two paid acquisition channels that align closely with your top-performing segments, to ensure you’re investing where the impact will be greatest.
For example:
- Travel apps Often see spikes in December and again in January, when consumers plan New Year’s trips. Increasing budget during these moments ensures that you capture high-intent customers when they are most likely to convert.
- Shopping apps Frontload investments should occur in November and early December to align with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas activity. Visibility during these periods provides a stronger ROI than fixed year-round expenses.
By investing more heavily during high-intent windows, you’re positioning your app to be seen when users are most motivated to take action.
Source: Jet2 Holidays Christmas screenshots
Leverage user-generated content (UGC) to drive engagement
Seasonal campaigns don’t have to rely solely on paid creatives. User-generated content adds authenticity, builds trust, and stretches your budget further.
UGC allows users to share real experiences, and during the holidays, these organic stories resonate more than any brand-produced ad.
Some ways you can use user-generated content effectively:
- Showcase genuine testimonials: Feature authentic reviews in your App Store listings and ads. For example, a productivity app can highlight how users manage their vacation planning with ease.
- Run holiday-themed contests: Encourage users to share festive photos or stories tied to your app, such as “Best Holiday Recipe” or “Gift Guide Challenge.”
- Create a Holiday Hashtag Campaign: Create a seasonal hashtag to increase visibility and encourage sharing.
- Feature user success stories: Share real examples of how users benefited from your app during past holiday seasons to demonstrate real-world value.
- Include UGC in Ads: Ads featuring real users often generate creative in engagement and CTR.
Advantages of UGC:
- Wider reach: User posts expose your app to their personal networks.
- Increased trust: Audiences are more likely to trust peer recommendations over branded messages.
- Cost Effectiveness: Reproducing authentic content reduces production costs.
- High engagement: UGC naturally blends into social feeds and generally generates high engagement on social media.
Use Apple Search Ads to accelerate your seasonal growth
Apple Search Ads (ASA) are one of the most effective ways to reach high-intent users, people already searching for apps like yours. During the holidays, when search behavior changes and competition increases, it’s important to improve your ASA strategy.
- Seasonal Keyword Research: Identify seasonal search terms and trends using ASO tools. Keywords like “holiday planner,” “gift ideas,” or “Christmas shopping” can unlock new audiences during this period.
- Seasonal Custom Product Pages (CPP): Custom Product Pages allow you to tailor visuals and messaging for specific keywords or campaigns. Update your CPP with festive creatives, special offers, or limited-time product features to deliver a more relevant user experience.
- Plan for high competition: Expect CPCs to increase during peak seasons, so factor this into your forecast. To maintain ROI, prioritize creative testing – visuals, messaging and offers that can help you convert at high rates when competition is strong.
Maximizing the lifetime value of seasonal installers
Seasonal campaigns can generate huge bursts of installs, but the real value is in retention. Many customers acquired during holiday periods are motivated by discounts or limited-time offers—meaning they run the risk of churning once the promotions end.
To combat this, segment your initial and design retention campaigns around the behavior of the seasoned installer:
- Offer special post-season promotions or loyalty rewards.
- Send out early access invitations to upcoming sales or events.
- Reinforce values with personalized push notifications or in-app messages that highlight ongoing benefits.
By nurturing these users beyond the vacation period, you can turn one-time installs into long-term, high-value customers.
Seasonal growth beyond retail
While shopping and e-commerce apps experience the biggest holiday peaks, seasonal user acquisition opportunities exist in almost every vertical. The key is to identify the moments that matter most to your audience and align your campaign strategy around them.
Travel and Experiences: December and January are planning months. Apps can use narratives like “avoid the cold” or “plan your next adventure” to capture high-intent travelers and early-year bookings.
Fitness and Wellness: A new year is synonymous with a fresh start. Fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness apps can leverage this momentum through “reset” or “new normal” messaging.
Finance and Money Management: After the holiday spending rush, consumers often turn to budgeting and saving. Finance apps can position themselves as the go-to solution to take control in January.
Entertainment and streaming: With more time spent at home, apps in entertainment, gaming and streaming can highlight shared experiences, relaxation or discovery.
Food and Delivery: From festive treats to New Year’s Eve get-togethers, delivery and recipe apps can add convenience, celebration, and seasonal delights.
Productivity and Learning: As goals and resolutions are formed in early Q1, these apps can help users stay organized, productive and inspired.
The result
The holiday season presents a unique opportunity for app marketers to connect with consumers at scale, but seizing this opportunity requires strategy, timing and creativity.
From festive creatives and limited-time offers to smart budget allocation, user-generated content, and Apple Search ads, every element of your customer acquisition strategy must work together to maximize performance.
And remember, seasonality isn’t just about the holidays, it’s about seizing the moments. By aligning your app marketing with user behavior and mindset throughout the year, you can create campaigns that not only drive downloads but also sustain growth long after the festive season ends.