Holiday shopping is top of mind for retailers as they want to make it easy for consumers to shop for their products. Pura, a retailer that sells fragrance products, is preparing for the busy holiday shopping season well before Black Friday with its annual “Influencer Early Access” promotion.

The retailer’s promotion occurs November 1-2. Last year, influencers shared the promotion through their social media channels like TikTok. Shoppers were instructed to tap on the influencer’s link and type in a unique password to redeem the promotion.

Last year, influencers shared unique links and passwords for followers to use to redeem a buy one, get one free Pura diffuser with fragrances.

Sam Forrest, senior digital marketing manager, said the retailer is preparing for the holiday season with dedicated campaigns in Q3 and Q4 2023. In the third quarter, Pura is is focusing on promoting Pura Car, its new product for car fragrances. In Q4, it will be at LTK Con, an invite-only conference in September. LTK is a shopping app that connects influencers with brands; it hosts the conference.

“We are excited to position both Pura Car and the Pura Smart Fragrance Diffuser as must-have gifts for the holiday season,” Forrest said. “We will also be putting a large emphasis on gifting.” This includes specific sets and gift options that will be available for purchase to make shopping easy, she said.

Last year was a BOGO offer, but this year will be Pura’s “best deal of the year,” according to the retailer. The promotion was the brand’s biggest online sales period for 2022, Forrest said, without revealing more.

Holiday sales expected to grow in 2023

Accounting and consulting firm Deloitte projects holiday ecommerce sales will total between $278 billion and $284 billion between November and January. In 2022, holiday online sales grew 7.9% year over year to a total of $252 billion.

Deloitte also forecasts total holiday sales (in store and online) of retail and consumer products to total between $1.54 trillion and $1.56 trillion from November to January. The projected 3.5% and 4.6% year over year growth would be at a slower pace compared with 7.6% growth in 2022, due in part to inflation, said Daniel Bachman, Deloitte’s U.S. economic forecaster. “This means the total value of retail sales will grow more slowly than last year,” he said.

Pura launched its “Influencer Early Access” promotion well before the holiday season last year, too. This is part of a larger trend of retailers starting promotions well before the season to encourage early holiday spending.

Ted Vaughan, assurance market leader at BDO, says he thinks the holiday season is going to start earlier once again this year.

“I mean, it’s already started; I don’t think that’s going to die away,” Vaughan said. “I don’t think it’s going to lose its steam. And one of the reasons is because of the consumer purchasing power, as it’s gone down.

Early holiday spending is trending

Rodney Mason, head of marketing and brand partnerships at LTK, said the shopping app is working with retailers to prepare for the holiday season.

“We are working with retailers much earlier to get holiday messaging in the market sooner and in new and different ways to address shifts in consumer shopping behaviors,” Mason said. “We found in our recent holiday shopper study that a large portion of the general population intend to begin holiday shopping by September to afford them more time to find better-quality values this year.”

38% of shoppers are planning to start holiday shopping as early as September, a 25% increase from 2022, according to the LTK study. LTK conducted the holiday survey on June 30, 2023 with 1,136 of consumers identified as Gen Z and Millennials.

Vaughan added that retailers have found it better in previous years to provide flexibility by marketing early promotions. By promoting the holiday season earlier, he said, retailers lengthen the amount of time for consumer spending. It can be challenging for consumers to spend their holiday budgets all in November, he said.

Vaughan said the omnichannel experience is increasingly important to holiday online sales.

“Something like Black Friday has become less of an event, right?” Vaughan said. “And so coming into the store has now been replaced in large part by online sales.”

Abbas Haleem contributed to this article.

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data with this quick survey and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.