Digital product sampling strategies for the 2025 holiday season

This year, holiday season shopping is expected to start as early as September. This means, if you haven’t already started planning your 2025 holiday season marketing campaigns, now is your sign to start! Don’t worry, though, we’ve got you covered. We’ve pulled together some digital product sampling strategies for this year’s holiday season to help you stand out from the festive crowd.

Why try digital product sampling this year?

According to reports, this year’s holiday season is expected to be incredibly competitive. Given the growing lack of trust in marketing and advertising, coupled with cost-consciousness due to ongoing tariff confusion, consumers are seeking value and engaging early with promotions. 

Digital product sampling lends itself to meeting consumers' needs in a unique way. Not only will a campaign increase brand awareness and grow your marketing database, it will also keep you top of mind when your target audience starts purchasing this year’s holiday gifts.

For example, we helped Tanqueray boost awareness of its delicious gin, which in turn, drove sales during the holiday season:

• Just two weeks after sampling, 89% of consumers had purchased a full-size bottle
• 81% had recommended the gin to a friend!

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Digital product sampling strategies for 2025

1. The virtual try on (VTO) and augmented reality experience

VTO and AR technology allows customers to “try on” products virtually. For companies launching a new make up product for the holidays, this method of digital product sampling lets consumers find and sample their perfect shade, without having to leave their home!

This is a great way to engage with audiences in the run-up to the busy holiday season and helps address a key online shopping challenge (the ability to physically interact with a product). Virtual try-on and augmented reality increase engagement and create a fun and interactive shopping experience, particularly appealing during the stressful holiday shopping season.

At SoPost, we typically see a 27% boost in shade-matching accuracy and a 57% increase in post-trial purchases, compared to campaigns that use traditional shade selectors. This holiday season, you could create a holiday-themed AR filter or VTO to create a digital product sampling campaign with a festive twist.

2. Product bundles 

Consumers are looking for value this year, and product bundling is the ultimate digital product sampling strategy that converts. Think about it, it’s a win-win situation: consumers get a taste of a high-value sample, while your brand can showcase multiple products before the holiday season even starts.

You’ll also find that most consumers will be more than happy to pay a small fee to cover shipping costs, too, given the high-value nature of product bundles. This strategy also helps offset fulfillment costs for high-value samples - like we say, win-win. Still not convinced?

A SoPost campaign for a popular haircare brand offered a bundle of three full-sized product samples and resulted in:

• 100,000 bundles claimed in just six weeks
• The campaign going viral on TikTok, with hundreds of videos and influencers sharing the brand and products
• 77% of consumers saying they’d switch to the brand as their new go-to
• 69% saying they’re likely to buy the products in the next six months

For this holiday season, why not consider a holiday gift sample, or even a stocking stuffer bundle that includes a mixture of your most popular items and new samples?

3. Get one, gift one digital product sampling

92% of people trust friend and family recommendations over brand decisions when it comes to buying decisions, and as we know, consumer trust in traditional advertising and marketing is eroding. A get one, gift one sampling campaign helps bridge the gap between consumer trust and generates a lot of word-of-mouth marketing, and expands your reach to new potential customers through people they already trust.

It’s also incredibly fitting with the spirit of the season - giving! Get one, gift one digital product sampling campaigns are simple: a consumer completes a request to claim a sample, and are then prompted to gift a sample to a loved one with a heartfelt message via email, text or WhatsApp.

At SoPost, we’ve achieved 100% marketing opt-in rates across some of our 'get one, gift one' campaigns.

4. Sweepstakes & giveaways

Competitions like this make great digital product sampling campaigns. Here’s why: they give consumers a chance to win a product while generating buzz around your brand - this helps grow your marketing database ahead of the holiday season.

It also means that, because you’re only hand-selecting a few winners, these campaigns also keep your sample fulfillment costs in check.

This is a very popular way to work with influencers and social media to promote your giveaway, and once it’s closed, you can target your new, engaged leads with tempting holiday promotions.

A popular cleaning brand worked with us to give away bundles of their new spring collection, which attracted over 56,000 entries in just two weeks! 74% of those also signed up to the brand’s marketing database.

5. Email marketing campaigns

Did you know that over 50% of consumers buy from marketing emails at least once a month? For loyal customers, offering a sample keeps your brand front of mind throughout the festive period, and helps you stand out in a flooded inbox of holiday promotions.

It’s also a great way to rekindle relationships with those who you haven’t heard from in a while… 

But why stop there?

You can also tap into third-party audiences by sampling through other retailer, publisher and community databases. 

These databases, such as Boots, Who What Wear and Unidays, are full of high-intent, engaged consumers waiting to participate in your holiday promotions. We typically see an average of one paying customer for every seven samples through targeted email marketing campaigns.

Our community sampling campaigns alone generate an average review and feedback rate of 36% - significantly higher than the industry benchmark.

6. Omni-channel experiences!

Around half of UK shoppers plan to spend the same on festive purchases as last year, with around 22% planning to spend more. In North America, 35% of people are set to boost their gift spending in 2025. By launching a digital product sampling campaign with omni-channel experiences at the forefront, you’re able to bridge the online-offline gap and engage consumers at every touchpoint, during the busiest retail period of the year. Here are some suggestions:

• Integrate sampling ads across popular retail websites
• Targeted social media posts from popular retailer social accounts
• Influencer video claiming a sample in-store
• Email marketing campaigns to relevant, high-intent shoppers 
• In-store QR codes linking your online sampling campaign

At SoPost, we work with some of the biggest retailers in the world, including Macy’s and Bloomingdales, to tap into relevant, high-intent audiences as they browse online. We’ve helped brands like Philosophy generate an incredible 3.2x return on their investment through our retail partnerships.