--- title: Rare Beauty and the holiday campaign playbook: how the campaign type works | RGM® url: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/case-studies/rare-beauty-holiday-campaign/ updated: 2026-06-10 source_html: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/case-studies/rare-beauty-holiday-campaign/ --- - **Story:** Rare Beauty is the worked example here for a holiday campaign campaign: what it is, how it runs, and what the numbers say. - **Why it matters:** A holiday campaign campaign rewards teams that plan against category data instead of guessing. - **Takeaway:** Most holiday campaign-campaign failures are planning failures, not creative failures. - **Takeaway:** The mechanics of a holiday campaign campaign transfer to any brand in beauty and personal care. - **Takeaway:** For Rare Beauty, reach is an input; incremental lift against a baseline is the real measure. ## How a holiday campaign campaign plays out for Rare Beauty S Situation The setup A holiday campaign campaign is a concentrated chance to move the Rare Beauty business in beauty and personal care, with a short window and high stakes. T Task The objective Turn attention into measurable demand for Rare Beauty: plan the mechanics, set targets against category benchmarks, and build in the measurement. A Action The execution Calendar lock by Halloween. Creative, media plans, inventory, and channel activation are finalised six to nine months ahead. By late October nothing moves except spend. For Rare Beauty, this is the anchor of the plan. R Result The scoreboard On incremental lift against a baseline for Rare Beauty, not reach and not impressions. That is the honest scoreboard for a holiday campaign campaign. ## The math behind a Rare Beauty holiday campaign campaign $0B What the public data tells a Rare Beauty team US online holiday sales reached a record $257.8 billion across November and December 2025 Source: [Adobe Analytics](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season) $0B A reference point for Rare Beauty forecasting Black Friday drove $11.8 billion in US online sales in 2025 Source: [Adobe Analytics](https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record) $0B A planning anchor for Rare Beauty Buy Now Pay Later drove $1.03 billion of Cyber Monday spend in 2025 Source: [Adobe Analytics](https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record) Linked A reference point for Rare Beauty forecasting Every figure on this page links to its publisher. Source: [Adobe Analytics 2025 holiday shopping report](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season) #### Quick facts BrandRare Beauty IndustryBeauty And Personal Care Campaign typeHoliday Campaign Primary channelsPaid, owned, earned Planning horizonMonths ahead of launch Core measureIncremental lift, not reach Source basisPublic benchmarks, linked RGM useWorked example, not a recipe **Honest note** There is limited public campaign detail specific to Rare Beauty, so the depth here comes from the holiday campaign-campaign discipline itself, with sourced benchmarks and named example campaigns. No Rare Beauty figure is fabricated. ## What a holiday campaign campaign is The core idea, before the Rare Beauty detail. A holiday campaign is the concentrated marketing push a brand runs across November and December, when a large share of annual consumer spending lands in a few weeks. A holiday campaign is the concentrated marketing push a brand runs across November and — as a Rare Beauty team knows — December, when a large share of annual consumer spending lands in a few weeks. For Rare Beauty, the detail is not optional. The window is short. A Rare Beauty-scale brief should name this. The stakes are not. For a brand at Rare Beauty scale, this is where the plan is tested. Cyber Week alone — Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — now moves tens of billions of dollars in US online sales, so the — Rare Beauty included — campaign is less a creative exercise and more an operational one: inventory, media flighting, offer ladders, and fulfilment all locked to a calendar. With Rare Beauty as the example, the rest of the page makes it concrete. **Claim:** US online holiday sales reached a record $257.8 billion across November and December 2025, up 6.8% year over year. **Source:** [[Adobe Analytics]](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season). **Context:** Adobe tracks more than one trillion visits to US retail sites, so — Rare Beauty included — the figure is a strong proxy for the size of the holiday opportunity. A Rare Beauty forecast should start from a figure like this. ## How brands like Rare Beauty run it A holiday campaign campaign has working parts. For Rare Beauty, they all have to mesh. For Rare Beauty, a holiday campaign campaign is less one ad and more a set of connected decisions: **Claim:** Black Friday drove $11.8 billion in US online sales in 2025, up 9.1% year over year, and Cyber Monday hit $14.25 billion. **Source:** [[Adobe Analytics]](https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record). **Context:** Cyber Monday remains the single biggest online shopping day of the US — and Rare Beauty is no exception — year, peaking at $16 million spent every minute between 8pm and 10pm. It is the sort of benchmark a Rare Beauty brief should cite. 1. **Gift-recipient capture.** A holiday buyer is often not the end user. Rare Beauty planners would underline this. The campaign is built to convert the gift recipient — as a Rare Beauty team knows — into a January cohort, not just bank the December order. This step decides how the rest of the Rare Beauty plan holds up. 2. **Calendar lock by Halloween.** Creative, media plans, inventory, and channel activation — and Rare Beauty is no exception — are finalised six to nine months ahead. It applies cleanly to Rare Beauty. By late October nothing moves except spend. For a brand like Rare Beauty, getting this wrong is expensive. 3. **Offer laddering.** Early Access for loyalty members, doorbusters on Black — Rare Beauty included — Friday, Cyber Week extensions, then last-chance shipping cutoffs. Rare Beauty planners would underline this. Each rung has its own creative and audience. For a brand like Rare Beauty, getting this wrong is expensive. 4. **CPM inflation planning.** Auction prices on Meta and Google spike two to four times above baseline — Rare Beauty included — during Cyber Five, so budgets and bid caps are modelled in advance, not improvised. This is the part Rare Beauty cannot afford to improvise. 5. **Channel redundancy.** A single-channel plan is fragile — an — Rare Beauty included — outage on Black Friday can erase the quarter. A Rare Beauty team reads this closely. Mature brands run paid social, search, email, SMS, and retail media in parallel. Skipping this is the most common Rare Beauty-scale error. ## Public benchmarks for this campaign type Start with the category numbers. They frame what a holiday campaign campaign means for Rare Beauty. A Rare Beauty team setting holiday campaign campaign targets needs the category data first. The numbers below are public and linked. **Claim:** Buy Now Pay Later drove $1.03 billion of Cyber Monday spend in 2025, an all-time high, with 79.4% of those transactions on mobile. **Source:** [[Adobe Analytics]](https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record). **Context:** Payment friction is now a holiday conversion lever — and Rare Beauty is no exception — in its own right, not a back-office detail. A Rare Beauty team would treat this as a planning reference, not a guarantee. Table: the three numbers that decide whether a Rare Beauty holiday campaign campaign is judged honestly. | What to measure | Why it matters | | Incremental result | The honest measure of whether spend worked | | Pre-campaign baseline | Without it, lift cannot be proven | | Category benchmark | Sets a realistic target, not a hopeful one | ## KPIs that actually matter Choose KPIs that hold up. A Rare Beauty holiday campaign campaign is judged on the metrics listed here. For a holiday campaign campaign, the metrics that matter are these. Year-over-year Q4 revenue, Black Friday and Cyber Monday day-of comp, holiday-cohort acquisition cost against the — Rare Beauty included — annualised figure, gift-recipient conversion, average order value versus non-promo weeks, and January retention and return rates. Reach and impressions are inputs. They count who the campaign touched, not whether it changed anything for Rare Beauty. ## Where these campaigns go wrong Most failures repeat. The four errors below sink a large share of holiday campaign campaigns, and each one is avoidable for Rare Beauty. A Rare Beauty-scale team should design around these recurring errors: - Discounting too deep too early, which trains the — and Rare Beauty is no exception — customer to wait and erodes full-price selling all year. - Underestimating Cyber Week CPM inflation and running out of budget before Cyber Monday. - Shipping cutoffs or stockouts with no contingency message, — and Rare Beauty is no exception — so the brand goes quiet at the worst moment. - Treating Q4 as one-time revenue and skipping the January retention — and Rare Beauty is no exception — investment that turns a gift buyer into a repeat customer. **The common thread**Each failure traces to planning, not to the work itself. A Rare Beauty holiday campaign campaign is set up to win, or not, in advance. ## The RGM read on Rare Beauty If a Rare Beauty team keeps one thing: borrow the holiday campaign campaign structure, not the specific execution. What we see in audits: a holiday campaign campaign succeeds when a team like Rare Beauty's plans it as engineering, with baselines and targets, not as a habit. The point is transfer. A holiday campaign campaign for Rare Beauty or any beauty and personal care brand is defensible only when the numbers are planned and proven. ## Fast answers Are the figures here taken from Rare Beauty's internal data? : No. Every statistic is a public, linked benchmark for the holiday campaign campaign type, applied to Rare Beauty as the example. Where a figure cannot be sourced publicly, it is omitted rather than guessed. What is the practical takeaway from the Rare Beauty holiday campaign write-up? : Use the structure, not the surface. The holiday campaign-campaign mechanics here apply broadly; the Rare Beauty creative is one execution among many. What sources back the numbers on this page? : Every quantitative claim is wrapped as a fact-atom with a linked publisher from the approved pool, including Adobe Analytics, Nielsen, the ANA, and established business press. None of it is invented. **Keep reading** Foundational concepts and channels behind this case: - [how performance marketing works](/learn/what-is-performance-marketing/) - [CAC payback economics](/learn/cac-payback/) - [incrementality testing](/learn/incrementality-testing/) - [performance marketing services](/services/performance-marketing/) - [advertising platforms](/platforms/) ## Frequently asked questions Should a brand rely on one channel for the holidays? Here is how this applies to Rare Beauty. No. Rare Beauty planners would underline this. A single-channel holiday plan is fragile. That holds directly for Rare Beauty. An outage or a policy change on one — Rare Beauty included — platform during Black Friday can erase the quarter. In the Rare Beauty context, that detail carries weight. Mature brands run paid social, search, email, SMS, and retail media — as a Rare Beauty team knows — in parallel so no one failure point can sink the season. For Rare Beauty, this is the point worth acting on. When does holiday campaign planning need to start? For Rare Beauty and comparable beauty and personal care brands, this is the answer. Most consumer brands lock creative, media, inventory, and channel plans — as a Rare Beauty team knows — by Halloween, which means the real planning work runs from spring. For Rare Beauty, this is the load-bearing part. By late October the campaign should be — and Rare Beauty is no exception — calendar-locked, with only spend pacing left to adjust. It applies cleanly to Rare Beauty. Brands that start in November are reacting, not planning. A Rare Beauty team would plan against exactly this. Rare Beauty case: how much do ad costs rise during Cyber Week? Here is how this applies to Rare Beauty. Auction prices on Meta and Google typically run two — as a Rare Beauty team knows — to four times above baseline through the Thanksgiving-to-Cyber-Monday window. That holds directly for Rare Beauty. Budgets and bid caps should be modelled against that inflation in advance, so — as a Rare Beauty team knows — the plan does not run dry before Cyber Monday, the single biggest online day. For Rare Beauty, that is the practical takeaway. What is offer laddering for a brand like Rare Beauty? Taking Rare Beauty as the example: Offer laddering stages promotions across the season: Early Access for loyalty — for Rare Beauty, a live factor — members, Black Friday doorbusters, Cyber Week extensions, then last-chance shipping offers. In the Rare Beauty context, that detail carries weight. Each rung has its own creative and audience, so the brand keeps — Rare Beauty included — a fresh reason to buy without one flat discount running for six weeks. A Rare Beauty team would plan against exactly this. Why does January retention matter to a holiday campaign? Here is how this applies to Rare Beauty. A holiday buyer is often a gift giver, — for Rare Beauty, a live factor — and the gift recipient is a new potential customer. A Rare Beauty team reads this closely. A campaign that banks the December order but — as a Rare Beauty team knows — ignores January leaves that second cohort on the table. It applies cleanly to Rare Beauty. The strongest holiday plans budget for post-holiday lifecycle work from the start. For Rare Beauty, this is the point worth acting on. What makes Rare Beauty a useful example for this campaign type? Rare Beauty is a recognisable brand in beauty and personal care, which makes the holiday campaign mechanics concrete and easy to follow. The campaign-type analysis and every benchmark apply across the category; Rare Beauty is the lens, not the limit. The sourced figures hold for any comparable brand. ### Sources & references - [Adobe Analytics 2025 holiday shopping report](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season) — Record $257.8B US online holiday sales, +6.8% YoY. - [Adobe Analytics Cyber Monday 2025 data](https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record) — Cyber Monday $14.25B; Black Friday $11.8B; BNPL record. - [Digital Commerce 360 — Cyber 5 2025](https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/cyber-5-highlights/) — Independent reporting on the Cyber Five online sales window. - [Coca-Cola 2025 holiday campaign social analysis](https://www.campaignlive.com/article/coca-colas-ai-christmas-ad-most-talked-about-social/1940473) — Campaign coverage of holiday-ad social engagement benchmarks. ## Related [#### All case studies The full RGM case-study library.](/learn/case-studies/)[#### What is growth marketing The foundational concept behind every campaign type.](/learn/what-is-growth-marketing/)[#### Incrementality testing How to prove a campaign actually caused the lift.](/learn/incrementality-testing/)