Rethinking the Q4-Q1 Relationship: Making Your Holidays Pay for Your New Year

D2C brands and Q4 have a very special relationship. It’s complicated. There’s a whole lot of love, chaos, maybe a little bit of resentment, a whole lot of pressure—and of course, that huge surge of victory hormones at the end when you realize you not just survived, you hopefully thrived.

And then January hits. The high wears off pretty fast.

You just spent thousands on ads in December to hit your revenue goals. Processed a ridiculous number of orders. Set the tone for the year. And now what? Retail sales drop 1%. Consumer spending falls 0.5%. January and February consistently run 13% below the yearly average. It’s almost like that mammoth month of December didn’t happen.

The January Slump Isn’t a Mystery

The why of it is pretty straightforward. Your customers have a December-sized hole in their wallets. Buyer’s remorse sets in. Overconsumption. Overspending. All that guilt adds up. Everybody makes their big New Year’s resolutions: I’m going to be healthy, I’m not going to spend, I’m not going to shop. Hibernation mode activates.

What that means is you’re back to square one. You spent a whole bunch of money. You’re doing a complete reset. Brands cut marketing budgets or spend even more to compete with other brands for a piece of this already low attention. You’re paying to reacquire customers you literally just had in December.

But here’s the thing—in reality, customers aren’t done spending. They want to be more intentional, sure. But they also need things. They are buying. The question is: are they buying from you?

The Store Credit Pattern That’s Right There

If we look at the retail landscape overall, there’s a pattern that’s pretty obvious and emerging. Gift cards and store credit get redeemed within six months—over 56% of them. 70% within the first year. That’s pretty fast redemption.

But more importantly, when people redeem store credit, they don’t just spend what’s on their card. They overspend by an average of $59. Some studies say 20-30% more. Others say 2x the value.

Store credit isn’t just bringing people back—it’s making them spend more than they originally planned. That’s the opportunity that can marry the big January slump with your potential next customers and sales. And some brands are completely missing it.

Think back to what you did in December. You gave discounts. Those discounts worked—you hit your targets. But discounts are a one-time transaction. Done and dusted. Customer bought, you got revenue, everybody moved on.

What if instead you gave them a reason to come back, but it wasn’t a discount? What if it was earnings they made in exchange for content you got that you could utilize?

How BrandPay Restructures This

BrandPay is a platform that allows customers to post about their favorite brands, build content for them, create brand awareness, create higher levels of recommendations. (You can read about why UGC is your best bet for the future.) But it also creates this compounding effect where your December sales fund January marketing. January marketing funds January sales. Each sale creates more content. Each of these cycles compounds repeatedly instead of resetting.

Take a brand in December. People are buying gift sets, treating themselves, posting about their Christmas hauls, sharing pictures. Content exists—it’s probably just untagged, invisible to your metrics, leading to nothing tangible right now.

With BrandPay, these posts become verified store credit.

You get content in December. Fantastic. Win. You get eyeballs. You get awareness. All of that. But more importantly, in our opinion, you get a built-in reason for those people to come back to you in January.

Come January, they get a reminder: You have $25 waiting to spend via BrandPay.

It’s not a promo code. It’s not a discount competing with 47 other emails. It’s money they earned. And because they’ve earned it, they don’t think twice about spending more. They come back. And as the data consistently shows, they spend more than the credit amount.

With BrandPay, you’re not paying to reacquire customers—you’ve already acquired them. What you’re doing is giving them a reason to come back, spend more, and give you content that you can own and repurpose for your ads in 2025 and beyond.

The Bigger Shift Happening

Overall as a platform, we’re seeing that brands are shifting from short-term bursts of engagement with customers to more long-term flywheels. And honestly, that’s the big problem BrandPay is trying to solve.

BrandPay fits into this shift because the credit isn’t just an incentive—it’s a new way of looking at revenue. You’re not giving away margin. You’re restructuring your spend so that your holiday purchases lead to more sales in the new year. And in the process, it gives you content and profits.

Your customers are going to spend money in January. BrandPay just makes sure they come back and spend it with you.

---

Ready to turn your holiday momentum into year-round growth? Book a demo to see how BrandPay can help your December sales fund your January marketing.