Marketing to Gen Z and Millennial Audiences: How to Win Their Loyalty, Now and Forever

Gen Z and Millennial audiences can be your most loyal and active customers and brand advocates – you just need to understand what makes them tick at any given moment.

The best way to engage this audience is by collecting, integrating, and analyzing real-time, rich customer data coupled with AI-powered personalization to deliver relevant content to each person. As a result, you can more confidently segment this audience – even to a very granular degree – and market to them on their preferred channels with automated and coordinated hyper-personalized messages, offers, and recommendations.

Listen to our live, interactive webinar with Rebecca Bender, Email Marketing Manager at WayUp and Joan Jenkins, CMO at Blueshift and discover some immediate ways that you can boost your Gen Z and Millennial marketing.

You’ll learn how to:

Understand the different nuances of how Gen Z and Millennials like to engage and interact with brands
Stay in tune with key strategies that are a must when marketing to this audience, such as cross-channel marketing, social media, influencer marketing, social values and more
Use key best practices to build and foster lifetime loyalty with this audience

View Transcript

Interview with Rebecca Bender, Email Marketing Manager at WayUp

How Gen Z and Millennial Shoppers Choose Brands and What Drives Their Loyalty

Joan Jenkins, CMO at Blueshift: Hello, everyone. Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you're joining from. I’m Joan Jenkins, and today’s webinar is focused on how to earn the loyalty of Gen Z and Millennial shoppers. I'm joined by Rebecca Bender from WayUp.

Rebecca Bender, Email Marketing Manager at WayUp: Hi, everyone. I’m Rebecca. I lead email marketing and also focus on growth and acquisition. WayUp helps students and recent grads find jobs and internships, so we’re deeply connected to Gen Z and Millennial behavior.

Email Marketing Best Practices for Engaging Millennial and Gen Z Audiences

Rebecca: Since we target early-career audiences, we A/B test constantly—subject lines, visuals, send times. What consistently works? Short-form, visually engaging emails. Long emails don’t perform well. We also find that interactive content—especially when mobile-optimized—drives stronger engagement than static formats.

Surprising Channel Insights: Where Millennials Actually Discover New Brands

Rebecca: We ran a quiz asking our users how they discover new brands. The top answer? Streaming ads. Platforms like Hulu and Netflix outperformed TikTok.

Joan: That’s unexpected. Most people assume TikTok dominates discovery.

Rebecca: It does for Gen Z, but Millennials are leaning into other channels. And while they’re often labeled disloyal, they actually stick with brands that consistently offer value and align with their values. Authenticity still matters.

How Non-Promotional Content Builds Brand Affinity with Young Shoppers

Rebecca: We’ve made trust a priority. On Instagram, instead of pushing products, we share resume and interview tips, career resources, and authentic stories. It’s not promotional—it’s valuable. And that builds credibility.

Why Email Remains a Top Engagement Channel for Millennials and Gen Z

Rebecca: We surveyed over 500 users. Email is still their top channel. Why? It’s how they’re used to getting official communication from schools, so it feels native. They also actively manage their inboxes—using folders, rules, and filters. Email isn’t dead; it just needs to be relevant.

Joan: That’s great news for marketers who focus on email.

Making Marketing Emails Feel Personal, Human, and Relevant

Rebecca: We use a persona named "Abby" for our job match alerts. She keeps things short, clear, and helpful. And it works—users actually write back, thinking she’s a real person. We also experiment with embedded visuals and fun formats like Wordle-style games. Anything that feels personal and engaging wins.

Using AI-Powered Personalization to Deliver Hyper-Relevant Job Alerts

Rebecca: With Blueshift, we don’t have to manually build thousands of emails. Instead, we dynamically personalize based on major, graduation year, behavior, and interests. A marketing student won’t get an engineering job alert—that kind of accuracy matters. And it scales beautifully.

How Blueshift’s AI Improves Customer Experience Through Better Targeting

Rebecca: Blueshift uses real-time data to optimize every recommendation. It tracks:

Open and click times
Browsing and job view behavior
Academic and profile data

From there, it builds recommendations that feel handpicked. We even tag users based on companies they like, so we can recommend similar roles.

Real-World Results from AI-Driven Campaigns and Smart Segmentation

Rebecca: Our alerts feel more human—more like thoughtful matches than mass emails. And that’s reflected in the numbers: we’ve seen higher open rates, more clicks, and overall better engagement. Customers feel like we understand them.

Final Thoughts on Building Lasting Loyalty with Gen Z and Millennials

Joan: Today’s marketers are trying to master segmentation, personalization, and cross-channel campaigns.

Rebecca: And AI helps with all of that. It’s about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Blueshift has been a key part of that for us. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out via email.

Joan: Thanks again, Rebecca—and thank you to everyone who joined us today!

WEBINAR