Key takeaways:
- In the past year, the global UHNW population grew 5.4% to 510,810 individuals. This essential audience for luxury brands is now worth a collective $59.8 trillion.
- Although they represent only 1.1% of millionaires, UHNWIs control 32% of total HNW wealth. This makes precision targeting more valuable than broad campaigns.
- Overall luxury spending, which includes goods and experiences, is expected to grow above $2 trillion by 2030.
- UHNW individuals drove $290 billion in personal luxury goods spending in 2024, or 21% of the global total. Spending spans industries, from fashion and watches to private aviation and wine.
- By 2028, 42% of UHNWIs will live in the top 50 cities worldwide, making urban hubs critical for luxury client acquisition.
- Clienteling remains a challenge: Fragmented CRM systems, difficulty prioritizing top-spending clients, and lack of scalable personalization slow progress.
- Winning strategies blend wealth intelligence, lifestyle insights, relationship mapping, and CRM enrichment to deliver personalized, trust-based engagement.
The evolving landscape of luxury brand marketing
Luxury brands are undergoing an evolution in target audiences, creating a paradox. The most valuable clients — namely, high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) — represent an elite market segment that craves exclusivity and personalization. Yet reaching these individuals requires more than aspirational campaigns or glossy experiences. The real differentiator lies in intelligence: the ability to understand who these clients are, what drives their decisions, and how to build authentic, long-term relationships.
The luxury market spans a diverse set of industries: watches, fashion, retail, beauty, private aviation, travel, real estate, yachts, automobiles, wine, spirits, sports, and publishing. Each of these sectors must balance timeless prestige with modern expectations of personalization and digital fluency. What unites them is the same challenge: how to market effectively to HNWIs and UHNWIs while preserving the aura of exclusivity that defines luxury.
The stakes are high. In 2024, the global UHNW population grew 5.4% to 510,810 individuals with a collective net worth of $59.8 trillion. That’s twice the GDP of the US. For luxury CMOs and Heads of Brand Strategy, this population represents both the greatest opportunity and the toughest challenge in client acquisition.
Looking ahead, research by Bain & Company shows that overall luxury spending, which includes goods and experiences, is expected to grow above $2 trillion by 2030.
Defining modern luxury brand marketing
At its core, luxury marketing is about creating desire, exclusivity, and trust. But for HNW and UHNW audiences, the old playbook consisting of tactics like mass advertising, generic celebrity endorsements, and one-size-fits-all campaigns doesn’t resonate anymore.
Though UHNWIs make up just 1.1% of the global millionaire population, they control 32% of its wealth. That concentration means luxury marketing is not about reaching everyone. It’s about crafting meaningful experiences for a highly influential few.
Your clients seek:
- Personalized experiences tied to lifestyle interests
- Trusted connections that feel authentic, not transactional
- Exclusivity and discretion, balanced with relevance
Modern luxury marketing therefore means blending timeless brand storytelling with data-driven insights that uncover who your prospects are, how they behave, and when they’re most likely to engage.
Essential elements of high net worth marketing
1. Global wealth intelligence
Understanding net worth and the source of wealth provides context for luxury brands and helps inform decisions. Almost 80% of UHNW individuals fall between $30 to $100 million in net worth. Billionaires, even though they make up less than 1% of the UHNW population, hold nearly 25% of all ultra wealth. Is a prospect a technology entrepreneur, a family-office principal, or a legacy inheritor? Each profile implies different motivations, philanthropic interests, and spending behaviors.
2. Lifestyle and interest data
HNWIs and UHNWIs don’t just buy products; they invest in experiences that reflect their passions—whether it’s art collecting, yachting, equestrian pursuits, or philanthropy. In 2023, UHNW individuals accounted for $290 billion in luxury goods spending, around 21% of the global total. Mapping lifestyle and interest data helps brands design offerings and campaigns that align seamlessly with these passions, elevating the sense of exclusivity.
3. Relationship mapping
The path to a high-value client often runs through trusted networks. UHNWIs also account for $207 billion in global philanthropic donations, equivalent to 36% of all individual giving. Mapping these philanthropic and professional networks often reveals warm paths for authentic engagement. For CMOs and business development leaders, this means moving beyond cold outreach to warm introductions that increase credibility and shorten the path to engagement.
4. Alerts and updates
Wealth events, such as liquidity events, asset acquisitions, or philanthropic milestones, can often be the best moments for outreach. Real-time alerts ensure that luxury brand marketers are notified when prospects undergo major life changes, giving them the ability to engage with timeliness and relevance.
5. CRM enrichment
Layering intelligence onto your CRM transforms static records into dynamic profiles. Instead of names and email addresses, teams gain access to verified wealth insights, lifestyle data, and relationship connections—all seamlessly integrated into existing workflows.
A powerful insight from our article on The Hidden Wealth in Your CRM is that many luxury brands already have immense value hiding in their CRM data. You just need to know how to unlock it. Globally, the median UHNW wealth is $51 million, but the average is more than double at $115 million. This reminds us that relying on averages alone can mislead. Enriching CRM data with verified net worth levels, lifestyle markers, and relational context helps brands prioritize realistically, segment intelligently, and personalize at scale.
Clienteling: turn data into deep, lasting relationships
Clienteling is more than just personalized service—it’s the art of being known, understood, and valued by the brands you engage with. For luxury brands doing high net worth marketing, clienteling is the bridge between transaction and lifelong loyalty. In our latest Guide to Clienteling, you’ll see that impactful clienteling requires a data evolution that goes well beyond mere purchase history or generic preferences.
Yet many clienteling leaders face significant obstacles: low or no visibility into HNW clients across fragmented CRM and POS systems, an ongoing struggle to prioritize top-spending clients for white-glove outreach or VIP events, and an inability to scale personalization across retail and digital touchpoints without trusted, verified data. These challenges often leave luxury teams working reactively instead of proactively. You might be missing opportunities to deepen relationships with your most valuable clients.
With nearly 42% of the UHNW population projected to live in just the top 50 cities by 2028, clienteling leaders must act quickly on insights that allow them to connect in these increasingly concentrated hubs of wealth.
Creative marketing tips for luxury brands
| Tip | What to Do | How It Works (with Wealth and Relationship Data) |
| 1. Tell unique, compelling stories | Highlight history, artisanship, and rarity in brand storytelling | Use wealth intelligence to align stories with passions; art collectors value authenticity, while entrepreneurs value innovation |
| 2. Limit editions and control scarcity | Release limited runs, bespoke items, or invite-only collections | Wealth event alerts reveal when clients are ready for rare offerings; relationship maps ensure exclusivity reaches the right circles |
| 3. Personalize beyond the product | Offer customization, private previews, or unique experiences | Lifestyle and interest data (yachting, wine, art) helps tailor offers, events, and outreach to resonate authentically |
| 4. Curate immersive visual and sensory content | Invest in high-quality visuals, immersive events, and sensory branding | Match content to client aesthetics: collectors may prefer behind-the-scenes craft stories; travelers may value experiential campaigns |
| 5. Leverage influential networks | Engage influencers, advisors, trusted peers; not just celebrities | Relationship mapping uncovers credible connectors already in your ecosystem, enabling warm introductions |
| 6. Connect through values and causes | Align brand with philanthropy, sustainability, or legacy themes | Use philanthropic and lifestyle insights to tailor campaigns around causes UHNWIs support (climate, education, art foundations) |
| 7. Price to reflect value | Maintain premium pricing to reinforce exclusivity | Net-worth segmentation helps determine which clients see value at higher tiers |
| 8. Choose touchpoints wisely | Focus on high-touch retail, digital, and experiential channels | Enrich CRM to see where clients are active (events, clubs, platforms), ensuring seamless engagement across channels |
Real-world success stories
Case study: Bombardier propels growth with a complete customer view
Bombardier, a global luxury aviation company, partnered with Salesforce and Altrata to unify disconnected customer data. They had mountains of leads but lacked clarity on which ones were most likely to convert. By integrating wealth intelligence into their existing sales workflow, Bombardier gave Sales Directors a complete customer view.
Key outcomes included prioritized outreach to high-value leads by using wealth and purchasing power signals. The sales team also reduced time spent on low-value leads, thanks to AI-driven insights. Bombardier enhanced the white-glove experience by integrating wealth intelligence directly into its CRM systems.
Case study: UK fine jewelry company transforms lead generation and events strategy
A leading UK fine jeweler leveraged Altrata intelligence to elevate client acquisition and events strategy. By adopting regular screenings plus dossier-level intelligence about interests, wealth, and networks, they uncovered prospects globally who fit their target segments, curated guest lists for high-value events, and deepened long-term relationships.
Digital engagement at scale will drive the future of luxury marketing
As client expectations evolve, the next frontier lies in how luxury brands bring this same level of exclusivity and personalization into digital channels. While exclusivity and in-person experiences remain at the heart of luxury, the future of client acquisition and retention will increasingly depend on digital engagement that feels just as personal as a private showroom. HNWIs and UHNWIs aren’t passive consumers of digital media. They actively seek curated platforms, communities, and services that mirror their offline lifestyles.
One growing arena is private social clubs and members-only digital communities. These platforms replicate the exclusivity of high-end country clubs or art societies, but in online form. For luxury brands, they represent an opportunity to connect with wealthy individuals in trusted, peer-vetted spaces—where discretion and authenticity are paramount. Relationship mapping and lifestyle intelligence can help identify which digital communities clients value most, enabling tailored engagement.
Luxury digital platforms and curated e-commerce are also reshaping buying behaviors. From limited-edition drops to invite-only online boutiques, HNWIs expect seamless, high-touch service even in digital transactions. Verified wealth data allows brands to segment which clients should be offered early access, bespoke packaging, or concierge-style fulfillment, reinforcing exclusivity in the digital sphere.
Looking ahead, immersive technology such as VR showrooms and AR-driven product experiences will become essential. UHNWIs are early adopters of innovation, but they expect it to align with luxury standards: private, personalized, and context-rich. A VR yacht preview or an AR fine-jewelry fitting must feel exclusive, not mass-market. Data enrichment makes this possible by ensuring that only the right prospects are invited to participate in these experiences – those with both the means and the interest to engage.
Ultimately, the future of luxury marketing will hinge on blending prestige with data-driven digital innovation. Brands that use intelligence to identify the right channels, the right communities, and the right technologies will not only maintain exclusivity but also scale personalization across digital and physical touchpoints.
Data is the new luxury advantage
After all, what is luxury marketing if not the art of making every interaction feel curated, exclusive, and personal? For client acquisition and brand leaders, leveraging global wealth data, lifestyle insights, relationship networks, and CRM enrichment transforms that vision into reality.
Luxury brands that embrace intelligence-driven strategies don’t just market to HNWIs and UHNWIs. You need to anticipate their needs, align with their passions, and build relationships that last generations. In the world of luxury, where reputation and relationships are everything, data is the new advantage.
Our experts are here to help you upgrade and refine your luxury marketing strategy. Connect with the team when it’s convenient for you.