HOLIDAY EMAIL CAMPAIGNS FOR HIGHER EFFICIENCY

HOLIDAY EMAIL CAMPAIGN FOR HIGHER EFFICIENCY

This is the season to be jolly! Are you ready to generate more income with a holiday email campaign?

Indeed, the holiday season is one of the most profitable times of the year. But to bring more cash to your register, you should have a solid holiday marketing plan in place.

Speaking of marketing, many platforms can help you reach more customers and promote your brand. One is email.

Why do you need to use holiday email marketing campaigns?

Aside from the fact that most people are anticipating exciting holiday deals from their favorite brands, there’s every reason to use email for your holiday marketing campaigns.

Holiday marketing campaigns tend to drive the highest engagement rate

While email marketing is helpful at any moment, it is more effective during the holiday season. Research shows that holiday marketing emails tend to generate higher open rates than emails for other events like Labor Day, Mother/Father’s Day, and Back-to-School.

Email marketing has an extremely high ROI

Email is also the easiest and cheapest way to reach out to your existing customers, with an ROI of 400%! Research shows that it’s 40% more effective than social media. What’s more, people who purchase products from marketing emails are also likely to spend 138% more than those who don’t.

Consumers love holiday shopping

The most popular holiday email marketing campaigns are those about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving. Black Friday emails are what excites consumers the most, with 116.5 million emails sent in 2017. They also had the highest open rate. Thanksgiving ranked second as to the highest engagement rate.

email campaign

Types of Emails to Optimize During the Holidays

Welcome emails

The holidays are a great time to grow your email list. With so many people looking for the best deals online, you can expect a lot of new subscribers before the season ends.

A welcome email can break or make your relationship with your subscribers. If you don’t make it attractive enough, you lose your chance to keep them engaged. So how can you make your welcome emails more powerful? Consider these tips:

  • Create a clear and engaging subject line

Your subscribers should know first hand that what they are getting is a welcome email. But then, you want to make it interesting to grab their attention. Don’t forget to add a greeting and include their first name to make your email sound more personal.

Welcome emails are a great way to ask your subscribers about the type of content that they’re most interested in.

  • Give them a gift

Customers love gifts! It could be a discount on their first order or some really good content.

Relevant promotional emails

With the holiday season coming up so fast, it’s time to get started with your promotional campaigns. Make sure to start early. The earlier you start, the more people you can reach. Take advantage of all special occasions this holiday season, from Black Friday to Christmas. You can create Black Friday exclusives, Winter Solace Sales, Cyber Monday deals, Thanksgiving Specials, etc.

Abandoned cart emails

There are many reasons why shoppers abandon their carts. Regardless of the reason, it’s important to send them a follow-up email to increase your chance of a conversion. Effective abandoned cart emails have the following characteristics:

  • A relevant headline
  • An actionable CTA
  • A description of the products abandoned
  • A discount offer

Be sure to create a sense of urgency by using a countdown timer. This is a proven technique to encourage shoppers to complete their purchases.

Tips For Your Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns

You only have a few weeks before you launch your campaign. Here are some tips and tricks for a smooth and successful holiday email marketing:

Check out last year’s trends

If you’ve been doing holiday email marketing for the past years, it’s always a good practice to look at past data to know how you can make this year’s holiday campaign more successful. What offers gave you the most conversions? What was your open rate? What went well? What are the things you think you can make better?

start planning early

Start planning early

When it comes to holiday marketing, the earlier the better. You should be prepared to launch your email campaign as early as November 1st. Planning takes time. It takes so much effort to think about a good content strategy. So as early as September or October, you should be starting to plan your holiday marketing campaigns. When crafting your email campaign, be sure it has the following elements:

  • Clear, concise, yet catchy subject line.
  • Engaging content.
  • Clear CTA (call-to-action).

Before you send it out, proofread your email. Even a minor typo error can hurt your reputation and turn down shoppers. Send a test email to your address to see how the actual email looks like. Additionally, check if your email looks good from a mobile device. Note that more than 70% of people read their emails from their mobile phones or tablets.

Personalize and segment your list

Segmenting your list is a crucial step in email marketing.

Segmentation is a grouping or categorizing your subscribers based on different criteria, such as their demographics, age, location, gender, interests, hobbies, purchasing behavior, etc.

Your subscribers may have different needs and interests. Some of them are likely working moms who have no time to shop around for holiday presents. Others might be students working around a tight budget. Segmenting your list is an effective strategy to generate leads and increase your conversions.

Here are some tips to segment your list for the holiday:

Segment by shipping deadlines

The last thing your customers want is to get their orders past December 25. Segment your list by geographic locations to inform what shipping deadlines are relevant to them. Send them reminders as the shipping deadline approaches. Add urgency by including a countdown timer.

Segment by purchase history

Segmenting according to your customers’ buying behavior can help you create the best offer for them. For example, if you have customers who tend to spend more money and buy items at their full price, you can send them an email to offer your priciest products. For customers who only buy from your store when there’s a sale, send them a promotional email that features all your products on sale.

Furthermore, you can segment your list based on the items they’ve purchased before. You can send recommendations based on their purchase history. Segmenting your list ensures that your customers are getting exactly what they want.

Make your holiday email subject line catchy

Your content is only as good as your subject line. With a crowded inbox full of holiday emails, there’s a good chance that your email will go unread or unnoticed. If you don’t want this to happen, make sure you get your subscriber’s attention right away by making your email subject interesting.

Here are some great tips to make your subject line catchy:

  • Make it short and sweet.
  • Make it urgent.
  • Offer free stuff.
  • Include discounts.
  • Add an emoji.

Email Validation Services to Scrub your Holiday Email List

When was the last time you scrubbed your list? If you can’t remember it, you could be compromising your holiday email marketing campaigns.

People change their email addresses when they change jobs or ISPs. Some of your old contacts may no longer be interested in your business anymore. If you don’t update your list to remove inactive emails, you’re just wasting time, money, and effort on them.

Cleaning your list can lower your open rate, clickthrough rate, number of unsubscribes, and spam complaints.

Some tools make email scrubbing easier, especially if you have thousands of subscribers. Start with the most active email lists. Remove contacts that haven’t opened your mail or clicked on your links for a long time.

Black Friday Email Examples

Black Friday Email Examples

What makes this email great?

First of all, it makes use of bright, attractive colors. Next, it provides a clear and enticing message: a 50% discount. Lastly (and most importantly), it instills urgency and thus, encourages customers to take action right away.

Thanksgiving Email Examples EmailOversight

Who doesn’t love free stuff? This Black Friday email from Storq cleverly used the term “thanksgiving” in place of “thanksgiving” which made the campaign even more appealing. Note that this is a segmented email (directed only to moms and moms-to-be).

Black Friday Email Examples EmailOversight

Okay, everybody loves to receive a Black Friday email from Apple. This one is cleverly written and enforces a strong call-to-action. All the details are included. You need not write too much.

Check out more Black Friday email examples here.

Christmas Email Examples

Christmas Email Examples EmailOversight

When crafting a holiday email campaign, make sure to highlight important info like what Puma did here. Adding Holiday FAQs and Gift Guide will surely make shopping a great experience for your customers.

Holiday email EmailOversight

Everything on this copy looks attractive, isn’t it? But more than that, customers will easily know what’s in store for them – more than 250 gift deals, 40% Off, and Free Shipping. That’s every shopper’s dream come true.

Check this out for more Christmas marketing email inspiration.

Top Email Software For Holiday Campaigns

If you think crafting a holiday marketing email as good as the examples above is difficult, you’re wrong. Most of them were created using an email marketing software. If it’s your first time creating a holiday campaign or if you want this year’s campaign much more successful, here are some of the most popular platforms that you can use:

Marsello

This platform makes holiday email marketing easy with their beautifully branded, holiday-themed email designs. You can even customize your design if you want. Other features include scheduling and discount creation.

Springbot

Springbot is an eCommerce marketing platform that comes with a pre-built template library, responsive templates, and scheduling features. It’s easy to craft an email here through its “drag and drop” functionality, in-line editing, in-depth message preview, and MJML editing.

Constant Contact

This platform features customizable templates for different types of holiday marketing campaigns, from holiday preview sale to Cyber Monday, gift card bonus, gift guide, holiday coupon, etc.

MailChimp

This email marketing platform turns reports into a narrative story to make it easy for marketers to understand data insights. You can also add promo codes, postcards, and other helpful tools to make your campaign even more appealing.

Privy

In addition to the holiday-themed templates, Privy comes with different holiday marketing features, such as unique coupon codes, autoresponders, cart saver pop-ups, and shipping deadline bars.

Happy Email

Happy Email app comes with customization features for a more targeted holiday email. You can add your store logo, customize your social media links, and choose from many designs.

This holiday season, make sure you have the perfect email marketing campaign. Use it to connect with your customers, promote your brand, generate leads, and up your revenues.

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