Holiday season is just around the corner again, so if you’re thinking of boosting your sales by implementing email marketing into your strategy, then you’re on the right track.
With inflation skyrocketing you must make sure your campaigns have the best chance of landing in the inbox — and converting readers. Incorporate these 8 email marketing tactics and you’re sure to boost your sales during the holidays.
Conduct A Competitive Analysis
As with any strategy or campaign, you need to start with a competitive analysis. Find your top competitors and review their new and old holiday marketing strategies. Consider subscribing to email marketing tools like MailCharts to gain a comprehensive view of your competitors’ promotional strategy and cadence.
Send Targeted Emails With Segmentation
Sending generic emails to your entire list will be less effective for your holiday email marketing. So you should opt for personalised email campaigns that can be built by segmenting your email subscribers. Here’s some criteria to help you segment your email list:
Demographics: Segmenting email marketing lists can improve open and clickthrough rates. Age, gender, and geographical location are the basics when it comes to segmentation criteria. To go deeper in segmentation you could consider segmenting your customers by their interests, allowing you to send highly personalised holiday emails.
Even though this tactic is more advanced, it’s still fairly straightforward. Create user profiles on your website or use an email subscription centre to get detailed information about subscribers’ personal interests. If you ask your subscribers for their preferences, you can easily target your audience based on their real interests, so you can cut through the noise.
Past purchases: Sort your customers based on the items they’ve searched for and their previous purchases, as well as whether they’re seasonal or year-round shoppers. Share VIP preview sales or exclusive offers with frequent shoppers and a reward points system that encourages seasonal shoppers to purchase more frequently.
Discount shoppers: Make a separate list of people who shop during a sale or only with discount codes. By creating this segment, you can make sure that you do not offer discounts to users who are open to paying full price.
Run Automated Holiday Campaigns
As part of a targeted campaign, you can automate the sending of a series of emails to subscribers in your email list. Email open rates and customer engagement can be increased by reaching the right people with the right message at the right time. Here’s some ideas for automated campaigns:
Automate abandoned cart workflows: Sales are more likely to be secured with abandoned cart emails during the holiday season.
Welcome new subscribers with a seasonal email: Generate an adapted welcome email with an exclusive discount or holiday theme to get more subscribers.
Engage customers with RSS-based emails: Send RSS-based emails to drive engagement with your customers and prospects. If you have great content on your blog, why not set up RSS-based emails that automatically send when new content is published?
Dress Your Campaign Festively
This is the most obvious component of your campaign- dress it festively. During holidays you can let your creativity run wild by using festive email templates, incorporating visually appealing elements, and engaging your audience through polls, storytelling and festive puns.
Don’t forget to create killer holiday subjects. Holiday emails also provide the perfect opportunity to insert emojis. Incorporating emojis in the subject line can see an increase in the open rate of your emails. The unexpected emoji in the inbox is sure to catch the recipient’s eye. For holidays you can use festive emojis like a snowman ☃️, christmas trees🎄, and of course santa🎅.
You can also consider employing small games or competitions to generate excitement and word-of-mouth marketing, as people love taking part in games and contests.
Personalise Your Emails
You’ll get more conversions if you give your emails a gentle touch of personalisation. To grab the attention of your email recipients, you can greet them with their names, and you can even write a customised subject line for each customer to increase conversions.
You can also include some holiday-themed pictures of your team to make your emails more warm and inviting. Make sure to schedule these appeals to go out at appropriate times according to your segmentation.
Try Not To Be Too Salesy
A good holiday campaign is fun and festive but never salesy. During the holiday season, marketers send more emails, yet everyone is busy during the holiday season, and they might not appreciate receiving hard-sell emails.
Make sure you respect their time and follow a customer-centric approach. Also, instead of boosting your sales agenda during the holidays, find out what your subscribers want from you.
You can’t just write down a few sales-oriented copies and call it a day since it’s the holiday season. Your copy should focus on how you can help your subscribers spread joy through the gifts they purchase from you. It is possible to reinforce trust with your customers even with just a simple holiday greeting.
Spread The Christmas Spirit With Gift-Giving
Holidays are all about gift giving. So, what’s better than giving appreciation gifts to your customers to spread the Christmas spirit? Gift giving will help you increase loyalty, generate exposure through social media and help people choose your brand for their holiday shopping over others.
Now, it is important to remember that a gift doesn’t mean a discount. To remain faithful to the Christmas spirit you need to give actual gifts. They don’t necessarily have to be expensive, but they do need to be meaningful and of sufficient value, when compared to the price point of your products or services.
Some fun ideas could include a free product, branded gifts like a jar of branded candies or a classic diary, and a charity donation. If possible, tailor the gift to each customers’ personality and interests. Remember not to ask anyone to post about their gift to social media, because doing so will make the gift seem insincere.
Send Post-Holiday Email Campaigns
Google reports that 20 percent of all store traffic occurs in the six days following Christmas. You could lose a major percentage of your holiday revenue if your marketing efforts slacken after December 25th. It’s not the best time to be working, but marketing automation makes it easier.
In fact, even B2B customers are shopping in the last week of December, since business is starting to wind down and they have more time on their hands. Make the most of this by continuing a campaign after Christmas. You can run an end-of-season promotion with marketing automation now that people are looking for new ideas to start the new year, or connect with customers by sharing plans for 2023.
Wrapping Up
It’s not too late, start now and you can still take advantage of the holiday season’s huge potential. By following just a few of the above-mentioned tips, you’ll be able to create a successful holiday email campaign in no time. Start planning your campaign for the holidays now, and if you’re really in need of the experts, then why not get in touch today?