Are you ready for the holidays? Sure, you’ve still got 3+ months until December 25th, but when it comes to holiday communications, now is the time to take action. Back to school mania just began, but for the eCommerce store, it’s time to start thinking Christmas.
A successful holiday email campaign is well thought out in advance, and starts tantalizing your customers with Christmas ideas and merchandise in October. October! That’s just over 3 weeks from now, so it’s time to get motivated! What motivation you ask? Well, the potential to bring in your highest revenue numbers of the year should give you that extra push to get prepared now!
Goals?
The goal of your holiday email marketing is to 1) persuade the shopper to buy from you, 2) Inform them about deals and holiday offerings they can’t afford to pass up, 3) Show them why your products are the gifts everyone will want under their tree this year, 4) Boost sales!
Of course, email marketing shouldn’t be used as a one-off jolt to increase revenue when sales are slow, but it can be used meticulously throughout the holiday season to increase revenue and ideally, leave you in the black!
Marketing Calendar
Get started now! Your competitors aren’t wasting any time getting started with their holiday promotions, so why should you? Starting early gives you the opportunity to sell to the early shoppers and build a relationship with the ones who will buy later.
So, what’s the game plan? You’re busy, and the holidays are going to be no exception! Rather, you’ll hopefully be even busier than usual. So take the time now to plan out your send dates from October through New Year’s Eve. While you’ve got 3+ months until December 25th, you’ve got even less time to build up the anticipation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
And even better than simply planning out your campaigns and dates, is designing and pre-scheduling them. Decide on your Black Friday special and design and schedule it for sending now. That way, when you are busy in November your emails won’t be a last-minute attempt to throw something together!
Promotions & Topics
Here are some trusted tips that will help make this a successful email marketing holiday season for you:
• Offer a range of promotions – free shipping, incremental discounts, site wide savings, etc.
• Offer early bird specials to encourage email subscribers to shop early
• Offer newsletter-subscriber-only specials
• Introduce daily or weekly deals or sales
• Showcase gift ideas by interest, budget, gender, age, etc.
• Encourage gift card purchasing
• Promote “last minute” gift items
• Create urgency closer to the holidays
• Participate in National Free Shipping Day (December 16, 2011) http://www.freeshippingday.com/
Send Tips
The holidays are not the time to try out new and fancy tricks. Stick with what works. Try out the fancy stuff when so much isn’t at stake.
Here are some general tips to keep in mind when sending during the holidays, and all year long:
• Optimize your email campaigns for mobile users, who could potentially account for a huge chunk of your customers.
• Segment – When possible, segment your list so you are able to speak to your customers on a more personal level, giving them a unique shopping experience.
• Manage expectations – While they have come to expect to hear from you twice a month during the non-holiday season, it will be a harder adjustment for them, and they might stop opening if from November through Christmas you email them daily. Manage your frequency carefully.
• Maintain balance between offer and value-added content.
• Display a prominent call to action.
• Subscribe to your competitors emails to generate ideas for next year.
A Successful Season
Trying to get your message to people becomes increasingly harder because of the high volume across email as a whole. Keep your email messages short and sweet, and offer a compelling subject line to get them opened. Of the utmost importance, be sure you are supplying value. Gift guides offer shoppers value. Coupons offer incentive. Marry the two for a perfect email campaign.
Finally, you’ve increased your communication during these peak months; don’t abandon them after December 25th. At minimum, return to your usual pattern, but be sure to encourage them to spend their holiday cash or gift cards, and suggest items and accessories to compliment their holiday purchases and gifts.
Happy Holidays!
Reprinted from Solid Cactus Blog – Michelle Johnson
Snap this QR Code with your SmartPhone and watch where it takes you
