How to Succeed at Holiday Email Marketing
As we transition into the last quarter of the year, holidays start to come to mind. And with all the excitement surrounding Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s, companies have a great opportunity to launch a holiday-themed email marketing campaign. Here are a few ways your business can get the most out of the holidays.
The timing of marketing emails is crucial, as messages that are sent too early or too late can deter recipients and knock several potential customers off of your mailing list. Avoid having your emails ignored or deleted by sending them at off-peak times when very few other companies are sending out their own. Your recipients will pay more attention to them and take the time to look through their content. If you’re having trouble determining the off-peak hours for your industry, look through the data on open and clickthrough rates and use that to experiment with different sending times.
Start targeting lapsed customers during the holiday season. If they haven’t received anything from you lately or haven’t bought anything from you in a while, sending them a holiday-themed email can be the perfect prompt. To get their attention, be creative with your titles and introductions. Put interesting visual content and useful information into the body of your email to pack enough value to spark curiosity in the recipient, giving them reason to visit your website and perhaps purchase something while they’re there. It won’t work every time, but it’s much more effective during the holidays.
The holiday season at the end of the year is the perfect time to express your gratitude to your most loyal customers, and what better way to do that than with an email offer? Making sales and generating revenue is all well and good, but so is maintaining your customer base. Use email marketing to thank your active customers and give them a discounted or free item, as well as remind your less active customers that you’re still around and would love to help out with their Christmas shopping. As long as the content is strongly linked to a holiday, your recipients will have a hard time resisting your offer.
Involve your email recipients in your company’s activities by giving them opportunities to interact with you and offer their opinions. If you can, avoid the survey or poll format, as it feels less personal and the response rate for both tools isn’t very high. Instead, encourage your followers on social media to comment their opinions on a certain post, then like or respond to the comments that are inquisitive or particularly interesting. Make sure the opinions connect to an upcoming holiday strongly enough to hook your followers and get genuine responses.
The holidays are the perfect time to ramp up your email marketing campaign, especially if you offer themed products or services on your business website or ecommerce website. Draw your prospects in with fun holiday-related offers and activities at the right time, and they’ll be buying from you all year long, no matter what season it is.
