These 7 Holiday Email Marketing Tips are Lighting up the Season!

Marketing experts are using holiday email marketing to build stronger sales, move strategic inventory, and to meet shipping deadlines. These 7 holiday email marketing tips are designed to help in peak season accomplish those three things. Holiday email marketing is the biggest campaign all year. Knowing where to focus your efforts can help save on time and cost. Read ahead!

 Plan Way Ahead of Time

 Less than 21 percent of marketers plan for the holiday email marketing season more than three months in advance. It’s a big mistake that many marketers make when they don’t plan for the busiest time of year months ahead of time. By putting in the effort to plan, it gives you some time to get the right email look, strategy, and dates all set up. Execute your campaigns better by knowing the creative, production, and execution plan weeks before you ever need to deploy.

 Use Interactive Elements

 When a consumer receives your email, it should be exciting. Tastefully using interactive elements such as GIFs can help add interest to messages. It’s all about creating excitement. If big, bright GIFs are not your style, innovating your message with a slider, accordion, menu, flip effect, or something else can be equally satisfying.

 Keep a Customer-Centric Mindset

 Many marketers also make the mistake of sending out more emails during the holidays and not personalizing any of its messages to the actual human beings on the other end of communication. Develop a customer-centric approach and learn what the consumer expects from you during the holiday season. Don’t just distribute sales copy. Look at how other retail marketing brands are doing it. They build trust in the consumer by spreading joy, talking about the holiday experience, and communicating something more meaningful than general sales copy.

 Create Personal Emails

 Personalization is pivotal. Send out emails that make an impression by referring to a past purchase by the subscriber. Customize offers and deals according to the behavioral data you have on hand.

 Segment your Email Marketing

 Segment your email marketing lists to ensure that content appears relevant at all times in the eyes of the recipient. It is estimated that as many as 27 percent of individuals over 55 years of age believe the marketing emails they receive to be targeted towards millennials. Though it can be more work to segment different emails designated for different audiences, it will lead to better conversions.

 Ensure your Email Design is Responsive

 There’s no excuse for email marketing in 2017 to not have a responsive design. Imagine someone opening up an email on their iPhone and seeing something they can barely read. When this happens, you run the risk of a subscriber unsubscribing and have just wasted an email in peak season! Approximately 54 percent of emails are now opened on mobile devices. Streamline a design and keep it simple with a single column layout, minimalist design, user-friendly navigation, and compact images with alt-text included.

 Real-Time Content

 Real-time email marketing content can help move inventory you need to get out the door and help create sense of urgency in the recipient to make a purchase. Things like, limited-time promotions and adding a countdown timer can help promote sales and maximize shipping deadlines.