6 Strategies for Booming Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns

Halloween is officially the commencement of the holiday season and with Thanksgiving is only weeks away, it’s time of the year when marketers gear up for their holiday marketing campaigns. Though all marketers blast their holiday email marketing campaigns, however, not of those emails catch dust either in the spam box or as unread messages under promotional categories.

That’s why we wanted to bring you the bunch of tricks which actually work plus dos and don’ts to make your holiday-themed email campaigns collect higher revenues, not dust in recipients’ promotional or spam folders.

Before you get started…

Every successful holiday-themed email marketing campaign follows a data-backed plan and goal which is closely tied to the specific business objective for that season. Hence, the first thing you need to do is to set goals in the form of estimated open rates, downloads, link clicks, or actual conversions. Once you have set the goal, you need the right strategies to set your email marketing campaigns in motion. Here are six strategies to get you started and race for a revenue-driven holiday email marketing program.

1. Leverage progressive profiling for better segmentation

Owing to this technology of predictive intelligence, your email marketing campaigns can benefit from more personalized recommendations. However, your target customers might be shopping for a whole lot of other stuff which is why data received from a subscribers’ history might not provide exact data you need to segment based on their areas of interests during this holiday season.

Instead you can simply ask your target audience about their interests and choice of products they will be shopping this year. Hence, first send your subscribers the progressive profiling email which will create an alert for the holiday email which will be optimized to your subscribers.

2. The right set of images on holiday-themed emails

One of the most important elements in a holiday email marketing campaign is images that spark instant connections with subscribers. Photos aid in adding relevancy, sense of fellow-feeling and often triggers an instant urge for shopping.

Especially during festive seasons like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Black Friday etc. Hence, it is extremely imperative to add seasonal imageries, preferably your own images and optimized with your brand names and your own messages that appear more personalized for your subscribers.

3. Leverage social media for further interactions

Social media plays a vital role in improving visibility of your holiday email marketing campaigns. The trick is to distribute your holiday campaign across diverse social media channels and make your holiday offers surface on different channels – therefore, even when your subscriber misses your emails, they can be targeted on social media channels where they most frequent.

In addition to social media channels, you can also publish your offer on your blogs. Another way to incorporate social media channels is to incorporate social media plug-ins in your emails, if you have not done them yet. You can give a holiday makeover to social media plug-ins by incorporating holiday-themed social media buttons. Encourage your subscribers to make purchases from your social channels by offering an additional social media offer.

For example, you can offer 30% for email subscribers and an additional 30% discount for those who purchase from social channels by clicking on your social buttons. For this, you can use social media analytics, for example Pinterest gives data on what people are looking for and are buying during holiday season.

4. Make sure your emails are mobile-optimized

The single factor which may decide the fate of your holiday email marketing campaigns is mobile-readiness. That’s why you need to check how your emails look, feel and function on mobile devices, mobile browsers, on different mobile platforms.

Especially, you need to test your emails on newer platforms and browsers to ensure cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility of your emails before you release them. For this you can consider the responsive template of emails – need help with responsive email templates for your holiday email marketing campaign? Call our email marketing and designing experts at (408) 502 6765 now.

5. What about when things go awry?

And that’s why you need to keep an apology email ready for your holiday campaigns. Email marketing mistakes are common and those are most likely during holiday seasons when your team could be pressed for time to run multiple campaigns on diverse channels within a limited span of time.

Mistakes such as sending repeated offers to the same prospects or customers, erroneous email copies, links to incorrect pages, faulty navigational links, or date of validity etc., could tarnish the reputation of your holiday campaign, however, a personalized, immediate apology mail delivered to targeted subscribers can bridge the gap and restore their confidence in your campaign.

It is best to create an apology email template and make sure they contain the latest logo (if holiday-themed), links to facilitate unsubscribe, links to your website, holiday microsite, social media pages etc.

6. Holiday email subject lines – do’s and don’ts

a. Your subscribers are expecting discounts, offers, coupon codes or other holiday special incentives on your holiday emails – make your message clear, declare the discount or the special offer in the subject lines to lure them to open the email, sign-up, register, or click the links.

b. Optimize your holiday email copies to the theme of the season – use relatable words such as, “spooktacular” for Halloween, “Gobble the offer” for Thanksgiving etc. Hence, it is time to mix trigger the fun with pun in your holiday-special email copies.

c. Do include the season’s top performing and mostly used keywords in the subject line such as, jingles, jingle bell, New Year’s Eve, Black Friday, last-minute Christmas deals etc.

d. Talk to your subscribers through the email subject line – give a personal touch to the subject lines by using first and second person pronouns such as, we, you, your,  our etc.

e. Introduce numbers and offer gift ideas and suggestions in the subject line – for example, “10 Christmas gifts that break the stereotypes”, “5 holiday gift choices that will create memories”, “8 Christmas gift ideas under $25” etc., to fetch the holiday tips and suggestions they are searching for.

f. Beat the bush of vague subject lines such as, “gifts for him” or “gifts for her”, be precise and mention whom the gifts are appropriate for – whether gifts for wife, gifts for husbands, gifts for senior moms, gifts for your identical twins, gifts for expecting moms etc. If possible, also mention the budget the products you want to promote through holiday email marketing campaigns such as, under $50, $25 or $200 etc.

Finally, it’s time to get your creative juices flowing and get creative with every element of your holiday-themed email campaigns, way beyond just the creative holiday theme or templates. Right from the email message copy, pictures, buttons, offers, subject lines, to everything that you can think of can be optimized for the season. Also, do not hesitate to recreate the magic of the past by implementing and tweaking what about your previous campaigns work best to draw your customers and prospects closer to your brands.

If you have yet to plan how to get started with this year’s holiday email marketing campaigns, then our marketers will walk you through the latest trends and creative ideas which will perfectly reflect your holiday promotional goals for this year. Just call us or reach us via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.