There is approximately one month between Black Friday and Christmas Day, but these few days generate 50-100% more revenue than any other shopping day.
Such is the spirit of holidays. That’s why marketing for eCommerce store is different during holidays.
You might be running various campaigns to cash the holiday season, but nothing works as great as email marketing.
In this post, I will tell you the 10 Holiday Email Marketing Tips to improve your email campaign.
10 Holiday Email Marketing Tips:
- Segment your List
- Create Thematic Mail
- Give Discounts and Offers
- Catchy Subject Lines
- Optimize for Mobile
- Test your Emails/Offers
- Schedule Mails
- Holiday Email Marketing + Social Media
- Use of Emojis
- Plan and Plan
#1 Segment your Email List
According to a study, nearly 27% subscribers over 55 years of age find that the emails they receive are targeted for millennials.
Though millennials is a lucrative audience to send mail to, alienating other subscribers is not a wise decision.
That’s why you should always segment your email list, and send relevant emails to each list.
It will improve your open rates, click-through rates and ultimately conversion rates.
Basic Segmentation
You can start segmenting your audience with fundamental demographic differences, such as age, gender, and location.
These three divisions of email lists would make your email marketing much more effective than an unsegmented list.
However, you can go vertical to these points, for better targeting.
Size of Organization
Other segmentation could be according to the size of the organisation or buying scope of the customers.
You may sell enterprise-level email marketing software, but a blogger with a few hundred subscribers might not be interested in all those enterprise-level functions.
By segmenting, according to the size of customers, you can tell the functions that are attractive to each segment.
Sales Funnel
Another segment you can do is according to the sales funnel.
Though complicated, but if you successfully segmented your audience into the cold and warm audience, email marketing will provide good output.
For example:
- Person A subscribed from: What is Email Marketing?
- Person B subscribed from: Mailer Lite Review.
You can see Person B is more ready to buy the product, and you do not need to send him an introductory email. A good offer in the mail will convert him.
Purchase History
If a person always buys a plastic water bottle from your online store, sending him an offer for a copper water bottle will not be good.
Segmenting according to what users use to buy, and then sending him related products is more efficient than sending random product suggestions.
Amazon is an excellent example of sending personalized product recommendations according to purchase history.
#2 Create Thematic Mail
When it comes to email marketing during holidays, you need to have some themes in the email designs.
People are usually in jolly moods, and images grab more attention than any text.
Moreover, if you send a mail that resonates with the holiday spirits, you will be able to capture the attention of the subscribers.
Or the email could show the personality of the online store and the buyers, emphasizing on the bond customer and product will have.
For example:
This Christmas theme email is rocking the festival. Now if the person is in Christmas spirit, and there is a reasonable probability he would be, then he will indeed check out your offer.
An email aligned with the festival feeling, and matching the site’s design is much much better than a flat and generic email template.
#3 Give Discounts and Offers
Providing discounts and offers is an excellent tactic, but it requires moderation. You do not want discount addicted customers, and there is a limit you can provide sales with without cutting the margins.
Though holidays are the best option to roll out offers, as the people are looking to purchase at this time, and the conversion rates are much higher.
But keep a few things in mind while sending discounts in the mail:
Simple Deals: Don’t provide complicated offers, and keep it simple. There are so many sales going on, so your mail should mention what the offer is.
Link to correct sale page: Take the user to the correct sales page, and the terms and condition of the offers should be easy. Visitors should understand the offer in three seconds.
Create Urgency: Add some time limit to the offer, or sale limit. Such as that offer limited till the stocks left. Add this clearly in the mail, so the visitors know if they don’t buy now, they might not be able to get a discounted product.
Multiple offers: Don’t just give a discount on the price. Diversify your offers.
- Flash Sales
- Buy One to get 50% Discount on Next.
- Buy Two Get One Free
- Get a Mystery Box with the Product
- Free shipping on order above $XXX
#4 Catchy Subject Lines
You can create an ideal newsletter with a 100% conversion rate (hypothetically), but it will still fail to get you customers, if the Subject Line is not interesting enough.
Subject Line of email is the first interaction point of your email with visitors, and if those few words do not attract the person, he will not open the mail.
According to research, people usually take 10 minutes each week in checking their emails for marketing emails. So the time frame you have to capture the attention is short.
Few tips to make catchy email subject lines:
Theme Base: Align the subject line with the theme of the mail to get the best result. It will send a coherent message and will give a better conversion rate.
Display Offer: Providing an offer in the email, don’t shy away from putting it in the email subject line. There are very few things more attractive than Discounts.
Play with Words: You may use humour to make the user open your mail. Make some festival/product related pun or word-play.
Custom Subject: Mails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened, so it’s worth your time to add a subscriber’s first name to the subject line.
Read this following holiday email subject line example to get the ideas:
- https://thrivehive.com/holiday-email-subject-lines/
- https://email.uplers.com/blog/holiday-email-subject-lines/
#5 Optimize for Mobile
According to Castor, purchases made on mobile devices have jumped from 3.4% to 36.7% in the past four years. And 76% OF Black Friday emails and 63% of Cyber Monday emails were opened on mobile devices.
At this moment in history, we cannot deny the importance and influence of mobile on shopping and purchasing behaviour.
So, you must make your email responsive. And mobile-friendly.
Tips to make your mail mobile-friendly:
Subject Line Length: On a desktop, it can be easily of 60 characters, but on mobile, only 25-30 characters are visible. So keep it short.
Preheader Text: On mobile, email displays the first line of your email. This line should complement the subject line to maximize rates. Length of it varies, depending on the device, and email app.
Images: Not all devices can load images on emails, and sometimes networks are not good at crowded places during the holiday season. So make a mail that makes sense with/without images…
Clear CTA: Keep the call to action button clearly in front and centre.
Have some Distance: Mobile displays are often small. Keep the clickable element at some distance, so the user does not click at the wrong URL accidentally.
Testing: There are many tools (such as responsinator) that can display your email for various devices. So check it before sending it.
Note: Follow all these tips for holiday email marketing after checking if your subscribers open the email from desktop or phone. You can check analytics in your email marketing software.
#6 Test your Emails/Offers
It is better to run the A/B test a few months before the holiday season. However, there are other tests that you can run before sending the mails.
Email testing will allow you to compare the various elements of your promotional mail, and you will be able to analyze what works best during the holiday season.
Few things to test in holiday marketing mail:
Subject lines: Length of the subject, message and the opening rate. You can include an offer, joke, topic, conversational message etc. and see which line works best.
Day/Time: At what time of the day, people like to shop or open their emails. For example, Tuesday is when people often open their emails. So sending on Tuesday is better than any other day. For holidays, you can mail send a few days before the holiday, so the gift can arrives before the holiday. All these tactics come into light after you read your email data.
Content and Copy: What content converts the best? Text or images, illustrations of sketches, videos or gif? All these questions are answered with an A/B test.
#7 Schedule Mails
One of the things that people ignore is that the staff also goes on holiday. So who will send the marketing email on the holidays?
That’s why you plan early and make a schedule. And you assign the team to monitor the mails, and send the right one at the right time. Most of the email marketing software already have automatic mail senders, where you put the time and date, and the mail will send itself.
You can make a drip or flow emails. For example, if a person opens up your mail but bounces back, you will send the next one with a more enticing offer. If someone buys your product, you can automate a thank you mail.
This is critical for holiday email marketing as there are so many things going on, and without a proper schedule, holiday email marketing will be a mess.
#8 Holiday Email Marketing + Social Media
To make it your email marketing more effective, align it correctly with social media.
Use Facebook ads, or boost social media posts, to double the impact of your message. But keep the offer and voice the same in both email and social media posts.
You can also change the theme of your social media accounts by changing the display pictures and cover pics.
For example, on Christmas, most of the brands put Santa on the cover image, or use red and white colours to make posts.
With the help of colours and text, they deliver the same message across all their web channels. It is an excellent way to improve the credibility of the organisation and increase sales during the holiday season.
So basically, you should integrate all the digital properties to deliver the same message. And most importantly, integrate social media with email marketing.
#9 Use of Emojis
Using emoji in your subject line and email will not magically improve the open rate. Besides, during the holiday season, customers get lots of emails from the companies.
And almost all of them try to use emojis in their copy.
Look at this image:
Would you like your email dashboard to look like this?
And, using the wrong emoji can ruin your email marketing by not rendering at all. Emoji looks different on different browsers and devices. New images do not even render.
Men do not entertain emoji as much as women do. Some demographic does not even like emojis.
Best practice to use only one emoji and a popular one so that it can load on every device.
#10 Plan and Plan
Finally, the last tip: Plan Everything.
Planning is an important part. Your competitors are doing it, and to being ahead of the game, you need to make better plans for email marketing during the holiday season.
- What email marketing tools will you use?
- Have you tested those tools?
- How will you make email templates?
- What offer will you promote?
- Is the segmentation ready?
- How will you manage the analytics?
There are so many questions to answer, and there will be many more. But once answered, you will see your holiday email marketing getting easier.
FAQ
When is the best time to start your holiday email marketing?
There is no best time; however, if you are targeting November-December festivals, then you can start planning from October. You can make templates, segment your email list, and select products for discounts.
Then you can begin sending mail from November, giving your customer an offer to buy so the product can arrive before the holiday.
Why does email make the best holiday marketing tool?
Email makes the best holiday marketing tool because they have the highest engagement rate. Social media and other forms of marketing channels are diluted and crowded. Like Facebook feed filled with so many posts.
Email is more personal, as people tend to provide their mail only to those companies and organisations that they trust.
So having an email is already a sign of bond.
How Is Email Marketing During The Holidays Different?
Email marketing during the holidays is different because people are usually in a spending spirit during the holidays. People are ready to buy the stuff, and they think less while making decisions.
During the holidays, people are warm leads, ready to convert with reasonable offers.
How many emails are too many?
It depends on your store and product, but sending 1-2 emails per week is a sweet spot. More than this, and it will look like spam.
Wrap Up
The mantra of running successful holiday email campaigns is to study your customers & products and then to create an email newsletter that they are already looking for.
With the right strategy and planning, email marketing can garner a lot of sales in the holiday season.
Plan, and follow the tips in the article.
And don’t forget to load test your sales page before sending the mails.
