Top Ways to Win at Holiday Email Marketing

The holidays are here! If you’re an email marketer, that means it’s time to make sure you’ve optimized your strategy. The competition is working hard to get the attention of your customers, so you’ll need to take key steps to stand out this holiday season.

Luckily, by working smarter instead of harder, that’s an achievable goal. As always, it’s important to follow best practices, like segmenting lists and using an email verification tool to make sure emails land in inboxes. Keep the following tips in mind and your holiday email campaign just may crush it this season.

Explain the benefits you offer

Throughout the year, you might think it’s unnecessary to continue reminding your followers about why your products or services are worth their money. You probably already offered that information when they first subscribed to your email list, but perhaps they need a reminder or extra push to take action.

During the holidays, there’s a good chance you’ll attract a lot of new followers who may consider making a purchase. It’s a great time of year to highlight what makes your business unique and why consumers should care.

Study past strategies

Most holiday email campaigns involve promoting special offers or discounts. To decide which promotional strategy is best for your goals, study past campaign performance to see which delivered the greatest overall return on investment. You want to know what you’re promoting before designing email content around it.

Keep mobile users in mind

Statistics indicate that most people check their inboxes via mobile devices. Make sure your email content is organized accordingly. Avoid large chunks of text, use headers and bullets to make your content scannable and include images to break up sections of text.

Offer Personalized Recommendations

Approximately 22 percent of American shoppers say they also buy gifts for themselves during the holiday season. Remember, your followers may not be exclusively looking to purchase items for someone else. Boost your sales by offering personalized product recommendations they may be interested in.

Guard against cart abandonment

Cart abandonment is to be expected during any time of year. Online shoppers can be easily distracted. However, this issue is of particular concern during the holidays, with shoppers often using carts as wish-lists they end up forgetting about.

Maximize your sales by automating a reminder email that arrives in a customer’s inbox an hour after they abandon their cart. A simple reminder may be just what they need to complete the purchase.

Promote other services and features

The holiday season gives you an opportunity to reach a large audience with your emails. Thus, while you should focus on promoting your holiday deals, you should also remember to promote other features and services, such as your sister brands, social media channels, rewards programs and the like. Leverage your large audience during the holidays to boost brand awareness.

Offer exclusive deals

Your holiday email campaign can demonstrate the value of subscribing to your list in general. For instance, by offering your followers access to exclusive deals or products, you can make them feel like valued customers and remind them how they benefit from following you.

The holidays don’t need to stress you out. It’s true that email marketing can be competitive this time of year, but if you apply the points listed here, you’ll design a successful campaign that boosts sales and brand loyalty.

See related article: Marketing the (Shorter) 2019 Holiday Shopping Season