Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas are just a few of the biggest shopping events of the year. These are traditionally the most profitable months for retailers, but they are also the most competitive.
This year’s sale season will see an increase in email volume similar to 2020. In 2020, the pandemic boosted email volumes significantly, with businesses worldwide using email as their primary communication channel. In fact, email send volume has nearly doubled in the last 18 months, up 94% year-on-year.
Because consumers’ inboxes are now more crowded than ever, retailers must be on their A-game to make an impact with email marketing. Consumers are becoming more selective about what they open, preferring emails from senders they know and trust, with appealing subject lines.
So, how can retailers prepare their email campaigns for the upcoming sale season?
Stick to databases that are active
Just because it’s sales season doesn’t mean you should revisit an old database. Remove any unknown, suspicious, or inactive email addresses. Contacting inactive email addresses can harm your marketing efforts by harming your sender reputation, which is used by MBPs like Google and Outlook to determine delivery. Using Validity’s Everest for older subscriber addresses will help identify and remove unknown and incorrect user addresses.
Examine your email’s landing page
If your carefully crafted email with a great offer ends up in the junk folder, start here. Build strong IP and domain reputations, and use authentication to ensure email addresses are authorised to send emails from approved domains. Establishing domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC) will help MBPs authenticate emails.
Doubling frequency isn’t the solution.
Creating thoughtful and targeted content that is shared at key moments is a far better strategy than simply increasing communication frequency. If mailbox providers suspect your IP address has been compromised, they may block or delay delivery of your emails until you can prove your sender reputation. Instead, focus on creating quality content that encourages engagement and gradually increases frequency.
Restore the receiver’s power
To effectively market your products and services, you must first understand your target market. The simplest way is to give them options via a preference center. Subscribers can choose how often they want to hear from us, which channels to use, and what content they want to see. A snooze button is also available for those who wish to temporarily halt communication.
With Apple’s Mail Protection Privacy, a preference center is critical (MPP). MPP disables pixel tracking and makes inferring subscribers’ interest from open rates less reliable, necessitating direct contact.
Try Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
BIMI adds the sender’s authorized logo next to the brand’s email address in the receiver’s inbox. This visual indicator confirms an email’s sender, increasing engagement, brand recall, and purchase likelihood.
Make Use of Split test
Before the holiday sales season, all retailers should run split tests. Start with something simple like changing the subject line – with or without an emoji – or the promotion offered – such as 20% off vs $20 off. You’ll know what’s working if it gets more engagement and conversions. After learning more about your customers, you can test email creatives, banner images, and send times.
Triggered emails
Consider using triggered emails based on subscriber actions. The automatic emailing of customers who leave items in their online cart after a certain time. They may have decided not to buy the item, but they may have become distracted and will appreciate the reminder. Triggered emails have a huge impact. Cart abandonment emails generate ten times the revenue of other marketing emails.
While sale season is a great time for retailers and marketers, it is also a time for mistakes. Don’t let your new campaign distract you from privacy compliance and other year-round best practices.