1. Use marketing automation to send holiday emails
The best way to increase email open rates and engagement is to target the right people at the right time. Holiday email marketing automation is your secret weapon.
Marketing automation can help your CRM efforts by smartly cleaning, enhancing, and segmenting your contact lists.
Get the most out of your holiday emails by automating them:
- With the competitive holiday season, abandoned cart emails are even more vital to securing sales.
- Target warm leads with lead scoring: Using customer engagement data and scoring contacts helps build consumer profiles. Email Marketing software tracks user actions like clicks and email opens and uses this data to score leads. So you can tailor your holiday email content to the most engaged contacts.
- You’ll likely get new subscribers during the holidays, so prepare a seasonal welcome email with a special discount or holiday theme. This will help persuade the shopper to buy from you.
2. Send segmented holiday email campaigns
Holiday emails that are targeted and personalized will have a much higher engagement rate. Contact segmentation allows you to target messages to a customer’s specific interests and buying habits.
Here are some effective holiday emails marketing segmentation ideas:
- Interests: Group subscribers based on previous purchases or website sections visited.
- In comparison to year-round customers, Q4 shoppers have a different relationship with your company. Consider their desires and motivations when planning your next follow-up campaign.
- Coupon lovers: Identify customers who frequently (or exclusively) use coupons to engage your most price-sensitive customers. Similarly, creating this segment will help avoid discounting full-price paying subscribers.
3. Make your emails designs festive
Consider how you can incorporate holiday imagery into your email design. This doesn’t mean you should abandon your brand; it means you can experiment with your standard format to entice subscribers.
4. Build a smart holiday email campaign schedule
To make the most of the holiday season, plan your email marketing schedule ahead of time.
In spite of the advice not to leave holiday email marketing until the last minute, some marketers have gone too far!
Sending too many retail emails too early can cause general email fatigue and lead to customer apathy. It’s more important than ever to time emails well.
5. Add value
An email is a request. You’re asking them to open, read, and hopefully act. You must provide value to make it worthwhile for them. If your emails fail the “what’s in it for me” test, you need to revise them.
You can do this by sharing useful information in your holiday emails. You can offer more than just exclusive deals to your subscribers. Use emails to inform customers about deadlines for Christmas shipping, Black Friday sales, and product shortages.
During the holiday season, it’s critical to distinguish your brand from competitors. Consider what your competitors expect from you and what you have to offer that they don’t.
6. Know your audience’s needs
Focus on what has previously worked well for your audience when creating your holiday email campaign. Start by reviewing previous year’s data, including opens, clicks, and conversions.
Find out why certain emails were successful and use the same strategy. It could be the promotion, the subject line, segmentation, or the timing of the email. Also, remember to figure out why something went wrong so you can avoid it next time.