The holiday season is one of the most profitable times of the year for many businesses. November and December are the peak months for online retail sales. Preparing for this period takes time, patience and creativity. Do you already have a holiday email marketing strategy? If not, it’s not too late. Let us show you some useful holiday email marketing tips to get you ready for the holiday season!
Planning Your Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing is crucial for almost all eCommerce merchants to generate traffic and boost sales. According to Shopify, email marketing generated roughly 24% of holiday sales in 2018. To be more specific, this means $169 billion in revenue in the last 2 months of 2018. An impressive number, right?
Here are a few essential steps to get you started for the 2019 holiday season.
Start early
Creating email marketing campaigns for the holiday season is fun, but also time-consuming. Not only that you have to work on coming up with original promotions, but also adapt them to your business and audience. This process requires a lot of effort, so it’s better to start planning your holiday email marketing campaigns as early as possible.
Another important aspect is to work on your email list. The best email campaigns start with great lists. Your top priority has to be building a targeted email list for the holiday season. Work on your email list keeping in mind the quality (real information from real people), relevance (genuine interest in your business) and volume.
Know the email marketing calendar
Where do you start when you create your campaigns? The best thing you can do is to consult the calendar. This is where you get campaign ideas to promote your products and services. In the USA, the holiday season starts early November and ends in early January. Don’t restrict yourself to the most famous holidays, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Christmas. The calendar has a lot of special days you can use to your advantage, such as December Solstice or St. Nicholas Day. Create your own special holiday email marketing for 2019!
You can find more information on the 2019 Holidays and Observances Calendar and on www.wincalendar.com.
Segment your audience list
You don’t want your marketing efforts to be in vain, so what can you do to ensure the success of your marketing campaigns? Email list segmentation is the answer.
By doing this, you will be sending more relevant and targeted emails to shoppers who are genuinely interested in your products.
Create your campaigns & make them stand out
Your holiday marketing emails have to be appealing and inviting. Use holiday-themed images, enticing messages, and templates to draw attention. Create more designs and don’t be afraid to use a bolder approach.
To make things easier, you can use email marketing software tools. If you need help with marketing content, here is a great article with some of the best content marketing tools you can use for your eCommerce website.
Add a holiday gift guide to your website
A gift guide is a great way to showcase your products in an email or even on your website. Create a landing page with multiple types of products, to cover a wide area of interest. You can use sales data to put together a list of your most popular products and market trends. Work with your team to create categories for the gift guide. Include last-minute gifts and bundles too.
Create an online advent calendar
A great way to keep shoppers interested in your business during the holiday season is to create an online advent calendar. It increases social media engagement, it grows the mailing list and drives traffic to your website.
You can use the online advent calendar to highlight daily offers, products, articles and anything else you can think of.
If you are considering using an online advent calendar, check out dot.vu and turchen.com.
Holiday Email Marketing Ideas & Tips 2019
#1 Run an online contest
#2 Create exclusive holiday sales
#3 Use urgency (promote early bird pricing, display discount codes with a timer)
#4 Theme your email subject lines (include emojis and catchy words)
#5 Host giveaways
#6 Create bundle offers
#7 Add some holiday spirit to your newsletters
#9 Use loyalty program offers
#10 Offer free shipping
#11 Invent catchy holiday product names
#12 Use personalized flash sales
#13 Leverage novelty dates & create original promotions
#14 Create the New Year product strategy
#15 Think about the post-New Year promotions
Catchy holiday email subject lines
Be creative and original with your holiday email marketing messages. The first thing your shoppers see is the subject line, so this one needs special attention. Here are some great examples you can use as inspiration:
⦿ “Last day! 30% off everything with our Cyber Monday sale” (Kate Spade)
⦿ “Cyber Tuesday – 50% Off Clearance!” (Steve Madden)
⦿ “$20 Coupon! Save Big on Cyber Monday.” (BevMo!)
⦿ “Gifting Made Easy: Free Shipping + Discounted Gift Cards + Our Best Picks” (Provisions by Food52)
⦿ “Good Gravy! 20% off” (Orbitz)
⦿ “10% OFF Site-Wide + Shop Our Holiday Gift Guide!” (Monoprice)
⦿ “Save 10% with Promo Code: Christmas10” (KSL Deals)
⦿ “Click Quick. Last chance for a FREE $26 gift” (Dr. Axe)
⦿ “New arrivals + gift guide = 😍” (Madewell)
There are a few key power words you can include in the email subject lines, check the list below:
⇒ Words that increase conversions: Sale, Off, Now, Thank You, You, New, Exclusive, Discover, Be the first, Instantly, Win.
⇒ Holiday words: Holiday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Last Chance/Minute, Special, Deals, Save, Gift/Give, Shopping.
Conclusion
You can easily maximize your profits this holiday season if you focus on your holiday email marketing campaign. With these holiday email marketing tips, you have all the essentials elements to get started. If you want to know more about eCommerce strategies you can use to boost your sales, click here.
