The holidays are a huge opportunity to reach your customers and increase overall sales for the year and your email marketing is a tactic you don’t want to overlook. Online and mobile sales continue to soar across the market so it is important that you maximize your reach during the busy season. Here are some tips to make sure your holiday efforts are a success.
Decide How the Holidays Fit into your Marketing Strategy
The nature of your business will dictate the way you plan your holiday email marketing campaign. Are you a product or service based business? While products are usually at the forefront of holiday shopping, service based businesses can also benefit during this time. If you are service based you may want to consider running holiday packages or customer appreciation specials during this time. It’s all about being strategic for your business. To get started define the products or services you are focused on highlighting during the season and begin to create a schedule.
Create Template Variations and A/B Test your Content
With so many businesses running holiday promotions and specials, it is a time to get creative with your images and messaging. If your marketing strategy is focused around highlighting a few products or services get creative with your campaigns by varying the content. Your content may be similar in some of your emails so it is important to distinguish a difference and keep the attention of your audience by using different graphics and headlines. This will also allow you to A/B test your emails to see which your audience best responds to and use those results to drive future emails. It is also essential that your messaging is clear and focused. Consumers are being bombarded with marketing efforts during the holidays so you want to make sure your messaging is clear and your call-to-actions are simple.
Promote Crucial Dates
Promoting order by and ship by dates can be a valuable use of your email marketing. This way you can communicate to your customers of when they need to order product without running into order or shipping issues, which can be frustrating for all involved. We suggest noting these dates in your emails 2 weeks prior to the drop dates and also creating dedicated emails for both dates to target last-minute and impulse shoppers.
Optimize Mobile Layout
Mobile commerce is only continuing to increase making your mobile marketing strategy more important everyday. Make sure your email marketing campaign is optimized for mobile use. Here are a few suggestions:
- Use a responsive design template
- Utilize the pre-header
- Make sure call-to-action buttons are scaled for easy use on mobile
Review Campaign Reports
One of the most important parts of your email marketing campaign is paying attention to your email reports. To get proper data, wait at least 4 hours before reviewing analytics. Pay extra attention to your click-map to see what images and call-to-actions are appealing to your audience. It’s also important to monitor your sales reports to see how they correlate with your email marketing efforts. Every successful email marketing campaign is based on reviewing your results and catering to your audience. Don’t be afraid to test different templates and messaging to see what best resonates with your audience.
The most important parts about using email marketing during the holidays is being strategic and monitoring and adjusting your campaigns. Do both of these things and your business will be off to a successful start!
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