Email campaigns provide one of the most cost effective marketing strategies during the holidays. Especially with the rising costs of digital advertising and social media ads during the holiday season, an effective email campaign could get you the best ROI on your marketing efforts.

Benefits Beyond Cost

As your marketing or sales teams plan out strategic touch points to interact with your clients, or your potential clients, email marketing campaigns should rise to the top of your priorities. Aside from being one of the cheaper marketing strategies, email marketing campaigns have other benefits to your business. They provide a non-intrusive communication method that can be used to highlight your product or service 24/7. By creating touch points through PCs and mobile phones, email is a highly effective marketing channel. Online retailers are getting 62% of the holiday shopping transactions and emails are driving 20% of those transactions. With COVID-19 changing the landscape of how people holiday shop, that number is likely to rise in 2021 and reaching shoppers with email marketing is now more important than ever.

Your Content Calendar Matters

Planning and scheduling your email marketing campaign is critical. According to Adobe, online shoppers spent $34.4 billion during the 2020 Cyber Week. There is too much revenue on the line to scramble or rush through your holiday email marketing without giving it the proper thought and preparation it deserves. Your email schedule needs to be spaced out so that you don’t overwhelm the contacts in your database. To avoid unsubscribes, you need to plan ahead. Properly planning for your holiday email marketing strategy includes considering the following types of consumers:

*The consumers that like to get their shopping done early

*The consumers that wait for a specific date (Black Friday, Cyber Monday)

*The consumers that wait for a significant deal, discount, or promotion

*The consumers that shop ethically (Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday)

*The consumers that shop last minute or forgot someone/something

It’s never too early to create a plan for your content calendar and you should be one quarter ahead. If you don’t have a content calendar that aligns with your marketing and sales goals, it might be time to consider hiring a Marketing Strategist. A strategist can help you prepare a content calendar or adjust your current calendar to make sure that it is creative, effective, and measurable.

Not all Leads Should be Treated the Same

A common mistake is to treat all of the people in your CRM, or database, as equals. Your leads should be segmented into lists so that you can treat them differently and target them with specific holiday campaigns. This is important because your messaging and your holiday offers should be customized to each segmentation list. An email to a cold lead who has never heard of your company should look different than an email to a brand loyalist who has purchased your product previously.

Work Smarter and Automate Your CRM

Once your contacts are segmented into various lists or categories, let your CRM or email platform do some of the automation for you. A great example of utilizing automation is by creating a cart abandonment strategy. By automating the follow-up process with people who leave items in their cart on your website, you can catch any of the people who were considering a purchase. If you need help creating email drip campaigns, a Marketing Assistant can set up and manage email automation for you.

Creating Holiday Content with 7 Email Marketing Tips

1. Use unique subject lines that stand out and cut through the holiday noise. Try using emojis and going beyond ‘Happy Holidays’.
2. Personalize your emails. From email subject lines to introductions, if your database has names and information that helps you customize your emails- use it! Your open rates will increase if you use personalization.
3. Highlight your CTAs. Your ‘Call to Action’ buttons should be bright and link people to webpages where direct purchases can be made instantly.
4. Keep your emails clear and concise. Avoid long copy or try a video.
5. Provide value in your holiday emails. Include discounts, deals, free shipping offers, holiday freebies, holiday gift guides/gift catalogues, etc.
6. Design for ‘above the fold’. Put at least one CTA button and one image above the fold. Don’t make people scroll too far to see the value offered or to get to the important messaging. Place any text heavy sections below the fold.
7. Don’t forget about Small Business Saturday. In 2020, the biggest growth in online sales happened on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when shoppers spent 30.2% more online than they did in 2019. A total of $4.7 billion was spent on that day alone, so don’t leave Small Business Saturday out of your holiday email marketing campaign.

Flying by the seat of your pants during the holiday season isn’t recommended if you want to get your year end profit growth moving in the right direction. If you feel like you need any assistance with Email Marketing, start planning now because your competitors sure will be!