Your Holiday Email Marketing Guide

• Updated on: 2023-08-04
• Read original article here

The holiday season is no time to relax on your marketing activities. It’s one of the best times to reach out to your customers, and it’s also an excellent opportunity to build relationships with them. While the holiday season is a great time for people to relax and bond with family and friends, it is a time for you to improve your sales and grow revenue.

The last quarter of the year makes up26.8% of total annual retail sales, with customers in America spending between $755 billion and $767 billion inNovember and December alone. This makes the holiday season the most important time of year for many businesses, so what you’re doing to capitalize on the spending trend is of utmost importance. 

What’s the best way to reach your customers and increase sales during the holidays? Use amarketing channel that guarantees returns and conversions. Join us as we walk through how to leverageemail marketingto provide customers with what they need during the holiday season.

Like you, other businesses will take advantage of the holiday season and the shopping frenzy. How do you stand out and capture the attention of your subscribers? Use the following tips:

47% of email respondentsdecide whether to open an email based on thesubject linealone. It is the first element in your email that pulls your reader in. Get creative by using attention-grabbing words, and make sure you play on the festivity of this time of year. The holidays are also a great time to test out using emojis in your email subject line. 

Your regular emails won’t cut it for holiday email marketing. Create new holiday-themed email designs and templates and use these for your email marketing. Not sure how to do that? Benchmark Email has a freeemail template library, as well as somefree holiday email templatesfor you to use. Users have access to even more holiday email templates that will help you spread some cheer (and no coding required).

Instead of linking CTAs, add to your holiday email’s creativity andvisual appealby using bold CTA buttons that align with the rest of the email design. Use holiday colors for your buttons and make them big, so they stand out and readers know exactly what they’re supposed to do when they open the email. 

A holiday campaign is a great opportunity to use some fun images. You can pull stock images or create your own that pull in holiday themes or help evoke a certain feeling associated with the holidays; however, when doing so, make sure you avoid large image files that subscribers have to scroll through before getting the complete picture. If pictures are too large, it could affect your email loading time, and it could frustrate recipients if it means scrolling for a while to get to the meat of the email. 

People are looking for the best gifts for family and friends and plan to spoil themselves with a few buys. While they may be excited to get your email, especially if there’s a promise of a holiday discount, they do not have time to sift through something lengthy and long-winded. When it comes to anyemail marketing strategy, brevity is key. Keep your content short and straight to the point, which willincrease the likelihood of conversion. 

It is one thing to write the ultimate holiday email, and it is another thing to get results from your email campaigns. Use the following tips to optimize your holidayemail campaigns.

While your emails may contain the best holiday gift ideas, they won’t appeal to everyone. Draw insights from your buyer personas andsegment your listbased on what ticks each group. If you’re running numerous promotions, make sure you send those promotions to the group of subscribers they best apply to. 

Drawing from segmentation, ensure the emails are customized andpersonalizedto each contact group. To do this, you can usemarketing automation toolsthat tap into customer behavior and trigger automated email campaigns based on that behavior and engagement patterns.  

Email automationhelps you reach your customers with the right emails at the right time with relevant content. By automating these emails, you can ensure your customers are getting the right holiday promos and nurture while you’re busy checking other things off your to-do list. 

Don’t wait for the holiday season to be in full force before sending out those holiday promotional emails. Customers purchase after identifying a need, conducting research, and evaluating alternatives. You want to ensure they are through all the stages and ready tomake purchaseswhen the holiday season crawls in.

Planning is important so you can spend time identifying the most important aspects of your campaign and initiate proper execution. Decide on the holiday email series you’ll share with your subscribers, as well as the timelines. Consider any viable partners to team up with and what each will need in order to get the word out. Properly put your emails together, mapping out each one within your campaign so you can ensure you create excitement and get as much return as possible. 

Below are examples of email campaigns you can use for your holiday email marketing:

The success of your holiday email marketing depends on several factors. Use this guide to check all the boxes and prepare your business to take full advantage of the holiday shopping season. And, if you need an email marketing tool to make it simple,sign up for our free planand get started today!