Business and Holiday Emails

Email marketing is a very important means of promotion with very good results no matter what products you offer in your business. You can grow your audience and improve results by taking advantage of holiday email marketing, and studies show that consumers check their personal email accounts two to five times a day, where they can receive updates.

By taking advantage of the annual holidays, not just Christmas or Thanksgiving, you can transform a promotional email into a tool that helps you generate more profit for your business. Now let’s look at a guide that will help you create an email marketing strategy for the holidays.

Some steps to get started with holiday email marketing

You need to start planning early, no matter the holiday, you can start at Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years. You can meet with your team to decide the holidays that are most favorable for your business, with this you can plan before the stipulated day, and you can organize the entire process beforehand, but before doing all this it is important to put yourself in the client’s shoes first.

Know your audience

When you know your customers it is easier to know how to offer them your products, you must create a specific buyer personality for the holidays and personalize your emails to offer greater personal value to your recipients, depending on the preferences and needs of each one.

Understand segmentation

After specifying the customer and the person who is the buyer, you can categorize your audience into different segments, in order to know who is buying what and how often they come back for more, so that it is easier to show customers what you really want. they are interested in Let’s see some more steps:

1. Clean up your email subscriber list 

In your list of subscribers I checked the ones that have been inactive in the last 90 days, to then send at least three re-engage messages and confirm if they are still interested in receiving emails from your brand, and don’t worry about removing subscribers who are no longer interested, this allows you to bring new subscribers to your brand.

2. Get new subscribers

Organize your current subscribers in one place first, then test your integrations and forms, it’s also a good idea to ask subscribers to respond so you can add them to your whitelist. And to get new subscribers you can include:

• Re-share your consent on social media
• Partner with relevant companies in a collaboration
• Request referrals from current subscribers
• You can look for ways to strengthen your relationship with current subscribers so that they motivate other people to subscribe and buy

3. Build new email segments

You can segment your subscriber lists using sublists to personalize content, for example:

• Repeat customers
• Frequent buyers
• New subscribers
• Special offer redeemers and more

4. Update and fine-tune your automations

You must be careful to update the messages, since many times a link can stop working, incorrect dates of promotions, among other inconveniences, and it can cause you to lose sales for this. Also for holiday emails it should relate to your products, you can use a cross-sell message which will suggest similar items to customers, or an up-sell which shows them additional accessories to combine with the purchase.

5. Superpower your transactional messages

Transactional messages can also help maximize holiday sales, you can include promotional communications in shipping and delivery confirmations, or reminders such as:

• Shipping deadlines
• Special offers
• Last chance notifications

Consider your email subject lines

The title is important so that customers can review the email on vacation, also, the subject lines must be correct, as well as short, attractive and relevant. For this you can also think about your type of customers, their preferences with prior planning.

Know when to send your emails

You may already have a list of holidays, for example, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, however, you can keep in mind the following dates, which can help your business a lot:

• Black Friday: November 25, 2022
• Small Business Saturday: November 26th, 2022
• Cyber Monday: November 28th, 2022
• Giving Tuesday: November 29th, 2022

Ideally, you should also keep in mind to plan in advance the peak vacation months, for example, from August and September you can start preparing for traditional vacations; at the end of October and November you can start planning your Christmas shopping; and in January you can start the year with emails about new products.

Building your holiday email marketing strategy

For vacation emails it is important that you communicate personally with your customers, so that the intent is clear and concise. Here are some tips that can help you in the content of your emails.

Create a holiday-themed design

A design with striking images depending on the theme will encourage your client; Likewise, you can add offers or promotions to encourage purchases and encourage clicks on your website. In case you need help you can have it with GoDaddy Studio which has a selection of templates, graphics and fonts that you can use.

Share holiday gift guides, deals and teaser emails

You can add tips, advice and advice on what is best to buy in the holiday season; also send emails with previews of the festivities; seasonal offers, promotions and discounts help a lot; last minute emails offering free shipping or reminding your subscribers of the redemption deadlines of your promotions, offers or discounts; add instant or one-click purchase options; and you can also create a holiday-themed contest for customers to enter and also share content about your brand. It should always be a natural conversation with the client and avoiding that they feel pressured.

Produce a holiday marketing video

It is estimated that 54% of consumers today want to see more video content from the brands they subscribe to, so creating a product video is highly brand-friendly, and if this video is holiday related you can get more attention and share in promotional emails your products.

Campaign ideas

Let’s look at some ideas that can help you create additional content for your holiday email campaigns:

Thank you campaign

An email thanking your subscribers on Thanksgiving is great for letting them know your value as a customer, and you can also add a section at the end where you announce new promotions, for example, on Black Friday, which would be the next day.

Pre-sale campaign

This option works for active users who open your messages and make purchases regularly, you can offer them a special coupon code or a promotional offer for a limited time.

Free-shipping campaign

You first need to figure out if you can ship for free, then offer the option to your customers, this works quite a bit on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Gift-based campaign

Gifts are a good option, putting a specific price on purchases to receive a gift from you and you can also use a stock quantity, for example, for the first 200 customers.

Raffle or giveaway campaign

With a raffle you can greatly motivate your customers to buy your products and especially on holidays. You can also use other incentives such as: Free shipping for one year; gift cards to another store; free subscriptions to your software service; among others that you can use.

Sequence-based campaign

You can use a countdown to let customers know how long promotions last, especially this works on days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Partnering business campaigns

You can partner with other stores that offer similar or related products and you can promote your business to your email subscribers and those of your partners.

Holiday email marketing optimization and retargeting

Now you can optimize all of the above while retargeting subscribers to get the most value from your campaign, let’s look at a few ways to do it:

Set up referral rewards

Sending a follow-up email can offer a reward for first-time shoppers or multiple buyers during the holidays, for example, a discount code; two-for-one offer; first dibs on brand-new products; free shipping for a month. And you can also get shoppers to encourage their friends or family to sign up and buy.

Deliver post-holiday or follow-up emails

It works well when the end of the last holiday date is approaching, for example, you can follow up on a recipient of a Christmas marketing email. Let’s look at some approaches you can take:

1. Send a reminder to folks with an incomplete transaction

You can use cart abandonment emails, which allow you to re-engage your subscribers and you can also send them a special holiday message.

2. Utilize a template for quick turnaround

With a template it is easier to edit the email according to the campaign or the occasion, this will save you effort and time.

3. Make it personal with a sweet deal

You can use offers, or suggestions, which drive engagement and help them continue with their purchase process if they like to link to a product or purchase. However, avoid mistakes like:

• Not ending every page with a call to action. 
• Not using CTAs to guide your website sales funnel.
• Not having a call-to-action above the fold.
• Using too many calls to action.
• Using weak language in your CTAs.
• Not thinking about the design of the CTA.
• Not testing your calls to action.
• Thinking that calls-to-action don’t matter.

Embrace email automation

You can create and schedule emails to be sent to different segments using automation, as well as monitor and configure the process.

Don’t forget holiday email mobile optimization

Thanks to Hubspot statistics, it is estimated that email views are now opened more on mobile devices than on desktop, being part of mobile commerce. You can take this as a reference to be able to make mobile-friendly designs for your holiday email marketing campaigns.

You can also use layouts that are clean and streamlined; with quick and relevant buttons; also links and contrast between the text and the background color. It is a great opportunity to use the optimization for mobile friendly emails, you can test your development and find the best alternative.

Research, track and refine your holiday email efforts

It’s important to check and test your vacation emails, as this will help you avoid mistakes like typography, layout, broken links, and more. And if you don’t have a marketing team, you can try your own emails for testing. Now let’s look at two strategies that will help you confirm that vacation emails are working:

Benchmark your results

You can analyze the following metrics to compare your campaign efforts:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates

They can be based on the performance of individual emails and can be monitored through Google Analytics, so be aware of what you discover from the investigation. You can also figure out the best times to send emails, or which offers and promotions work best, so you can move forward and improve your holiday marketing sales.

Peek at your competitors

You can review competitor campaigns, so you can find content gaps to exploit and put your own spin on them. It’s also good to keep in mind that the holiday emails would only be every 12 months, since the holidays are once a year, so you can research and plan content for your brand.

Conclusion 

The holidays are a great opportunity to increase your customers, sell more and make your brand known, with good planning you can create something that excites the audience.

Do not forget to always be clear with your message, without pressuring the customer to make purchases but motivating him; you should also be aware that the emails work, remember to test and edit them so that they are as good as possible; and above all, always be attentive to your customers and listen to their suggestions and give incentives for customers to stay in your business.