The fourth quarter is the busiest time for email marketers, being the Holiday season. Brands face an intense competition to promote their business and stand out from the pack during this period. They leave no stone unturned to create the merriest of Holiday email campaigns that bring the maximum revenue.
Through this article, we have thrown light on the nuances of effective Holiday email marketing that would help you get an edge over others in the industry.
Let’s delve deeper into all those Holiday email marketing pro-tips that would bring high conversions for you.
1. Make your Holiday emails a visual treat
Visually rich content is easier to consume. So, incorporate relevant images, animations, and videos in your Holiday emails.
As short video content is gaining immense momentum on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, visuals will make your emails more engaging for the readers.
Of course, it does not mean that text-based emails are obsolete. You still have to maintain the 80:20 text to image ratio to steer clear of the spam traps.
Additionally, include vibrant colors like red and blue that match the Holiday vibes. It is a good idea to use Holiday elements like pumpkin, turkey, snowflakes, ribbons, Santa Claus, and reindeer in your emails.
2. Address the customer’s pain points through your emails
Remind the users how your products bring convenience to their lives. Avoid overly promotional language and stick to an empathetic tone.
Let them know about your free shipping, easy returns, and gift wrapping policies so that they get encouraged to buy gifts from you. Most people are buying for their loved ones during the Holiday season.
So, make sure that you target them based on their browse history rather than their previous purchases. An important pro-tip is to create different emails for early and last-minute shoppers.
3. Follow the fundamentals of email accessibility
The likelihood of conversions increases when more people see your emails. That’s why you must strive to create accessible emails that can reach everyone, regardless of any disability.
While using animated images, make sure that the flashing rate is not between 2 to 55 Hz. Also, choose the right color contrast so that the important message and CTAs stand out.
4. Revamp your email automation strategy
It is quite likely that you have increased the email volume during the Holiday season. If so, overhaul your automation workflows and consider pausing them or updating the automated campaign rules. Modify the current segmentation strategies so that your customers do not receive any redundant communications.
Avoid resending the emails to non-openers automatically. This is especially important because of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. It does not allow the accurate recording of the open rate.
So, resending emails can inundate people with unwanted messages. Ultimately, it will cause lower engagement and deliverability rate, affecting the overall performance of your email campaigns.
5. Try to maintain an optimum email delivery rate
Invest in a robust ESP or CRM that gives you detailed insights into the delivery rate.
For example: Does it have the feature to segment the users by their likelihood to open? Can it throttle speeds to lower propensity openers? If these features are available, you must use them throughout the year, but particularly in the Holidays.
As send volumes are going to reach an astronomical figure during the Holidays, it is advisable to set up a new subdomain. The main advantage of doing so is that it will help you stay away from the vigilance of ESPs and ISPs.
Many brands dig out the email list from the past years and send blast emails to all the email addresses they can find. That’s the worst thing you can do during the Holidays. Instead of increasing your conversions, it will hamper your deliverability and sender reputation.
As a best practice, you must send more emails to those who are already engaged with your brand. The Holiday season is a good time to send re-engagement emails to the dormant subscribers and get them to purchase again. If they still show no interest, it is prudent to remove them from the list.
6. Add interactivity and gamification in your Holiday emails
In the race to woo maximum subscribers, it becomes important to serve something unique. So, send interactive emails that would encourage more people to engage with your brand.
Include some kind of gamification or click-based event that would contribute to your click-through rate. Doing so will also boost your sender reputation and inbox placement rate. You can also include a “Share on social media” CTA in the emails to increase brand visibility.
If you have a large subscriber base using Gmail and an ESP supporting AMP email, you should definitely use this technology for your Holiday emails.
Here’s why:
- AMP emails are great for the ecommerce industry. You can let the users shop from the email itself without redirecting them to your app or landing page. They only have to visit the landing page to make the payment. It is a brilliant idea to use this technology for cart recovery emails to bring back the cart abandoners.
- You can use AMP technology to boost your travel business. The recipients can complete the booking from the email. As a result, it will facilitate the checkout process and increase conversions.
Wrapping Up
More often than not, brands blast their subscribers with the same Holiday email copy and design again and again.
That’s the main reason why email fatigue is so prevalent during the Holiday season. People conveniently ignore the emails and even unsubscribe. It is, therefore, most important to build out-of-the-box emails that can draw the user’s attention.
To help you create such customer-centric Holiday emails that get noticed, Email Uplers got in touch with 10 industry stalwarts who know email marketing inside out.
We collated all their tips in our infographic: 10 experts share actionable pointers on Holiday email marketing to help you cut through the noise.
About the Author!
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.
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