Holidays are the most awaited time for people, creating so much joy and happiness among them. The excitement for the celebration among the people begins weeks before the day. They do the shopping and various other preparations to make their holiday special. Not only for the customers, but the holiday season is quite joyous for the businesses as well.
The holiday season is one of the most lucrative and profitable times for the business. In fact, as per the survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, 20-30% of the annual sales are generated during the holiday season. Considering the fact, companies should prepare well for holiday sales. They can organize various events like festival sales if they have related products to sell.
For this, the most effective tools that can be useful for the business is email marketing. Email tends to target the customer more effectively than any other medium. Hence, it proves to be the best place to promote your business. Promotional emails, if used rightly, have the potential to drive traffic to your business and enhance sales. Check out the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website during the holiday season.
10 Excellent Holiday Email Marketing Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Business
1. Know Your Holidays
The foremost thing to reap the benefits of the holiday season into your business is to be acquainted with all the major holidays specific to the country. You should know each celebrated day of your country which relates to your products/services.
For instance, the holiday season in the US starts from November to January. This proves to be a promotional period that fuels profits for the business for the entire year. Hence, make sure you do not lose this precious opportunity for your business. Integrate your holidays in your email marketing calendar, and automate the campaign.
If you are already into the practice, track the performance of your promotional emails of previous years based on the revenue incurred. According to this, you can make improvements to your campaign and boost profits.
2. Schedule Your Holiday Email Marketing Smartly
Merely scheduling emails like weekly emails or newsletters are not always profitable, especially when it comes to the holiday season. Sending heaps of emails too early can cause email fatigue, and too late might make you lose the opportunity. You need to plan it out smartly, neither sending too early nor late, but at the right time.
Start promoting your business timely, by educating your customers on how your business could be helpful for them. Give them some potential reasons to consider your brand rather than the other available options.
You can help them prepare for their holidays through some valuable recommendations. Guide them on the products and services they might require during their holidays. You can also give some gifting ideas to your customers as Jimmy Choo did in their holiday email
(Image Source: Pinpointe)
3. Design Your Email in the Holiday Theme
Whether it’s a festival or a normal day, email design plays a crucial role in customer engagement. A customer never wishes to engage with an email with poorly placed content and design. Hence, before pushing emails to the customer’s inbox, make sure it is properly designed.
For the holiday season, you can design your email in a way that conveys your message at a glance. Try to blend the holiday theme with your brand signature. Make sure that along with the festive feel, your email also promotes your brand at its best.
In the following holiday email, Starbucks included elements that instigate the feeling of the holidays to their email. Along with the festive email design theme, the placement of the content grabs the user’s attention as well.
(Image Source: Really Good Emails)
4. Use a Powerful Subject Line
The first thing that appears to the customers when they receive an email, is the subject line. The more compelling is the subject line of your email, the higher is its open rate. The main objective of a subject line should be to create curiosity among the subscribers about the email content. This encourages subscribers to open the email and go through the email content.
When Levi’s sends a Holiday Email Marketing about the end-of-season sale, its subject line directly talks about the sale. Reading this, the interested customers definitely opens the email, check out the details.
Subject line: Our ghastly, ghostly sweater is BACK! 👻
(Image Source: Milled)
5. Offer Loyalty Benefits to Your Customers
The concept of loyalty benefit is not new, it has been there forever. Customers love to be treated in a special way if they regularly buy products from your store. The best way to make them feel special and a part of the family is to offer them loyalty rewards. Loyalty reward is something that always works, resulting in better customer retention.
You can offer loyalty rewards in numerous ways-
- Offer exclusive discounts on their purchases.
- Provide gifts with the purchases.
- Invite your customers to try out your latest products.
- Offer reciprocal discounts for other products.
- Offer gift cards for future purchases.
This approach not only gains customer confidence but also retains them for a longer time. Loyal customers also promote your brand to their friends and relatives, increasing your brand reach.
6. Segment Your Email
Segmentation is one of the most effective ways of Holiday email marketing. Segmented campaigns produce an approximately 760% increase in revenue for the marketers. The same logic applies to the holiday email as well. Segment your holiday emails for better customer engagement and higher sales.
There are various factors that you can consider for the email segmentation for your holiday emails-
- The loyal customers
- The customers who purchased in last 2 years
- New Subscribers
- The Interest of the customer
In the following example, Airbnb uses segmentation in its holiday-themed emails that it sends to its customers. The email includes promotional discounts as well as location recommendations tailored to the customer’s interest.
(Image Source: Really Good Emails)
7. Use a Compelling CTA:
Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks to 371% and sales 1617%.- WordStream
CTA holds immense importance in the conversion rate of the emails – the ultimate aim of a holiday email marketing campaign. Call-to-Action gives a direction to the subscribers, instead of leaving them clueless. For the holiday emails, along with the holiday theme, it’s important that you also include a compelling CTA.
Birchbox, a New York based monthly subscription service for beauty products, offers a free holiday pouch on each subscription. In the email, it places a compelling CTA just after offer details, guiding them for the next step.
(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)
8. Repurpose Your Email Content for Better performance
The holiday season is a golden time to gain a huge profit and enhance your business. Hence, you need to be cautious about the content that you are sending to your customer.
The companies have been feeding information to their customers for a long time. Some content perform satisfactorily and some fail to achieve the target. You can analyze the performance of your content and plan your future content based on the result. Always make sure you send your best piece of creation to your subscribers at this time, so that they couldn’t resist themselves from considering your offer.
9. Connect with Your Customer
“During the #holidays, don’t always go straight for the sale — emotion beats promotion every time,” says BrennerMichael
If selling products was only enough, no business would have ever faced losses. Apart from the product quality, the factor that contributes to the success of a company is the customer relationship. The more you connect with your customer, the better is the customer satisfaction and retention.
Make your customers feel attended to and taken care of. Following are some effective ways that can help you to establish a better connection with your customer and strengthen your customer relationship-
- Address customer queries
- Give them loyalty rewards
- Always abide by their interests in the product recommendations
- Wish them on their special days
- Give them exclusive offers for holidays and festivals
(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)
Here, Velour, along with the sales event, also gives an additional offer to its loyal customers. Velour always updates its loyal members about the offers and new products before the non-loyal ones. This makes the customers feel special, encouraging them to stick to your brand for a longer time.
10. Create a Sense of Urgency in Your Holiday Emails
People become more active in pressure. The urgent situation makes the human brain work faster, helping them to make quick decisions. You can also reap benefits from this human tendency by including urgency in your emails. An email that creates a sense of urgency in its email is more likely to convert a subscriber into a potential buyer.
There are various ways to show urgency to the subscribers-
- Setting a deadline.
- Limited stock.
- Compelling subject lines talking about a problem.
- Early bird offers
For example, Lucky Brand uses a compelling subject line, informing the customers about the last day of the holiday sale. This creates a sense of urgency in the customer’s mind, encouraging them to make a purchase.
(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)
Final Thoughts
Now you know the ways to improve your holiday emails to boost your business. The scope of the profit from the holiday email is massive. All you need to do is to craft your emails strategically. Once you craft your email, review it before you send it. Check out the areas where you can make improvements to create a holiday feel. However, if you feel stuck, get expert guidance, and simplify the process. Reach out to Email Marketing Experts and improve your email marketing campaign during the holiday season.
