Holiday Email Marketing Tips and Tricks to Stand Out in the Crowded Inbox
The holiday season is a huge opportunity for all businesses. Whether you are a B2B company or an eCommerce store, the last quarter of the year brings the best time to try out new things and send innovative emails to the subscribers.
To help you stand out in the competition and create winsome emails, we are here with actionable insights into the subject.
For ease of understanding, we have bifurcated the subject into five different topics:
Content, design and development, deliverability, x-factor, and things to avoid.
Let’s discuss each of them in greater detail.
1. Content
Everyone on your subscriber list has different preferences. So, batch and blast emails won’t work. Avoid “one size fits all” type of email campaigns. Try to understand your audience’s preferences and create content accordingly. Derive inspiration from your competitors or complementary businesses.
Build on insights from historical data like past purchases and resources downloaded. A pro tip for holiday season emails is that besides the purchase history, keep tabs on the products searched for. This is important because people are not just buying for themselves during the holiday season but for their family and friends too.
Address the customers’ challenges and talk about how your products make lives better for them. Highlight your USPs and policies like free shipping, easy returns, and gift wrapping to encourage more customers to convert.
Using dynamic content can be of great help to create personalized holiday emails that resonate with all your subscribers. As short videos are getting more popular on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, even your emails need to be visually enticing for the readers.
The holiday season offers a golden chance to re-engage dormant subscribers. So, create a re-engagement email workflow that targets these customers and prompts them to buy again.
2. Design and Development
AMP is the latest technology to enter the world of email design and coding. If your subscriber base prefers to use Gmail and your ESP supports the deployment of AMP emails, you must certainly give it a shot during the holiday season.
The advantage of using this technique is that it allows the users to take action from the email itself. For example, eCommerce stores can send out AMP emails during the holidays to let the recipients shop and check out without redirecting them to the website. It is especially useful for cart abandonment emails. As it emulates mailable microsites, it enhances subscriber engagement and user experience.
You can also incorporate interactivity and gamification in your holiday emails to exude the holiday vibes.
Use colors like red, blue, and white along with holiday elements that match the festive mood. Of course, holiday email marketing should be successful in promoting your products and getting you conversions. But you can also send out emails to wish the subscribers without any sales pitch. Add attractive GIFs or visual elements in these emails to reinforce your brand positioning.
3. Deliverability
When it comes to deliverability, you have something to learn from each email campaign. Check the metrics related to bounce rate and unsubscribes. Optimize your emails accordingly. It is advisable to clean the lists before you send out the first-holiday email campaign. You can even set up a new subdomain that works exclusively for the holiday season. As the email cadence touches an astronomical figure these days, ESPs and ISPs get extra careful. Therefore, a new subdomain helps to steer clear of spam filters and maintain an optimum deliverability rate.
As a best practice, you must not increase the send frequency abruptly during the holidays. Instead, ramp up the volume in advance so that the mailbox providers perceive that volume as normal and don’t get triggered during the holidays.
Personalize your emails as far as possible. It will help you draw the subscriber’s attention. Such emails will be less likely to hit the junk mailbox.
It is a good idea to check with your ESP whether they break down the campaign list into segments according to the likelihood to open. Does it prioritize the customers who are most likely to open? In case such features are available, you should use them throughout the year but particularly during the holiday season.
Keep an eye on the automation workflows and make sure that there are no repetitive communications to the subscribers. Consider revamping your automation emails to align them with the celebratory feel. For example: Add an exclusive offer in the welcome email campaign for people who sign up during the holiday season. Avoid automatic resending of the emails to the non-openers. It might lead to an unnecessary increase in the number of emails, which can result in unsubscribes and spam complaints. Eventually, it will hamper email deliverability and sender reputation.
Some industry experts also advise using emojis in the subject line and preheader text to catch the reader’s attention to your emails, especially on mobile devices. It will, in turn, increase email opens and engagement.
4. X Factor
Stand out from the herd of brands by sharing your story and why customers should choose you over the competitors. If needed, put a break on the current segmentation strategies and update the automated campaign rules to match the data collection and targeting during the holiday season.
Take an omnichannel marketing approach. Send text messages too for cart recovery and back-in-stock notifications to increase the conversion rate. Accessibility is of utmost importance if you want to reach a larger audience with your emails. For every visual element, add a suitable Alt-text to let the screen readers know what it is about. Also, it will help subscribers using email clients with images turned off by default.
5. Things to Avoid
As the holiday season sees a huge spike in the number of emails, avoid sending the same email with the same copy and design again and again. It will turn off the subscribers and make them opt out of all future communications.
Many companies send wordy emails that might frustrate busy subscribers. They prefer to scan and skim through emails. So, it is best to create concise emails with predictable designs. Avoid sounding too money-hungry. Add a pinch of philanthropy to your emails to bring in the essence of giving during the holidays.
Creating a holiday email calendar is a must. But do not restrict yourself to it. Make necessary changes based on the metrics you gather.
Wrapping Up
The holidays are all about putting your best foot forward when it comes to email copy, design, and coding. Through these tips, I am sure you will be able to create the most effective emails and get a high conversion rate during the holidays.
