Jared Atchison — October 24, 2019 We are well into fall, and winter is creeping up on us faster than we realize. Marketers are working hard on their holiday promotions this year, and it’s not hard to figure out why. In 2018 consumers in the United States spent a staggering 707.5 billion dollars during the holiday season. Business owners know that the fall and winter months are, without a doubt, the most profitable time of the year.
The problem with reaching your audience during the holiday season is that they are constantly bombarded by the latest Black Friday deals and Christmas promotions. It’s your job to break through the noise and reach your target audience. Email is a useful marketing tool every month, but it can prove to be an extraordinary tool if appropriately used during the holiday season.
Let’s take a look at four email marketing tips you should keep in mind if you want to see a successful shopping season.
Generate Additional Leads
There are plenty of ways to generate leads for your business. Before the holidays arrive, you should work towards getting more people to sign up for your email list and to follow you on social media. The more consumers interested in your business pre-holiday shopping, the more likely they are to receive your marketing campaign containing special holiday offers reserved for subscribers.
We suggest hosting multiple giveaways during the summer months to bolster your subscriber count before you start planning your holiday marketing campaign. Contests are great ways to spread brand awareness and add to your email list. Here’s an example campaign that shows how hosting a giveaway can help you build your subscribers.
In the contest above, you have to either sign in with Facebook or an account for a chance to win the competition. Combine these tactics with a giveaway plugin for WordPress or standalone software, and you’re well on your way towards building your holiday list.
Additionally, you can create a seasonal lead magnet such as “Top 10 gifts for the Holidays,” or “5 Best Gifts for New Parents.” Lead magnets encourage to sign up on social media, which prompts them to go to your website. Once they’ve landed on your squeeze page, you can ask for their email address in exchange for your gift.
Segment Your Email List
Now that you have a decent number of leads, it’s time to start segmenting your lead lists. Email subscribers all have different interests and desires as consumers. It’s your job to analyze your analytic behavior and on-site traffic to break your subscriber list into various categories.
People are more likely to take advantage of specials if they are relevant to the consumers’ lives. For example, if you own an online electronics store, you would want to segment your audience into various lists, including video games/consoles, TVs/Blueray players/ Radio/speakers, etc.
The guy going to your online shop for his car speakers isn’t going to care about your BOGO Black Friday offer on video games. However, someone who has a history of buying games or consoles for your website would likely take advantage of this offer.
Segment your lead list by considering all of your products, and the ideal customer for each genre of products. Combine thing information with your on-site analytics, and you’ll have no problem dealing out valuable promotions to consumers that find your offer relevant.
Use Holiday Themes and Text
Brick and mortar stores often decorate their store for the fall and winter holidays every year. During October, you’ll see spooky witches and ghosts dotting storefront windows across town. Thanksgiving usually inspires cartoon cutouts that show the pilgrims eating turkey with the Indians.
When you start sending emails to your consumers about Halloween deals, Black Friday offers, and Christmas discounts, make sure your template and copy match the holiday. For instance, you could create a spooky email headline that reads, “An offer so good it will give you chills,” follower by a pumpkin emoji.
Your on-site marketing should match the same theme as your email marketing campaign. Below is an example of a holiday template you could use on your website to grow your email list and prepare for the holiday season.
Optimize for Mobile Users
There are 5.13 billion people in the world who own smartphones. There’s a good chance that at least half of your audience is checking your marketing emails and your website from their smart device. If your site is unable to handle mobile users, you’re not going to get nearly as many sales than if you had a wonderfully written mobile-responsive website.
You can make things easier for mobile shoppers during the holidays by simplifying your checkout process, ensuring that your site is mobile-responsive and bug-free, and by taking precautions to boost the speed of your website.
Conclusion
Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to your audience during the holiday season. If you want to get the best results this year, make sure you look at your sales records and trends from the previous years. There’s a good chance that you can use the data from last year to make projections for the upcoming year.
If this is your first year as a business owner, make sure you keep track of trends and patterns during the holiday season. As you gain experience working during this hectic time of the year, you’ll learn to make informed choices in both your email marketing campaign and on-site.
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