Holiday Email Marketing Best Practices

The holiday season is the most special time of the year and a huge opportunity for publishers to shine. To have a successful holiday email marketing strategy you need to focus on meeting your audience’s needs and expectations, not only to sell your products. There is no surprise that with the widespread popularity and indisputable benefits of email marketing, the return on investment is massive.

Publishers should stay focused and take control over their email strategy. Incorporating these tactics in your holiday email marketing strategy can help you achieve your marketing goals:

• Keep track of everything: insights, metrics, statistics, open and click rates – everything that can be measured and analyzed
• Create and design special newsletters for the holiday season
• Segment your email lists and send targeted messages and increase your subscribers’ engagement
• Monetize your email newsletters to increase your business’ revenue

Keep track of everything (audience-related)

The holiday season is near, and timing is essential in email marketing. Dive into your subscribers’ insights and metrics to learn when they are the most active and which email newsletters have the highest open and click rates.

Identify what these email newsletters have in common, whether it’s sending day, sending time, or the subject itself, and segment your email list to reach the right audience with the right and expected message.

Look at their demographics, their social media interactions (likes, shares), their online behavior in terms of preferences and pain points: all these can help you identify your most engaged customers who will be your main focus in this holiday email marketing strategy.

The key to success is to position your products or services as solutions to your customers’ problems and needs. Especially around this time of year, you need to avoid self-promotion.

This is what content marketing is all about: helpful and well-researched content that can help you increase your customers’ engagement and loyalty.

After all, aren’t you most loyal to those people or businesses that help you out?

In conclusion, you need to know your audience’s needs and expectations, but this process can take up more of your time for research and analysis. Start as soon as possible, before the holiday season starts.

Create and design special holiday email newsletters

There is no secret that the holiday shopping season is a huge deal for publishers, and email is a popular choice for marketing strategies. Whatever your product, industry, or target market, holiday marketing has the potential to help you get big rewards for your business.

Send out email newsletters that highlight your promotions, sales, or seasonal products. In this period businesses have a variety of offers and promotions. That’s why customers check their email more frequently in the holiday season – because they want to get the best deal and the right email that can help them save more money.

Creative design and subject lines for the holiday email newsletters can be marketing gold.

Key takeaways:

• The subject line is the single most important factor that determines whether your subscriber opens your email – or reports it as spam. All it takes is a little creativity. Add holiday sparkle to increase the open rate.
• The design should inspire the holiday vibe: from the colors of your brand to those associated with the season you can create a spectacular design for your newsletter. Try to keep it simple and clean to make the entire message visible. Be careful not to put too many images in your email newsletter and include catchy CTA buttons.
• As an extra tip, you can also think of a newsletter that introduces your customer to your brand’s holiday story with your best offers “created especially for him” – keep in mind that personalization is always a good idea.

Segment your email lists and focus on your audience

A targeted holiday email will always have a much higher engagement rate than any other email. Segmenting your contacts is the most effective way to send the right message to the right audience by simply knowing their interests and online behavior.

Manage your holiday email campaigns

To make the most of your holiday email marketing strategy you need to start planning your campaigns schedule in advance.

The best timing for emails can vary significantly based on industry and business goals. Decide when you want to start the holiday email carousel and start scheduling your campaigns.

Automation is a key point in every email marketing strategy so this is the reason why you should already know what ESP can answer your sending needs and help you better track the performance of each email campaign you send.

Welcome emails seem to be an essential marketing tool. This kind of email has a huge impact on the relationship between customers and your brand.

Plus, when your subscribers open your emails, they expect to find personalized offers, special recommendations, and favorite product updates.

Welcome emails generate higher open rates, and they should be sent immediately. Usually, from the moment when they had the first interaction with your brand.

Promotional emails help you set your subscribers’ expectations on what promotions you’re running during the holiday season. From gift cards to free shipping – every idea you may have is a good idea in terms of promotional email content.

Abandoned cart emails are a very important marketing tool because an abandoned cart is the last thing you want. Usually, it means that something went wrong, and this kind of email is used to solve any issue that is behind this decision. These are the main reasons they abandon the cart:

1. Shipping costs: is it feasible for you to offer free shipping?
2. Better deal elsewhere: tempt customers back with better price deals
3. Out-of-stock: how can they know when the products are available again?

Monetize your holiday email newsletters with programmatic native ads to increase revenue

When you decide to monetize your email newsletters you engage your business into the big plan of increasing revenue and subscribers’ engagement at the same time.

Native ads appear like sponsored stories do in your social newsfeed. They look like links to other articles. These ads link to products, services, or any other relevant information that your target customers will need.

Programmatic native ads provide your subscribers with a great alternative to find what they are looking for in the holiday season and not just right now. They expect you to speak to their needs and focus on their problems.

By monetizing your email newsletters with programmatic native ads, you basically let the power of advanced personalization work for your brand. These ads are aligned perfectly with the rest of your newsletter’s content, so users are 2X as likely to click on a native ad vs. any other ad version.

The main two advantages that programmatic native ads have are:

• They boost email engagement: these ads leverage the AI’s capabilities to deliver your customers advertisements about products, services, and information that will interest them.
• They are low in costs, but high in returns: with ZERO costs for email publishers and up to 42% more revenue, programmatic native ads seem to be the winner for a strong email monetization strategy.

To succeed with your email monetization strategy, you need a partner with the experience and expertise to merge design and technology for optimum results.

  This article originally appeared on inboxAds Blog and has been republished with permission.
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Author: Marika Zinca

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