Don’t wait until the last minute to decide what holiday sale you will be running and promoting in an attempt to maximize your holiday sales this year! Planning ahead, although we know it can be tough to get ahead of anything in business these days, allows you to increase your reach and make a few waves in the market which will flow money back to your bottom line.
Now we have to ask…
How is your email marketing going? If you answered with *crickets* or hesitation, it’s time to perfect your email marketing strategy OR START ONE to promote your upcoming sales or holiday-released products or services.
Sending an email out to those on your list should be a consistent cog in your marketing strategy wheel. Not a last minute – let’s do it!
Why email marketing? Well… these stats should convince you!
Email marketing converts at 4.29%, which is higher than search engine marketing, direct, and social media marketing.
People who buy products marketed through emails spend 138% more than people who do not receive promotional emails.
Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
Segmented email marketing campaigns result in a whopping 760% increase in revenue.
According to a recent study done by Venture Beat, businesses that use email marketing systems earn $38 for each $1 they spend.
According to GetResponse’s benchmarks, 91.43% of people open welcome emails and welcome emails also boast a 26.90% click-through rate.
Not convinced yet?
Let’s talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday Stats
Both of these holidays give in-store shoppers and e-commerce businesses a chance to put on wicked deals before the holiday season to capture money spent in the market ahead of Christmas. These are considered two of the biggest sales days of the year!
Black Friday is the busiest email day, with 116.5 million campaigns being sent out to customers. (according to CampaignMonitor)
59% of consumers between 18-44 want to shop online. (according to Sitecore)
83% of shoppers agree that they will avoid in-store shopping. (according to Sitecore)
Discounts and deals are sought out by consumers as soon as they receive that email in their inbox. To capitalize on this purchase intent, you need to develop an effective emailing schedule that targets them at the right time. If you didn’t have a plan in place this past year, next year plan ahead and divide your thoughts into three mailing periods: before Black Friday, the day of Black Friday, and then post-Black Friday leading up until Cyber Monday is completed. This will help you create your audience as you go along in the planning and promotion process so you can start analyzing your email marketing metrics. The more you analyze what data you have, the more you will learn about what worked and what didn’t.
From headlines to subject lines, to links and offers, review it all in detail. The biggest mistake we see businesses make is NOT taking the time to analyze the data from what they have done already before jumping into the next big thing.
But, the next burning question is when reviewing, what email marketing metrics should you be looking at?
- Email open rate: If your subject lines aren’t converting, your open rates might be low. To increase their performance, you can tweak them. Try keeping that subject line to 3-4 words only.
- Click-throughs: A high CTR (click-through rate) means that your value proposition and CTA resonate with your subscribers.
- Bounce rate: This shows how many people are clicking off your email and website. Pay attention to this metric because it may indicate potential email deliverability issues.
- Unsubscribe rate: A high unsubscribe rate means that your campaigns are not engaging enough or your audience sees them as spam. If this is the case think about segmenting your contact lists into categories of content so that you can personalize the offers to your audience most likely to buy. For example, if you are a retail store try dividing your list by gender and send them products specific to them, with a smaller section of the opposite gender at the bottom titled something like gift ideas for her/him etc.
IN EARLY DECEMBER you should be jumping on the bandwagon with your email marketing when it comes to stocking stuffers and last-minute holiday shopping
Now that you’ve established what your target audience wants, you can use that data to start promoting a stocking stuffers blitz or last-minute holiday shopping ideas. You can send out another marketing email talking about the most popular items during the holiday season and lead your customers back to in-store shopping or specific pages of your website.
HOT TIP: Think about previous discounts you’ve done in the past through promo emails or in-store offers and recall how your audience responded to those deals. Which ones were most successful? Run offers close to the ones that worked but with a few tweaks so you’re building on the success you have already achieved instead of starting at ground zero again.
Your goal might be getting more data on your customers this holiday season. You might not have anything but an email and a name at the moment but, you have to start somewhere to give yourself a benchmark on what to predict for next year.
Plan,
Design,
Execute,
Analyze.
Look for consumer behaviour patterns. Send out a survey after purchase to get helpful feedback to improve your product or service. Study purchasing trends during the holiday season. And, keep an eye out for your competitors’ marketing as well so you can see what they find that works. Not so you can copycat it, but you can keep it in mind shall we say when planning.
NEXT UP Boxing Day Promotions are a must in SO MANY industries!
Make your customers feel like the deals just keep coming! After using the previous data from your pre-Christmas email marketing campaigns, take a step back and view the data and info from a different perspective.
If you were a customer looking at your emails… would you buy from you?
I know you have examples sent to your inbox daily from other companies because our own tend to overflow this time of year.
Which ones catch your eye, and which ones do you immediately send to the trash bin?
Which subject lines make you want to open them, and which ones do you skip?
HOT TIP: Keep in mind that the design templates can make a big difference in your conversion rates and click-through rates too. Note the colour of buttons, what the buttons say, where they click to etc. It’s all market research.
High-quality product images and attention-grabbing visuals need to be included so the consumer knows exactly what the product is. Highlight the benefits of the product for them and for the love of chocolate to make it easy to read.
AS A RULE OF THUMB: If a grade 7 student can’t read it, simplify your wording until they can.
Often we assume the reading level of our customers but, what is important isn’t whether or not they are a scholar, it’s whether or not they understand what you want to communicate.
Choose colours that match the holiday season. Be careful that the colours aren’t off-brand, but you can get creative with your festive colours. Try dropping your logo back to a solid white on top of a cherry red to add that little extra sprinkle of cheer.
Lastly, make sure the email opens quickly, or else your customers will immediately delete it. You need to make sure that you keep this in mind: The ideal email image dimensions are 600px wide and 1500px high, with a file size of <102KB.
Get started TODAY on your email marketing campaigns for the upcoming Holiday season! Time is running out.
It’s time you stop making 10 different phone calls for all your marketing needs and just call 1 number – ours: 705-242-8964! We will save you time, money, and a whole lot of effort when it comes to your marketing planning, advertising, and execution. There is enough for you to worry about right now. You take care of your business and we’ll take care of the marketing. Teamwork makes the dream work, after all.
Give us a call today at 705-242-8964 and sign up for a free no-obligation consultation to learn more about how we can work as a team to conquer your email campaigns and other marketing together to boost your ROI dramatically!
WAIT one more thing before we forget! Whatever you do send out to customers, place your call-to-action buttons in an easily accessible place.
The call to action is one of the, if not the most, essential elements of your email marketing campaign. They are THING that tells your audience what you want them to do. Ie. Sign up for your service or make a purchase for your business.
The call-to-action should be bright enough that it stands out from the rest and be sure to use call-to-action words to promote the urgency of the sale.
Examples include,
- Shop holiday deals
- Hurry! These deals won’t last long!
- Order Now!
- Shop our limited collection
- Get your free gift
- Start saving today
- Shop the best deals now!
You could even insert countdown timers to show visually the urgency for the customer to act fast!
Not sure how to do that? Just ask us. We’re here to take care of the details to make your ideas a reality while fueling your growth.
