Why the holiday season is great for email marketing the answer is pretty simple. You have people willing to spend often overspend on gifts for family members and friends.
We Americans are consumed to have the latest technology, toys, and gadgets in the market. This makes it a great time to send promotional emails or newsletters showcasing your holiday product offerings.
Why not pull on these emotions to help your grow your business. After all this is what marketing and advertising is all about. Thinks about famous companies such a Coca Cola use the polar bears to represent winter and the holidays or how Anheuser-Busch has the Clydesdale horses. These ads are done to evoke emotions. Holiday promotions can have a similar effect just not on the grand scale of a nationwide commercial. Be crafty and find a way to design and email that triggers the holiday spirit.
You could hire a professional email consultant or agency that offers email marketing but read on for those small business owners that have the do it yourself spirit or simply don’t have the funds to hire someone. Provided below are actionable tips to help with your holiday email marketing efforts.
Know Who You Are Targeting
It’s vital to any marketing campaigns success that you understand who you are targeting and email marketing is no different. Understanding your audience is one of the first steps you should take with any marketing campaign. The more you know about who are trying to target the better you can design and craft content those appeals to them.
This information not only aids in your email marketing campaign success but also can save you time and money. By knowing your audience you will have a better understanding of what type of email designs and subject lines that appeal to them.
Building Up Your Email List
The holidays are not only good for promoting your company but also provide you the great opportunity to build up your email subscriber list. There are a couple of ways you can do this. One can run a contest by offering a product giveaway you with making signing up for your email subscriber list the requirement for contest entry.
If you happen to be selling a product that's in demand for the holiday season you can offer a slight discount on this product if they are willing to subscribe to your newsletters. After the subscribe you will send them an email with the promo code for the discount.
If you are looking to build up you email list you might want to invest in a landing page. This page can be custom designed to fit the look you need along with the content pushing the specific product, service or contest you are running. A well designed landing page will crease conversions and make it easier to subscribe to your mailing list.
B2B and Email Marketing
Yes, email marketing, especially at the holiday time, tends to work better on business to consumer basis but if you are b2b don't let this get in the way of trying to market your company. Many companies later in the year have already spent and allocated their budget and are planning for the next year. Every once in a while you will find some companies that need to spend their remaining budget for the year or they will lose it.
Look if you’re not willing to market your company, how do you expect these diamonds in the rough to find your business. At the very least it can lead to extra branding for your business.
It can even be something a simple as sending out holiday thank your card to your current clients. Don't over think it just keep it simple and make sure it has your company branding and of course your name if you are the main contact. Just plan on sending your email out early in December before everyone starts to head out on vacation.
Five Quick Tips to Make Your Email Marketing More Successful
Here are five quick tips that can help your email marketing campaign be more successful:
- Clean your email list before sending out. Remove any duplicates and fake email address that you might have received during subscriber list signup.
- Keep the email design simple. Yes, you can include some holiday flair but don't go overboard with it.
- Make what you are offering very clear so there is no confusion.
- Don't spam people. Abide by the spam laws they are in place for a reason.
- Track your success. If the email does well run with it. If not you might want to do a split test with two different email designs and subjects lines to see what performs better.
I know this can seem overwhelming but create a step by step task list of what you want to achieve with your holiday email marketing. Start on step one and don’t look back. Even us marketing experts done hit a homerun all the time. What should be doing is track, collect data so we can make better informed decisions on future campaigns Play around the day and time the email list sent. This way you have a true understanding of what’s performing best.
Remember to start early that way you have plenty of time to send out the email before the holidays.
Happy Holiday Marketing
Remember it’s the holidays so don’t spam people and be Upfront about any promotions you are running. I understand many companies make a large portion of their income during the holiday season. Spamming is not going to help you gain long-term customers in fact it will hurt your brand and cause way more damage than they benefit you would receive from the couple of extra sales. I will leave you with this when doing marketing I ask myself will this not only help my company now but also for the feature. If they answer is yes you are on the right track. Happy marketing!