These days, every email marketer would be occupied with the thoughts of acing their Holiday campaigns. They try everything possible to come up trumps and woo maximum customers.
Naturally, email marketers invest a lot of time and energy in creating stunning Holiday emails. It is predicted that US retail ecommerce Holiday sales will grow 15.5% and reach $236 billion. Isn’t that huge?
However, with the intense competition in the subscriber’s inbox, it can get pretty challenging to stand out and drive conversions, especially during the Holidays.
Here are some actionable tips that will help you cut through the noise and meet your email goals in the busy Holiday season.
We have divided the pointers into three sections to simplify comprehension.
1. Content
Let’s start with the type of content you must send in the Holiday emails.
- The subject lines come first. Your subject line should reflect the Holiday mood and the email’s purpose. Try to pique the subscriber’s curiosity and compel them to open your email. Also, incorporate a sense of urgency in the Holiday subject lines so that the users open the email and take instant action. Also, personalize the subject lines and add emojis to add a human touch. A pro tip would be to draft catchy subject lines that go beyond the cliched puns. A/B test your email subject lines and see which ones perform the best for your business.
- Next is the email copy. It should be short and meaningful. Avoid sending long email copies as your subscribers are extremely busy during the Holiday season. Bring in some Holiday cheer in the email. Also, address the user’s challenges through it. For example: If you are an ecommerce email marketer, let the user know about free shipping, easy returns, and gift-wrapping features.
Take a look at this email by Factory Direct Flooring and see how they have highlighted their USPs, like price match promise, free sample, and next-day delivery.
- Send tailor-made content according to the user’s preferences. Remember that people are buying for their loved ones during the Holidays. So, consider their browsing history apart from past purchases before drafting the email copy.
- Add social proof in the emails to instill confidence in the reader’s mind. In addition, highlight the best-sellers and top-rated products in the email to grab the user’s eyeballs.
- Keep the content relevant according to your industry and audience. Make it as customer-centric as possible.
- Overhaul your automation strategy and include Holiday-related content. For example: Add an exclusive welcome offer for subscribers who sign up around or during the Holidays. Include additional discounts in the cart abandonment email to increase conversions.
- Use an empathetic tone in your Holiday emails. Make your emails about the customer rather than yourself or your business.
2. Design and development
When it comes to designing Holiday emails, the first requisite is to make them visually attractive. Include rich media elements like images, GIFs, and Cinemagraphs in your emails to display your products. Ecommerce and travel industry marketers can immensely benefit by using animated images or luxury printing that can showcase different products or getaway deals.
Check this email by Taco Bell that exudes Holiday vibes and encourages the readers to convert. Very catchy and engaging.
Make use of colors and symbols aligned with the Holidays. Shades of red and blue are good picks. While creating these emails, keep the accessibility principles in mind. Add appropriate alt-text to go with the visual elements. This will help screen readers understand what the images are about.
Using your alt-text description will also be useful to people accessing emails with images turned off. Pick the color contrast according to the WCAG guidelines. Make your emails compatible with dark mode, as most subscribers prefer dark mode settings on their devices later in the evening when many potential customers have their dark mode turned on.
Engaging subscribers is a challenge during the Holidays as their inbox is flooded with emails. So, incorporate interactivity to cut through the inbox noise. Use elements like countdowns, click-based events, hover effects, or flip-and-scratch effects to enhance the click-through rate. It will also contribute to enhancing email deliverability and sender reputation.
If you want to still up your Holiday email designs, add some gamification and allow the users to share it on social media. The advantage of this tactic is that it will take your brand visibility to the next level.
Email Uplers and Email Monks (which is now Email Uplers) have aced their gamification emails as is evident from their Halloween email. Take a look:
AMP technology is another great thing to try in your Holiday emails. If you have a large subscriber base using Gmail and your ESP web server supports it, you can send AMP (interactive) emails this Holiday season. It will enable the users to take action from the email without the need to go to the landing page — you want this function.
As an example, ecommerce email marketers can use AMP emails in their cart recovery emails to bring back the abandoners and increase Holiday conversions. Travel and hospitality businesses can use the same tactic and allow users to check deals and book tickets via email.
See this AMP email by Booking.com that allows users to see all deals and even manage their subscriptions.
Lastly, keep a check on your overall email size. The visuals should not exceed 1 MB. Otherwise, it can lead to slow load times and low subscriber engagement. As you know, slow loading times on your page will be a site killer, and that includes slow email loading.
3. Deliverability
Inbox placement is of utmost importance during the Holiday season. You don’t want to risk losing out on conversions because of bad deliverability. So, how will you make sure that your emails make it to the user’s inbox despite the strict vigilance of ESPs and ISPs? So your Internet Service Provider simply gives your access to your internet so that you can proceed with your marketing campaign. But the Email Service provider is a specific service for your email marketing needs.
Here are some tips:
- Before sending out the Holiday email campaigns, start re-engaging the less active and dormant subscribers.
Let the users know about your best products and updates. In case the users still don’t engage, remove them from the list. It is advisable to do this several weeks before launching the main Holiday email campaigns. - Personalize the emails as far as possible; it increases the likelihood of inbox placement.
- Avoid overly promotional language and a money-hungry tone, as it can turn off your subscribers and increase unsubscribes or spam complaints.
- Check with your ESP whether they have the feature to segment the campaign list according to the propensity to open. If yes, use it throughout the year, especially during the Holiday season.
- During the Holiday season, email send volumes reach an astronomical figure. So, warm up and prepare your dedicated IPs to accommodate the additional volume without any deliverability issues.
- Always follow a double opt-in method to build email lists and segment them properly to maintain list hygiene.
- Consider setting up an exclusive subdomain for the Holiday season. As send volumes are quite high during this season, a new subdomain would help in evading the scrutiny of ESPs and ISPs.
- Many marketers rummage through their old email lists and blast emails to every email address they have on hand. This proves to be detrimental to your email deliverability.
- As Apple has introduced Mail Privacy Protection, it has become difficult to track the correct open rate. Therefore, automatically resending emails to non-openers is a strict no-no. After all, you don’t want your subscribers to receive redundant email communications.
- If needed, take the help of an email deliverability expert or use an email delivery platform like Mailtrap.
- Monitor your email metrics, and if there are any sudden dips in the open or click-through rate, it’s time to revisit your strategy. Figure out whether you have any deliverability issues.
Wrapping Up
Grabbing the subscriber’s eyeballs during the Holidays is no cakewalk. You need to put in extra effort to create flawless and unique emails that leave an impact on the reader’s minds. The tips shared above will surely help you spruce up your game and make the customers choose you over the competitors.
Inner Article Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Thank you!
Featured Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Pexels; Thank you!
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