Tips for Creating a Christmas Email Marketing Strategy

Your customers love your products, and with all that goes on during the holidays, you want your store to be the first thing on their minds when it comes to gifting. Read on to find some holiday email marketing ideas that will help you develop a strong festive season email marketing strategy to get your customers into your store (or online) to shop.

Why do you need an email marketing strategy for the holidays?

A festive email marketing strategy can help your business get organised for the Christmas shopping season. It enables you to decide what to send your customers (flash sales, coupons, online workshops, etc.) and when.

If you need more incentive, people who buy products through email offers spend 138 percent more than those who do not get such offers. Here’s how to get started with your own Christmas email marketing strategy.

Creating your Christmas email marketing strategy

It’s important to set objectives. Do you want customers to visit your online store? Maybe you want your customers to use a promotion or engage with your brand. You have to decide what makes the most sense for your business. From there you need to choose which kind of marketing activity you want to send to help you reach that goal.

Let’s say you want customers to come to your online store to buy their Christmas gifts. With that goal in mind, your Christmas email should include a voucher that your customers can use only online. You can also make it timely by making the voucher valid for a short period, so your customers have more incentive to purchase items soon.

Using audience segmentation

Don’t be scared by the word “segmentation”. It sounds more complicated than it is. Audience segmentation simply means sending Christmas emails to clients based on their similarities.

For instance, let’s say your customer directory tells you that twenty customers haven’t visited your online store in six months. Another 200 customers have visited in the last three months, and 300 in the last month. You could segment these customers by sending the lapsed groups a Christmas themed email discount code to remind them to come back, and the regulars a Merry Christmas email with a discount code to express your gratitude for their loyal business.

Scheduling your festive season email

Your customers are just as busy as you are during the most wonderful time of the year, so they need reminders to buy from you. A good way to approach scheduling festive season emails is to focus on a series of emails, suggestions below:

• Two to three weeks before your event: Send a Christmas email introducing your online event (it could also be an online workshop, promotion, etc.). In this email, highlight incentives for them to come in: Is there a sale? Is there a promotion? Will they receive a free gift with purchase?

• One week before your event: With so much going on during the festive season, your customers need a second email to be reminded that your event/promotion will have gifts that will ease their Christmas shopping pains.

• One day before your event: Your third festive email is to ensure that the event is marked on their calendar. If you’re offering a promotion or a percentage off a particular product, showcase this fact.

• Day of your event: The day-of-event email is the final reminder. Remember to emphasise that this event will have sales that will not happen again.

Designing your festive email

Whether you want to send a discount code, advertise a flash sale, or get people to sign up for an online event or workshop, you need your festive email design to be as engaging as possible.

After you know what type of content you want to highlight, you can easily produce a festive season email design by choosing the colour, background, and font type. Many programmes, like Microsoft Word and Adobe Stock, have handy templates you can use and will walk you through how to make a festive email template. Even just changing up your company’s logo to reflect the season is a great way to make your readers pause and take notice.

Square Marketing is a great way to design and create beautiful email marketing campaigns for Christmas. Our platform features stocks of pre-designed templates, with sample text and customisable features you can use to create incredible emails. There’s no need to be a professional marketer to put amazing Christmas themed email campaigns into motion anymore.

Testing and optimising your email

In your email platform, you can analyse your data to see how many customers are opening your festive email (open rate) and how many are clicking your email to come to your site (clickthrough rate). This is your baseline data upon which you can build your email testing and optimising to drive and track sales.

With the right Christmas email marketing ideas and strategy, you can schedule your winning email ahead of time, helping you and your customers throughout the festive season.

Email marketing ideas for this festive season

It’s never too early to get started on your email marketing campaigns. According to a Square report on revenue, 25% of people start spending more in October, 46% in November and 48% in December. So, the earlier you start your marketing, the better your chances of hitting the right customers before they run out of money to spend. With the following ideas, you can start your email marketing right away.

1. Christmas Gift Guide Email

If you’re not ready for a teaser email, or you want to hold off on that until closer to the sales days, why not send out a Christmas gift guide of some of your top sellers. If you want to know how to make a gift guide, these are easy to create online as a PDF using Canva or an Adobe program if you’re a bit more experienced. You can include a section For Him, For Her, For Kids, and even For Mum / Dad, For Secret Santa, For Work Colleagues. A Christmas Gift Guide is a great way of showcasing your products so people can get an idea of what’s available.

2. Early Access Offer For Loyal Customers

This is a great way to reward your ongoing, loyal customers for their support throughout the previous year. Send details of the best Christmas gifts to buy online to those who have purchased with you before - and let them know they can take advantage of a special deal as part of an early bird offer. If you can, take your time and try to write a personal email to them, tailored to include relevant products to those they have purchased in the past. By personalising these emails, you’ll make the customer feel valued and they’ll be more willing to spend money with you again.

3. Christmas Shipping Deadline Reminder

You want to send your Christmas deal at least 3-4 weeks before Christmas, giving enough time for you to post products, so they arrive before Santa arrives. You might offer something like 25 percent off all purchases when you spend over $60, which they can get by using a particular code at the checkout. Remember, the bigger the deal, the more inclined people will be to buy, so be as generous as you can (without breaking your business bank). You should then follow this up the following week, reminding them that if they want their products to arrive before Christmas, they need to get their orders in. Social media can be a great tool for these kinds of messages too!

4. Promote Christmas Gift Cards

There’s always someone who has forgotten their part in the Christmas present buying, they have no idea what to buy for Christmas gifts, or a distant family member who announces last minute they are showing up for Christmas breakfast. In a last-minute panic, people are scrambling for ideas of what they could possibly buy for them. This is where you come in. An eGift card is a great idea for a last-minute email campaign. You can send an email a week before with a Christmas gift buying guide attached, and then a follow up one or two days before Christmas promoting your eGift Cards. You might even like to include a deal, such as Spend $50 & Get $60 Credit.

5. The Post-Christmas Email Campaign

Christmas Day is here and everyone is celebrating with their families and friends, enjoying the amazing presents they have bought from your store in the past few weeks… but that doesn’t mean your work is done! What’s next? Boxing Day Sales! And New Years’ Deals! Send out an email on the night of the 25th or early morning 26th with your Boxing Day discounts, targeting people who may have left products in their cart without purchasing pre-Christmas. And if you still have an oversupply of stock, or you’re feeling generous, why not have a New Years Sale as well.

Remember email marketing is regulated by the Australian Government in accordance with the Spam Act of 2003 and Regulations. Make sure you have consent when sending your email and refer to experts in the field for information on how to stay compliant.