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Your customers love your products, but with all that goes on during the holidays, your store may not be the first thing on their minds. A strong holiday email marketing strategy may be the key to getting them into your store to shop.
Why do you need an email marketing strategy for the holidays?
A holiday email marketing strategy can help you get organized for the holidays. It enables you to decide what to send your customers (flash sales, coupons, online workshops, etc.) and when.
If you need more incentive, we know that 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 holiday email marketing strategy.
Creating your holiday email marketing strategy
Do you want customers visit your online store? Maybe you want your customers to use a promotion or engage with your brand. All are valid goals. You just have to decide what makes the most sense for you. From there you need to decide which kinds of email and what messages will help you reach that goal.
Let’s say you want customers to come to your online store to buy their holiday gifts. With that goal in mind, your holiday email marketing strategy should include a coupon that your customers can use only online. You can also make it timely by making the coupon valid for a short period so your customers have incentive to purchase items soon.
Using audience segmentation
Don’t be scared away by the word “segmentation.” It sounds more complicated than it is. Audience segmentation simply means selecting a subgroup of your email subscribers based on their similarities.
For instance, let’s say your data 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 holiday email coupon to remind them to come back, and the regulars a thank-you holiday email with a coupon to express your gratitude for their loyal business.
Scheduling your holiday email
Your customers are just as busy as you are during the holidays, so they need reminders to buy. A good way to approach scheduling holiday email is to focus on just four emails you want to send and in this order:
- Two to three weeks before your event:Send an 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 recieve a free gift with purchase?
- One week before your event: With so much going on during Hanukkah and Christmas, your customers need a second email to be reminded that your event will have gifts that will ease their holiday shopping pains.
- One day before your event: Your third 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 emphasize that this event will have sales that will not happen again.
Designing your holiday email
Whether you want to send a coupon, advertise a flash sale, or get people to sign up for an online event or workshop, you can easily create all of this content with the Square Marketing tool.
After you know what type of content you want to highlight, you can easily design your email by choosing the color, background, and font type when you click Create a Campaign. (There are also handy holiday templates you can use.) And Square even offers the ability to select (free) high-quality images you can use in your email.
Testing and optimizing your email
In the Analytics section, you can analyze your data to see how many customers are opening your 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 optimizing.
With the right holiday email marketing strategy, you can schedule your winning email ahead of time, helping you and your customers.
Remember email marketing is regulated by state, federal, and international regulations. Check to see where you are sending your email, and refer to experts in the field for information on how to stay compliant.
