Holiday Marketing Campaign Ideas to Stand Out in 2023
The holiday season is the most beautiful time of year, and shopping is the name of the game. Online sales typically skyrocket during the holiday season, especially after covid. Email marketing is crucial during this time, with constant emails and content to keep the brand at the forefront of your holiday shopping brain. They are creating an aggressive approach to ensure you can hit your target audience and attract traffic from others.
Before diving into what makes a Holiday Marketing Campaign successful, it is wise to note some Holiday dates that will be upcoming in 2023.
November 12th: Diwali
November 23rd: Thanksgiving
November 24th: Black Friday
November 27th: Cyber Monday
December 3rd: International Day of People with Disabilities
December 7th: Hanukkah
December 24th: Christmas Eve
December 25th: Christmas Day
December 31st: New Year's Eve
These holidays are great opportunities to circle a campaign around; this is the highest sales increase.
How Is Email Marketing Beneficial During The Holiday Season?
Email marketing comes with many benefits. When you are looking at the aspect of business opportunities, the holiday season is a great time to send those emails. The Holiday season is the most significant shopping time of the year, which is no surprise. It starts on Black Friday and ends after Christmas; this being said, this is a great time to send engaging emails such as:
Attract more traffic: With the holiday season bringing in such a high fluctuation of foot traffic, it is essential to ensure the holiday email marketing campaign is on point. The High conversion rates are due to sales, deals, limited-time offers, exclusive season products, etc.
Be sure to include personalization: Email personalization is an email marketing basic practice; adding personalization makes the click-through rate 8x higher than just a generic email. However, there is a significant fluctuation between personalization, simple ways are to add the customer's name in the subject line, but it can get much more complicated by including VIP points or membership details in the body of the email.
Make the purchasing process easy: When a deal is offered, people are much more likely to participate. The rush of getting a good deal is a trigger for instant purchases. Emails are an excellent opportunity to include "buy now" or "limited time deal"; these keywords will only increase open and conversion rates.
Make it mobile-friendly: In 2020, online sales increased by about 50%; now, keep in mind that Covid was most definitely a factor, but mobile shopping is still a high platform that pushes conversion rates. Emails are already trending to be opened on a mobile device instead of a desktop computer. Emails must be mobile-friendly regarding template, formatting, text, subject line, etc. Taking advantage of the holiday season has never been easier to use Mailsoftly to find great mobile-friendly templates!
What Types Of Emails Can You Send During The Holiday Season?
Welcome Emails: Welcome emails carry the highest open rates. To kick off a successful interaction with a new subscriber sending a welcome email is essential. When you send welcome emails, it forms the new subscriber of the brand's personality. Already establishing the foundation for a healthy and trusting brand-to-customer relationship. Some ways that welcome emails aid in increasing conversion are:
- Keeping emails simple and using short, the concise text will keep the attention of the new subscriber, as well as using imagery that will truly capture the brand's identity.
- Offer a new subscriber discount code! This tactic immediately drives them back to the website to see what they can spend money on. If you are trying to push a conversion, adding expiration to the discount code will increase the likelihood of making a purchase.
- Give away something exclusive, whether free shipping or bonus points for shopping; giving an incentive is a great way to attract those first-timers.
Promotional Emails: The holidays wouldn't be without a good deal. Promotional emails are what sets expectations apart from other brands. When sending a promotional email, ensure to include explicit imagery and the agreement in either the subject line or large print. As well as make sure some necessities are included, such as shipping information, customer service contact, and a little about the brand.
Abandoned Cart Emails: Abandoned Cart emails make a huge difference, especially during the holiday season. When customers abandon their cart, it is usually due to disinterest or distraction. Both instances can be fixed by an informal email stating that their items of interest are still in their cart and in stock. This is an excellent way to re-engage customers and have them notice that the brand is genuinely there for them.
Confirmation Emails: The importance of confirmation emails during the holiday season can not be stressed enough. Nowadays, everybody is purchasing online, and email confirmation is necessary to inform customers that their order is being processed. It is also where a lot of additional information can be added, including the shipping information, estimated delivery date, confirmation number, return process, etc. All of these are contained in the crucial confirmation email.
Holiday Email Marketing Tips
Attention-grabbing Subject Lines: Making sure subject lines are included, and catchy is required. This is the forefront of the attempted email campaign. Ensuring that the subject line is catchy and intrigues audiences are what gets the email opened in the first place. This is a great time to run A/B testing and see what subject lines first catch the audience's attention. Another great way to ensure that the emails get opened is to make the subject line personalized, meaning that there needs to be the use of the recipient's first name in the subject line. Not only will this fall under the personalization category, but it will also catch recipients' attention when their inboxes are constantly flooded.
Make emails come from genuine people: A great way to connect with a customer or recipient is to make the email come from a natural person. The idea of "To" and "From" may be simplistic, but it is a great way to go out of your way to make a connection. There is also no need to promote the "no-reply@" email address; this is so cold and superficial, portraying the idea that it is not a conversation as opposed to a clear description of who is who. Leave a customer support email address to ensure that you are reached if the customer has any questions or concerns.
People are unique, so the email should be as well: Customers are individual, so the communication should be amazing. Including a person's touch only sometimes emphasizes using their first name; there are other personalization options, such as VIP status or how many points they have collected. The final goal is to increase the number of sales and to increase either the returning customers or promote new customers. There are a couple of different types of customers, such as:
- A prospective customer has yet to purchase but has expressed interest multiple times.
- A first-time customer, and the goal in this situation is to convert them to a regularly occurring customer.
- A loyal customer who consistently purchases and has an active account with the brand.
- A Lapsed customer who has yet to make any recent purchases.
Create a campaign and stick to it: When running Holiday campaigns, it is essential that there is a goal and steps in which you wish to complete this goal. This may be challenging to develop and keep original, but the steps are typically the same. Each step of the campaign will get you to the end goal, and each communication needs to be different than the previous one. Once the actions are taken and the customer purchases a product, it is essential to finalize the purchases with an email containing a detailed description of the transaction and offer the option to provide feedback.
It is also essential to be aware of the emails you are sending and the extent to which
you send them. This means you want to avoid bombarding your customers with emails on top of the promotional emails they will receive the entire holiday season. The best way to catch the recipient's attention is to create a stress-free environment where emails are more than just a sale. Instead, it consists of tips and tricks to make their lives easier.
- Simplicity is key: Make sure the emails sent out fit all shapes and sizes of inboxes. There are multiple devices used to look at emails now, and it is crucial that the formatting is the same across all platforms. The trick to sending simple emails is the color scheme that stays on brand with what you are trying to portray. As well as, the text is concise and straightforward, making sure not to overwhelm the customer but instead get the message across in a transparent manner. A Pro Tip would ensure the fonts are on an enormous scale for those who open the email on an iPhone; the message will be more precise. Make sure to use fewer words. This will increase the impact and stand out.
- Urgency matters: The holiday season creates the hustle and bustle of emails flooding the inbox; there needs to be a sense of urgency behind the campaign. An innovative approach is to include emojis and times at the header and footer of the email or to show an hourglass so that it is made clear that the deal is for an entire amount of time.
- Segmentation: Segmenting customers is the best way to reach a collective audience. You can segment an audience by many factors, such as geographic location, purchase history, age, gender, etc.; using these different data points; you can then shape the correct campaign for those recipients. For instance, if a customer lives in Hawaii and you are creating a campaign to sell your new snow line, odds are those Hawaii residents will not be purchasing from that email. So go ahead and spend the time to ensure that you reach out to the correct audience.
- Test and then Test again: It is essential to ensure that testing is done with different variables that can boost the campaign's performance. It is difficult to tell what will work for your audience, so it is essential to test it out and see different subject lines, images, call-to-action buttons, etc. When testing the results and analyzing how to adjust your approach, it is a great time to identify which courses have high engagement levels. Figuring out what the customers want is the mystery behind email marketing.
Wrap it all up!
Email Marketing is the most cost effective and creative approach to reaching out to many recipients. Being able to reach out to a target audience or base campaigns around preferences is ideal for the best results. Holiday email marketing can be made easy when using the Mail Softly platform—offering customization, testing, and creativity to see what works best for your brand and your customer. You are keeping in mind that holiday emails will boost sales your brand needs, and what better way to do that than using Mailsoftly. To conclude, remember a few factoring points, ensure the emailing campaign is centered around the holidays and being device friendly, entice all, whether with imagery or a sale and finally, make sure the brand image stays true. Through all the commotion of email campaigns during the holiday, never stray from the brand's purpose.