Online and offline businesses find the holiday season to be one of the most profitable and valuable times of the year. This is the best time to use your resources to generate huge sales for your business.

A strong email marketing strategy is essential if you want your holiday sales season be successful and profitable. Emails can help you connect with your customers and drive new sales with exclusive promotions and reward programs.

This article will provide some useful tips and tricks for holiday email marketing. It also includes examples of other successful holiday email marketing strategies.

Let’s get started.

Why is Holiday Email Marketing Important

Active customers

Communicating with customers is essential when they are listening. To find out more about your customers, dig deeper into their customer insights. This will help you determine when they are most active as well as which emails receive the highest open and click-through rate. What are their commonalities? Engage consumers in conversations by meeting them right where they are, with holiday messaging.

Instant buying

According to a study, 41% will use “Buy Now” buttons in email marketing. This makes it easier for customers to make purchasing decisions. You can highlight a gift, an offer, or event by adding a call to action button in your email. Subscribers can make purchase decisions in just a few clicks. Keep in mind that the holiday season is busy for your customers. Your business and their holiday shopping experience will be much more enjoyable if you can speed it up.

All holiday campaigns supported

Your marketing plan must include email. Emails are the only way to convert customers quickly. Your email newsletter can help you increase sales, engage customers at holiday events, and provide gift ideas and gift guides.

8 Holiday Marketing Tips and Tricks

1. Plan before you think that you should

Poor planning does not guarantee a customer will purchase your holiday email marketing campaign.

It is crucial to plan and introduce your holiday email marketing strategy so your customers get the offers they want.

You can make plans ahead of time if you:

• Create the content needed to increase conversion rates

• Before you implement strategies or content that have resulted in high conversions, make sure to review them.

• For future data analysis, ensure that you monitor important micro- and macro-conversion points

2. Focus on your customers and not on a sales agenda

Marketers send more emails during holidays than usual, but it is important to remember that you are communicating with a person.

Holidays are a busy time for all, so they may feel uneasy if their inbox is full of hard-sell emails. You should respect their time and be practical and customer-centric. It is important to find out what subscribers want during holidays, rather than promoting your sales agenda.

You can’t just keep track of a few sales-oriented copies and call it quits. You can focus your copy on how you can spread joy through the gifts you sell to your subscribers. A simple holiday greeting can help you build trust with your customers.

This email is from AfterShokz, a Bone Conduction Headphones company, and it shows gratitude for customers’ happy Hanukkah.

3. Segment your list

Segmenting your subscribers is important to ensure that they are happy with the content, especially during holidays when emotions are high.

Segmenting is easy if you track information such as what your subscribers are doing on your website and what they have bought from you. Segmenting your recipients will help you segment them better and send them targeted emails during holidays. This will ultimately lead to better, higher quality conversions.

These are some of the most efficient ways to segment holiday email marketing.

• Interests: Divide your subscribers according to their previous purchases or the sections they have browsed on your website.

• Year-round customers vs. seasonal customers: Seasonal customers are likely to have a different relationship than year-round customers. Consider their needs and motivations before you adjust the frequency, timing, and content of your next follow-up campaigns.

• To engage the most price-sensitive customers, find out who is using coupon codes. Segmenting can also be used to prevent subscribers from purchasing at full price. 

4. Marketing automation: Leverage

It is essential to reach the right people at the right time with the right message in order to increase email open rates and customer engagement. Email marketing automation can be your secret weapon. These automation strategies can be used to get holiday emails.

• Create abandoned cart automation workflows During the holiday season, abandoned cart emails are more important for securing sales.

• Lead scoring can be used to target warm prospects: By using customer details and scoring contacts, you can create customer profiles that will help with segmentation. 

• Send a seasonal email welcome: During the holidays, you will likely get new subscribers signing up. To get more subscribers, you can create a customized welcome email that includes a holiday or exclusive discount.

Subscribers are reminded by him in the Black Friday email that there is a generous discount program (30% on select favorites). Subscribers are enticed to click on the Shop Now button to place their order.

5. Make it personal

Personalization is key to the success of holiday email marketing campaigns.

Dynamic content that is based on subscribers’ needs and wants will build a strong impression of your brand and drive a higher ROI.

You can customize your offers and discounts based on behavioral data that you have. If you don’t have it, ask your customers what they would like to see in holiday emails.

Make sure to update the content of your triggered email messages. What if someone signs up for your emails during the holiday season? It’s unlikely that you will want to send your regular welcome email template to them. Your new subscribers should not miss holiday offers and promotions.

6. Combining interactivity with fallback

Your holiday messages will be rich in visual, interactive elements such as cinemagraphs, GIFs and gamification.

Interactivity in emails can be a great engagement strategy that grabs attention and creates holiday excitement. Emails can be updated with a slide-down menu or slider. It is important to offer support for fallback in case of email client limitations. You should also test the emails more before you send them.

7. Optimize for mobile

The mobile commerce (mcommerce) industry has seen a lot of unpredicted growth in the past few years. App Annie’s State of Mobile 2019, report concluded mobile users spent 18 million hours shopping on apps in 2018. Cyber Monday generated $2 Billion, with more than half of that coming from mobile devices.

It is important that holiday marketing campaigns and all marketing campaigns are mobile-responsive.

You might consider these options if you are looking to optimize holiday email marketing on mobile devices.

• Responsive templates are suitable for different screens and keep the most important content visible.

• Mobile users will be turned off if images are not optimized for high-resolution and slow-loading.

• Use short subject lines or make sure the primary information is at first so recipients don’t get confused by any missing information

One of the best ways to test holiday email marketing strategies is by checking how it looks on mobile devices that your customers are using.

8. Instill a sense of urgency

Economics teaches us that when a product’s supply drops, the demand for it rockets. Your holiday email marketing campaigns must create a sense of urgency.

You could add a scarcity or timer to your products so that shoppers understand that the promotion is only valid for a certain time. This increases conversion rates by a lot.

Remember that shoppers who click on your promotion should be reminded to keep the urgency or timer theme. To optimize your Cyber Monday email conversions, can be used to set your Cyber Monday email to expire at 12:00 AM.

If you want to show that your products are scarce, identify the remaining quantity. Display 2 items if you have 10 items in stock.

Which time is best to get holiday email marketing started?

Depending on your industry and goals, the timing of emails is important. These are some of the factors you should consider when setting up your holiday email schedule.

• Your buying cycle: Use your average purchase time to determine when you should start sending emails. If your buying cycle lasts between 1-2 weeks, you can start sending emails around December 4th through 11th to reach Christmas customers.

• Use logic. Customers continue to navigate the traditional purchase funnel during the holiday season. You can create campaigns that respect each stage of the buying cycle. Start by creating awareness about the product, then focus on specific benefits and then offer an incentive or promotion to close the sale.

• Follow up: sends an email campaign after the holiday to encourage future purchases.

Striking Holiday Email Marketing Examples You Can Learn From

Black Friday email marketing examples

Herschel

Herschel’s simple Black Friday email focuses on the most important information about their sales.

Combining the bold font and the black-and white design is a great combination to draw attention to the call for action. The newsletter layout also features negative space to highlight the offers.

Customers are compelled to act when they hear phrases such as “our only sale of this year” or “while supplies last”.

Tinker Watches

To release a new product, the campaign uses Black Friday buzz. This teaser email from Tinker Watches by Tinker Watches will be the best way to create anticipation for the event.

The combination of visuals and copy creates curiosity among the audience, which in turn generates a feeling of exclusivity about the product launch. This is achieved by keeping the email campaign’s text to a minimum, so readers don’t lose interest.

Aesop

Aesop’s Black Friday email allows products to be at the center of attention, rather than focusing on large discounts. The email features high-quality images and concise descriptions. There are also numerous calls to action to help you discover the products.

Great Simple Studio

Black Friday inbox competition is fierce, to put it mildly. This campaign does not compete for customers’ attention. Instead, it sends a series of emails leading up to Black Friday. They begin their sale on Tuesday.

Great Simple Studio’s campaign retains the urgency of the original campaign, despite the time restrictions. The simple color scheme encourages customers to buy because it highlights the products’ low prices.

Cyber Monday email marketing examples

Hill-Side

Cyber Monday is different than other shopping days. Cyber Monday is not like other shopping occasions. There are no timeless characters such as Santa Clause, no distinctive colors that are immediately noticeable, and no special phrases or traditions. You can create a totally unique theme for Cyber Monday emails by being unsure of what to do.

If you are feeling a little lost when creating your Cyber Monday email, and don’t have any holiday traditions to help you get started, let us try the cyber side of Cyber Monday. Your email should reflect your unique style and be technology-themed.

For their Cyber Monday sale, The Hill-Side included a retro command prompt as well as an outdated web icon. It is a sleek, efficient design with a bold appearance that fits in well with Cyber Monday.

Udemy

Numerous brands use countdown clocks in Cyber Monday emails to remind recipients that this is a limited-time deal and to make it clear that they are calling for action.

Udemy included a countdown timer in their Cyber Monday email campaign. It also featured bright images and strong copy.

Tunnelbear

The absence of holiday traditions has another advantage: you can be creative with wordplay, experiment with fonts and puns, as well as write special copy. Your email strategy can create new traditions that are relevant to your brand and encourage loyalty and recognition.

Tunnelbear’s Cyber Monday email is cute and charming thanks to the addition of a cartoon bear. This is a simple, fun play on words that fits the company’s brand and personality. The message is simple, even with photos and wordplay: Customers can save significant money by using this limited-time offer.

Wrapping up

Email marketing is essential. It can convert traffic to your online store in high numbers, especially during the holiday season.

You should take the time to optimize your emails for conversions. Also, make sure to account for mobile responsiveness. Also, you should prepare a holiday plan in advance. Then choose the best email marketing tools to suit your business.