The perfect holiday email marketing strategy
Email marketing is one of the most proven strategies for driving sales. Don’t believe us? Consider that during Black Friday 2017, email marketing campaigns drove an incredible 23% of online sales. To make email marketing work for you this holiday season, you’ll need to have a plan in place.
Rather than forming your email marketing strategy on a per-email basis, plan it out as a longer campaign so that each email complements the next. Your holiday emails should all work together to increase open rates, drive sales, and retain subscribers.
Before we go any further, it’s important to note that building your mailing list year-round will help immensely when it comes time to deploying your holiday email marketing. One of the best ways to do this is to by displaying email signup popups in your store. You can go even further and offer a reward for signing up—10% off a customer’s first purchase, for example.
In this post we’ll outline a handful of emails you can send as part of your holiday email marketing strategy. If possible, try writing all your emails before sending out the first one. This will tie them together nicely and give your customers hints on what to expect in the next email.
The sale announcement
The sale announcement email lays the foundation for your entire campaign. If your subscribers don’t know you’re having a sale, they’re probably not going to take advantage of it. Okay, that may seem obvious, but it’s imperative to let your most loyal customers, the ones who’ve handed over their precious email address, know about your sale. Plus, people who make a purchase via email spend 138% more than those who don’t receive an email offer.
The key goal of this email is to provide subscribers with exclusive information. Giving your subscribers the inside scoop in a sale announcement email lends a feeling of exclusivity and further entices them to take part in the sale.
The last-minute surprise
This can be an addition to the sale you’re already promoting. The last-minute surprise can come in many forms. Maybe you’re steepening a discount for a specific hour during your sales, maybe it’s an additional discount code, or maybe you’re giving away a free gift with purchases over a certain amount.
This email is a great way to remind subscribers of your main sale, while adding value with the addition of steeper discounts.
During busy sales seasons (like the holidays) it’s good to stay on your customers’ radar. It’s likely they’re getting inundated with promotional emails leading up to key dates like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Super Saturday.
The low-inventory warning
There are many ways you can instil urgency in your customers. You can use a countdown timer to promote limited-time offers, display recent sales notifications, or send emails. We suggest all three.
The low-inventory warning is another great way of reminding subscribers of your sale. Feature your products that are running low on stock, and let subscribers know they’re about to miss out.
Even if this email doesn’t have a high conversion rate, it’ll inform customers about how popular your sale was and create urgency for the next one.
The abandoned cart follow-up
Although this is classified as a transactional email rather than a marketing email, it’s important to remember cart recovery emails when planning your overall strategy. Following up with customers who have abandoned their cart may sound like a lot of work, but like with most things, there’s an app for that. Abandoned Cart Recovery is a great app that will automatically send emails to any customers who abandon their carts after inputting their email.
The “Thank you for your business”
Just because you’ve made a sale, that doesn’t mean the end of your relationship with a customer. In fact, it should represent a new beginning. Thanking customers for their purchase, asking for feedback, and letting them know about future offers can be a great way to follow up after a big sale. Consider writing an email unique to the sale or season.
Thank you emails can be easy to write, and often result in much higher open and click-through rates. Hubspot found that these rates doubled when compared to regular marketing emails. Those kind of numbers should be more than enough motivation to implement thank you emails into your strategy.
The “Welcome to our business”
Sales shouldn’t be your only goal during a big sale. Take advantage of your store’s increased traffic to gain more email subscribers. After the sale ends, send an email to your new subscribers welcoming them to your store.
Welcome emails see a whopping 50% open rate, so be sure to include pertinent information about your store, share a bit about yourself and your brand, and invite them to take part in future sales. If you need some inspiration, Shopify can help with that.
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