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Email is a goldmine for businesses: people who make purchases via email tend to spend up to 138% more than those who don’t. During key shopping days, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, email campaigns can significantly boost your last-quarter revenue. But sending a few random emails to your list isn’t enough to make a difference. To see results, you need to be strategic in how you reach out to your prospects.
Here are nine hacks to improve your holiday email marketing strategy and drive more sales.
1. Get your holiday marketing emails ready now
“It’s later than you think.” It’s one of my favorite quotes from the show “Mad Men.” Although the character of Roger Sterling was referring to “the finite nature of life” and urging us to enjoy every day more, I often think about this quote as it relates to my business. It also applies so well to holiday email marketing.
Many business owners underestimate the effort it takes to create effective email campaigns. Nearly 46% of consumers start their holiday shopping before November due to delivery concerns, so you don’t want to launch your emails too late. Give yourself enough time to decide on your offers, audiences and email sending cadence.
2. Slowly increase your email volume
Your sending rhythm has a dramatic impact on your email deliverability. Depending on how often you’ve been sending emails in the past few months, start increasing your cadence slowly. Any sudden spike may trigger spam filters, so pace your volume to avoid having your emails go to spam. It’s natural to send more emails during the holidays, but in the meantime, reach out to your list regularly to build trust with email service providers.
3. Offer exclusive holiday deals
People love feeling special, especially during the holidays. So, think about how you can reward your email subscribers for being part of your club. For 40% of consumers, email is a discount treasure trove — they check their inboxes looking specifically for brand deals. During the holidays, your prospects may be even more inclined to shop via email, so show up with relevant offers to boost engagement and sales.
4. Give your email list a scrub
The junk folder is the last place you want your holiday emails to land, but a messy email list can cause that. High bounce rates and spam complaints may make you look like a spammer, so your campaigns will fail to reach the inbox.
Use an email verification service to weed out obsolete contacts and ensure your email list is healthy. With Google deleting dormant accounts and Yahoo also tightening sending rules, your data must be fresh for your campaigns to be effective.
5. Make the most of automation
Automation doesn’t just save you time; it can also increase your holiday email conversion rates. Nearly 40% of people who click on an automated email go on to make a purchase, so if your resources allow it, set up the right emails to go out at the right time. Welcome messages, back-in-stock and cart abandonment emails see the most engagement. Automating them now means you won’t leave any money on the table.
6. Ensure a smooth experience across devices
Your emails can look great on desktop, but do they render properly on phones and tablets? The 2024 holiday shopping season will be “the most mobile of all time,” Adobe predicts, with a record $128.1 billion spent through mobile devices.
A broken image or poorly formatted text can turn your customers off, so remember to test every email before you send it. You don’t want a small mishap to prevent someone from making a purchase. Plus, it leaves a poor impression of your brand, and it may cause your future emails to fall flat or get deleted.
Related: 3 Tips and Tricks You Can Use to Drive Email Deliverability During The Holidays
7. Create a sense of urgency with your subject lines
During the holidays, inboxes are so packed that your subscribers may just scan subject lines, so you have to make each one worth clicking. It’s smart to avoid overused, spam-trigger words like “free,” “buy” or “urgent,” and find other ways to convey the value you offer and instill a sense of urgency. Calls to action like “last chance” or “don’t miss out” perform well for my business. Feel free to experiment with less common approaches.
8. Consider a countdown timer
Countdown timers add even more urgency to your campaign, so test them this holiday season and measure their performance. Add them to your website and marketing emails to give people a quick visual representation of your offers and build anticipation.
9. Monitor metrics and adjust quickly
Finally, don’t just set your holiday email campaigns and forget about them. Instead, monitor your performance metrics in real-time. Track open rates, click rates and conversions, and be ready to adjust if results are weak. You can always tweak your offers, improve your copy and test different send times to make your campaigns resonate more.