Do You Have These 7 Holiday Emails Ready?
It’s (almost) the most wonderful time of the year! Sales go up, everyone seems more cheerful and the anticipation is building for the start of a new year.
The holidays certainly get a lot of buzz, and the hot topic among marketers these days revolves around holiday campaign planning. How should you market to your customers? Here are a few ideas.
- Holiday Help – People are busy this time of year, so if you can offer something to help ease their burden, do it. This can come in the form of gift guides, event notifications or advertisements of any service you offer (gift wrapping, party hosting, catering, etc.). Your email may just come to your subscribers’ rescue, strengthening your relationship with them.
- Store Hours – The holidays will probably cause some fluctuations in your schedule. If you’re in retail, you’ll probably be open later. If you have a professional office, you might be in the office less. Either way, subscribers will want to know when they can reach you. Send out the notification of the change early (a couple weeks before the actual change), so that your subscribers can plan accordingly.
- Sales – At some point, you’ll probably want to have a sale. Be it Black Friday, Cyber Monday or even just a free shipping promotion, you’ll want to let your subscribers know what’s going on. Make sure you send at least one notification about your sales. If you have the time, send several notifications.
- Holiday Products – Are you selling anything related to the holidays, such as ornaments, candy or decorations? Or do you sell something that could be used during the holidays, like bakeware or travel gear? If so, that’s another email! Give your products some attention if they relate to the holiday season or can help people survive the holidays.
- More Than Christmas – Don’t leave out Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Years in your holiday emails. Either email about each of them or instead of labeling everything “Christmas,” just use the term “holidays.” Regardless of how you approach this, you should address these other important days in some way so you don’t leave anyone out.
- Shipping Reminders – Last minute shoppers need to know how last minute they can actually get. Figure out what’s the latest day you can ship something out and have it reach its destination by Christmas. Then let your subscribers know! This is another topic you can turn into multiple emails. You can start a countdown with how many days they have left to order.
- Happy Holidays with a Purpose – If you want to send subscribers a holiday greeting, make sure you don’t waste their time. All too often businesses send emails with a simple holiday greeting with good intentions, but really just add to the inbox clutter. The solution is to give your well wishes more value. Offer a free gift, coupon, video or something that your subscribers will enjoy. They’ll appreciate that more than just a “happy holidays” from some business entity.
Start Creating Your Holiday Emails!
Don’t procrastinate; get started on some of these holiday emails so they’re ready to send when the time comes!
About the Author: Crystal Gouldey is an Education Marketing Associate at AWeber, a leading email service provider for small-to-medium businesses. Crystal’s spent the past three years teaching email marketers how to optimize their campaigns. She currently writes for the AWeber blog, which you can visit for more tips on marketing with email. Sign up here to get email marketing tips delivered straight to your inbox.
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