The 12 Tips of Christmas Email Marketing
19th November 2018
Christmas Email Marketing – The 12 Tips of Christmas
It’s that time of year where email inboxes are bombarded with festive offerings. The competition is as high as Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve so how do you ensure that your Christmas email marketing gets noticed? Here are our 12 tips to tantalise your reader:
1. What worked last year?
The old saying of “if it’s not broken then don’t fix it” goes a long way. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you had a great campaign last year. Analyse the data from the emails that you sent during the same period and look at what worked and what didn’t. See how many people opened the emails and how many clicked through from your call to action.
2. Behind enemy subject lines
If you haven’t (but I bet you have) sign up to your competitor’s mailing lists to find out what they are doing and go to their websites. What catches your eye? We aren’t saying you take their ideas, but to compete with them, knowledge of their offerings will make you as smart as the three wise men.
3. Pack the Festive Punch
Whilst we are talking about subject lines, you need to keep yours intriguing but punchy! It must make the reader want to open yours over all the others that are flooding their inbox.
4. Desirable Design
So, you’ve caught the attention with your superb subject line so you HAVE to make sure the design is right. Glitter it up and give it that festive feel. Once the reader clicks open on that email, wow them with a design that causes that click straight through to your website.
5. Content is key
As we have said (several times already), your subscribers will be receiving so many emails, so you must keep the content short. If there is lots to read, they aren’t going to bother and will close your email as quickly as they opened it. All your reader will want to know is how your offering will benefit them. Keep it friendly and keep it relevant! Use eye-catching images and calls to action.
6. Lots to say?
We’ve told you to keep content to a minimum, but you really do have a lot to say and it is important your reader sees this. There is a way! Summarise the highlights of what you know will interest them and then link this to a full piece on your website.
7. Go Social
It’s a social time of year with all those parties so utilise your social media! Many of the email marketing campaign software companies give you the option to share your newsletter on social media! Do it! This way you will be targeting people who aren’t current subscribers, so you are automatically hitting a larger target audience.
8. Don’t cause an email blizzard
We all love the snow but when it gets to the point that we can’t move for it, we tend to get fed up and look forward to it melting away. Don’t do this to your subscribers. There is nothing more infuriating than your inbox being bombarded by the same company. If you want un-subscribers, go ahead! Otherwise, keep it strategic and keep it relevant!
9. A gentle reminder
We are all guilty of it! We sign up to so many mailing lists, we forget what half of the businesses are. Give your subscribers a little reminder as to why you are contacting them.
10. A/B Split testing
Like picking Christmas gifts for a loved one, the guesswork of what is right when sending an email is the make or break for your campaign. Remove that pressure and use split testing to find which version of your campaign will work best. By doing this you can maximise open and click-through rates. The best areas to test are different subject lines, link placements or even special offers. An example of how to run a split test through our favourite email marketing providers, Campaign Monitor, is HERE!
11. Atenshon to detale
See what we did there? Check spelling, grammar and that all your links work! Nothing will put a recipient off more than if they click to buy and the link takes them somewhere else. They are frustrated, and you’ve lost a sale. Check, check and check again!
12. Plain and Simple
Deliverability is so important and spam filters are getting better by the day! Make sure that you set plain text versions of your emails and you will have a better chance of beating the spam filter as it will be viewed as a safer campaign. Don’t forget, not everyone can view HTML emails, so this combats that issue too! Most emails are opened on mobile devices, so a plain text version of your email is imperative!
We hope this helps a little as we know that this is a hugely busy time of year for everyone! If you want greensplash to help with your email marketing campaigns, please feel free to contact us or pop in for a cuppa and a mince pie!
