The holidays are just around the corner, and I hope you’ll be using email marketing to get those shoppers into your store buying gifts for their loved ones. Let’s dive into this week’s post to give you some ideas on how to be more effective this season with your email marketing program.
5 Holiday Email Marketing Tips
1. Get people to open. Using email to market your store is one of the best ways to get the sale, but if customers aren’t opening the email, they’ll never see your new items/event info/special offers/etc. Get people to open by having a catchy and effective subject line. To help you find and brainstorm some strong holiday subject lines, check out this article by Vertical Response titled, “20 Holiday Subject Lines That Light Up the Inbox“
2. Make it exclusive. When people join email lists, they’re usually doing so to get special offers. However, some businesses send out a special offer via email that they also put on Facebook, Twitter, promote in-store, etc. By doing this, you weaken the value of being a subscriber to your email list. This holiday season be sure to send out something exclusive to your subscribers that they can’t find anywhere else. And, let them know it’s exclusive, they’ll feel special 🙂
3. Focus your call to action. People are busy, especially during this time of year. Don’t add more work to their lives by sending long email newsletters that feature lots a different calls to action (CTAs) like: buy, come in, call us, come to this event, read this recipe, go to our Facebook page, participate in our Pinterest contest. I’m not kidding, I received an email from an independent retailer that had 6 different CTAs and as a consumer, I have no idea what was most important; I thought, “what do they really want me to do?” As a shopper, I get overwhelmed and I’m busy, so to make my life easier I delete the email.
Now I want to be clear, if you have an email newsletter that works for you, don’t stop sending it. My tip here is to focus on one CTA that is simple to understand, obvious what you want the shopper to do and is above the fold (so they don’t need to scroll to see the CTA).
4. Don’t rely on images. Depending on your customer’s email settings, they might disable images from appearing. If this is the case, and your email is an entire graphic, or has words on a graphic, the reader will not see any part of the email and it will look like a blank, boring send. Be sure to include text in your emails in addition to images so your message is effectively being communicated (and getting seen!)
5. Check it twice. If you’re using an email service provider like Mail Chimp or SnapRetail, be sure to always send yourself a test email to make sure everything looks good and all the links work. Take it a step further by checking the email on mobile devices like a smartphone and/or tablet. With 47% of email being opened on a mobile device, according to Litmus, Aug 2013; it’s crucial to test email sends on these devices before sending to the masses. You don’t want to miss an opportunity to sell!
I’m wishing everyone a very successful holiday season, and email is one way to make it that way!
Please share this email with any retailer friends you have and have a wonderful rest of the week!
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