Christmas in July: Preparing for Holiday Email Marketing

The holidays are among the most important time of year for many businesses. Retailers specifically must cash in on this time when spending trends dramatically increase. One of the best ways to get ahead of the pack during the holidays is to have a fantastic email marketing strategy. It's not uncommon for retailers to start working on holiday promotional strategy for email as early as July! So we're here to give you some simple tips to get you thinking about and help you prepare for important upcomming holiday email marketing opportunities.

Just do it! - During the holidays, transaction rates are significantly higher. Money spent on email marketing, which already provides impressive ROI, is an even better investment during the holidays.

Risky Business - Consider taking a calculated risk during the holidays and ramp up the frequency of your campaigns. You'll have more unsubscribes, but sales will increase as well.

Tis the Season - You may not think your company fits into a holiday themed marketing campaign, but it's worth the effort to find a clever way to do so. While your product may not be festive, your marketing can be!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday - Know the big dates for sales and cash in on them. While all holiday mailing seems to perform better than standard mailing, these days are the most important.

On the Go - Make sure your email is optimized for mobile. It gets more important every year.

Learn from your Past - Revisit holiday campaigns from previous years. Take a close look at their stats and use the information to improve the campaign this year. If you had great success you can even re-use some elements.

Get Creative - Think outside of the box and consider something new. You may do a series of related emails, perhaps time sensitive offers. You can set these up before hand in an initial email so customers will be looking for them.

Target Procrastinators - Appealing to the idea that many people procrastinate can sometimes convince buyers to act now rather than put your email away for later where it's possible (likely) that they will forget about it.

List Member Exclusives - Give your email list members exclusive deals that aren't available in any other way. Make these offers usable more than once and recipients may forward them along to friends and family or share your email on social media networks.

It's definitely early to be thinking about the holidays, but success requires time for preparation! The sales that can be generated are too important to risk putting your marketing strategy off until the last minute. We hope that these tips will give you some ideas on how to make the holidays a success for you this year.


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