 Now that the holiday season is upon us, everyone is like a caged race horse ready to take the email track by storm. But will you be prepared for this crazy race? Will you be the straggler trying to catch up or will you be the head of the pack? Below are some survival tips to help you prepare your email marketing campaigns this holiday season.
Prepare:
Instead of basking in the calm before the storm you should be preparing your plan of attack. You can do this by following this quick cheat sheet:
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Reward your active openers, clickers, and past customers NOW. This will keep you on their radar while everyone else is trying to steal them away later.
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Lose the extra weight your list is carrying by cutting out the inactive records older than 60 days.
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Look for new clientele in unique areas.
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Create a series of templates you would like to use for the holidays.
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Put a schedule together and organize your links, subject lines and content.
Plan:
The hustle and bustle of the holidays makes everyone a little nuts, and everything seems to switch to overdrive for one hectic quarter. Many see this heightened holiday energy as a time to ramp up their email marketing blasts - it’s actually smarter to remain consistent and strategic. Just because everyone is out shopping doesn’t mean that they're any more willing to get spammed by you. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
People will still get annoyed by your flooded presence in their inbox and likely won’t forget your persistence come January. Ensure that what you're sending them is worth their time - make it relevant to their needs and offer real incentives.
But if all the other companies are doubling or tripling their frequency how will you stand out? Put a strategic plan together on just how frequently you will pursue your members while making sure you don’t abuse their tolerance.
Analyze:
Start testing your marketing ideas now. For most companies the holiday season is their bread and butter - for others they feel the ripple effect. Either way you need to organize your plan by testing it out. Here's a list of what you should be testing:
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subject lines
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email templates
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color schemes
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images
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calls-to-action
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message frequency
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launch day & time
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list segmentation
With all this testing you'll also need to analyze that data to determine what is and isn't working. Continue to clean out your unsubscribes and monitor your spam complaints so that you have the best of the best on your list come December.
All this work might seem a little intimidating at first glance, but it will definitely help you stay organized and sane (especially while everyone else is overdosing on eggnog)!
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