Email marketing is one of the core channels of holistic marketing. It is one of the most personal communication options a business has with their audience and it’s 100% owned by you. The best way to make it work for you is to optimize email marketing for your business.
It’s easy for an email list to get messy, and we know how quickly it can feel overwhelming to come up with emails for your subscribers, so regular sends just go by the wayside.
With the holiday season coming up, it’s time to make a calendar and establish a plan for any sales, launches, or fundraisers you may want to include in your marketing over the next few months!
So let’s talk about how to optimize your email marketing for the Holiday Season & Beyond!
Best Email Promotion Dates for the Holidays
We don’t want any holiday dates to come as a surprise so it’s important to note a few key dates and inform your customers.
- Give folks a few days heads up prior to any sales, launches or fundraisers. Start to get them excited!
- Email folks on the day of your sale or launch to let them know- the day has come!
- If you sell a physical product it’s important to tell your audience the shipping cut off date – this is the last day they can place an order with regular shipping to get the product before Christmas day. This is likely about 2 full weeks before the holiday, but give yourself a few days extra buffer just in case.
- Don’t just stop there though, give folks an option for something digitally, or something they can print at home to easily give as a last minute gift!
Optimize Your Email List Using Segmentation
You might think email doesn’t work for your business because you’re seeing low open and click rates, but who exactly are you emailing? Did these folks sign up years ago? When was the last time they actually engaged?
Periodically cleaning up your list can be really beneficial. Not only will this likely save you money with your ESP, but it will also ensure you’re getting accurate open and click data because you’re not sending to folks who don’t want to hear from you!
We like to cut folks from our lists if they haven’t clicked to open an email or engaged in any way after 3 or 4 months.
But don’t just cut them off cold turkey, give them an opportunity to reengage and that leads me to my next tip
Optimize Email Marketing Experience with Automations
Automations can help you establish a great relationship with your email audience right from the start! Giving folks a custom tailored email series from the moment they sign up, until they’re receiving your regular campaigns can be a make or break moment.
We use automations to Welcome audiences with specifics on HOW they signed up. Anytime someone places an order, there is also an automation there to help them stay informed on their order, get help, and give reviews, and we have automations set up to win folks back before they go onto our unengaged list and ultimately get deleted.
We tailor make the email automations for all of our clients and these are consistent revenue drivers! Be sure to get your email automations set up before the holiday season so you can stay connected and keep them engaged!
Check out our guide to the top 3 highest converting email automations here!
If you have any questions or need any help with your email marketing, get in touch here!