As Christmas 2023 approaches, we usher in the very festive season of the year. During this special holiday season, we hope to share a special gift - our carefully crafted comprehensive guide on Christmas email marketing.
Whether you are attempting email marketing for the first time or looking to optimize existing strategies, this guide will provide you with valuable advice and practical tips to help you stand out in this competitive holiday season.
This guide includes the following content:
- Preparation before getting started
- Don't forget about deliverability
- How to plan a Christmas email marketing strategy
- Write a more authentic content
- Final takeaway
Preparation before getting started
Before engaging in Christmas email marketing, we recommend analyzing past data, learning from history, and extracting experiences from both successes and failures to achieve greater breakthroughs this year.
You can analyze from the following aspects:
- Which products brought in more revenue during last Christmas? Think about bringing them back again this year.
- What were the user profiles of those biggest spenders during last Christmas? Can you customize email content and promotions for them this year?
- Which campaigns performed poorly during last Christmas? Speculate on the causes, and avoid the same strategy this year or consider redesigning one.
- In the just-concluded Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale, which products generated higher revenue? To some extent, this serves as an indicator for this year and can be worth trying during Christmas as well.
The answers to these questions will provide valuable info for this year's Christmas email marketing strategy, guiding your planning. Make use of the SmartPush data reports to access relevant information easily.
In addition to summarizing experiences, some preparatory work is also indispensable. Through the following operations, you can enhance efficiency and achieve more with less effort:
1. Clean your email list
- Regularly cleaning your email list is a common practice to maintain list health in email marketing. Typically, it is advised to clean inactive, expired, or invalid email addresses every three months. Before significant holidays, cleaning the list becomes particularly vital: reduce unnecessary email volume, improve deliverability and open rates, and maintain your domain reputation.
- SmartPush provides email validity verification services (free within a limited period), allowing you to exclude expired/ invalid email addresses easily, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency for you.
2. Reasonable audience segmentation
- Optimove's research suggests that segmented email campaigns can enhance the value of each customer. Usually, the smaller and more targeted your segmented audience, the more beneficial it is for increasing customer value. Basically, you can categorize recipients into inactive and active groups: for inactive recipients, focus on introducing products and brands; for active ones, send holiday greetings and offer discounts and benefits.
- Now, SmartPush is launching a brand-new customer lifecycle management, with reasonable segmentation, custom support, and assistance to refine your operations.
3. Check your CTA
- You might say this is a simple operation, but in effect, such details are often the key factors determining success or failure. Ensuring correct links is one of the essential prerequisites for a desirable outcome.
- During the busy pre-holiday preparation, details might be neglected. You can go to SmartPush > [Brand Info] to set all default URLs, brand logos, social media links, and related information. The subsequent emails will automatically apply theese settings, saving you a lot of time.
Don't forget about deliverability
Improve your performance by optimizing delivery rates and inbox rates, ensuring that your emails accurately reach the recipients' inboxes.
You can learn how to improve your domain reputation and avoid emails ending up in the spam folder through this article.
According to the new regulations from Google and Yahoo in 2024, spam email risk control will be stricter than usual. Learn more details through this article. To ensure deliverability, you can configure a dedicated brand-sending domain with SmartPush to safeguard reputation and delivery.
How to plan a Christmas email marketing strategy
Christmas campaigns are typically divided into the following three phases:
1. Before Christmas
Maintain a leading position in the competition by sending email campaigns before Christmas. At this time, users may be considering aspects such as holidays, Christmas cards, and decorations.
Therefore, this is the best time to engage subscribers or remind them to start thinking about the holiday. You can choose to start the holiday warm-up 1-2 weeks in advance.
1）Create a Christmas wish list
A wish list is an excellent way to show customers the products that may interest them, increasing conversions when Christmas arrives.
Consider creating lists that attract different customer segments. Segment the crowd based on user profiles and send lists of different categories to the most relevant audiences.
2）Christmas gift guide
Emails before Christmas can also take the form of a gift-buying guide, providing products that align with customer interests through audience segmentation and user lifecycle management.
2. Christmas activities
On the day of Christmas, you can send one or multiple emails.
1）Remind customers of email-exclusive discounts, special offers, Christmas promotions, or special Christmas packages.
2）Merry Christmas greetings
Christmas is one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. Take a minute to send your customers a Merry Christmas message to establish better connections with them.
3. Post-Christmas activities
The period after Christmas is often a good time for marketing, as people are always looking to catch post-holiday discounts and New Year campagins.
1）Happy New Year
Similar to wishing Merry Christmas, sending warm holiday wishes to customers makes it easier for them to remember your brand in the days to come.
2）Annual selections
At the end of the year, offer customers carefully selected products as a year-end token of gratitude.
Write a more authentic content
Repeated content is a major drawback in emails. An attention-grabbing content can make your email stand out in the inbox, achieving more with less effort. However, moments of inspiration don't always come instantly.
Choose to use SmartPush, whose rich preset template library plus AI intelligent content generator will assure you of the email content.
Final takeaway
As a major holiday following Black Friday, Christmas is also a marketing moment that cannot be missed.
Starting preparatory work as early as possible is one of the secrets to success. You can enhance your profits by offering heartfelt greetings and attractive discounts. Finally, we wish you a Merry Christmas!
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