2018 is here! The holidays are have come and gone, which means that your business just finished competing with a deluge of holiday marketing emails from every other business out there.
As you take stock of your business’ 2017 holiday email marketing open and click-through rates, consider what you can improve on in the new year. With almost 50% of all holiday shopping taking place online, your business cannot afford to send out subpar emails!
Check out these 5 essential tips from our marketing experts to making a stronger effort in 2018:
Plan Ahead
The holidays are a busy time for everyone, so you’ll be doing yourself (and your customers!) a huge favor by starting to plan your holiday marketing strategy in advance.
A great place to start is taking a look at your efforts (and your competition’s efforts) from the previous year. What worked? What didn’t? Looking at your business’ strengths and weaknesses will give you the most accurate perception of what you can improve upon.
Instead of scrambling to get your holiday marketing ready at the last minute, start compiling materials (offers, relevant content, etc.) a few weeks in advance so that you can just plug-and-play when it comes time to send something out!
The Customer Is Always Right
The age-old adage is certainly true for any marketer worth their salt. Give your customers what they want, not what you want them to want. This means that you need to understand your audience’s wants, needs, and pain points. Don’t just blast them with a sales pitch!
A successful holiday marketing email will be more about celebrating the end of a great year or getting into the festive holiday spirit. Let your customers see your holiday cheer and try to get them excited about your brand. You want your audience to see your business for its people, not its products.
Segmentation Is Your Friend
Segmentation basically means breaking your mailing list into smaller groups that are defined by certain attributes. Segmentation is your tool to better attribution, better data, and better results.
You should use segmentation to make the most of your audience. Using segements will enable you to avoid sending your millenial-focused ads to the 55+ subscribers in your mailing list (and, hopefully, vice versa!). Look at this as a way of making sure that your messages are tailored to the recipient.
Make Sure It Works
This is such a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many marketing emails get sent with typos, broken links, or (even worse) broken images.
Make sure your stuff works. Period. This includes making it mobile-friendly since over 50% of emails are usually opened on mobile devices! As always, measure twice and cut once, particularly when it comes to sending something out to current or potential customers.
Be A Personality
Nobody likes receiving generic emails from businesses. Seriously. Make sure that any marketing copy that goes out has a strong, personalized look and message, and, maybe even more importantly, make sure that there’s a good reason for that copy to be sent out in the first place!
Don’t just use templates and generic language/images to get your point across. Set yourself apart from the competition in every way possible, including an original, attention-grabbing subject line.
By combining your creativity with smart marketing practices (A/B testing, addressing your subscribers’ specific needs/likes/pain points, and using segmentation), you’ll be way more likely to have an increased open rate in your next mailing!