Santa’s workshop: 11 ways to nail, paint and finish your holiday emails

ways to nail, paint and finish your holiday emails

Looking for an effective and low-cost way to boost your holiday sales? You might consider creating and launching a holiday email marketing campaign to drive in more phone calls from holiday shoppers.

Contrary to what you may think, such campaigns can be fairly easy to devise. And they tend to produce a lot of bang for the buck; in fact, every dollar spent on such plans produces an ROI of about $44, reports marketer Campaign Monitor.

If you hustle like Dasher the reindeer, you still have time to pull together a very merry holiday email campaign aimed at encouraging recipients to pick up their phones (or, if they’re reading by mobile, simply clicking to call). While a variety of software packages and free online tools can help you store content, automate the emailing and measure results, you can also play Santa yourself by devising and sending your own messages and graphics.

Consider the following tips:

  1. Organize your address list. When possible, use tools that help you segment your audiences to increase the chances they’ll be interested in opening your emails. Possible categories? One-time, last-minute and highly engaged buyers. The more you can personalize your subject lines and content by intended recipient, the better; for example, you may be able to incorporate customer names and/or references to their job, industry, location, interests, hobbies, birthday or previous purchases. Studies show segmented campaigns are much more effective than blanket emails sent out at random.
  2. Put together a calendar based on how often you wish to email and which holidays you want to recognize. Possibilities include the traditional Christian, Muslim, Jewish and African holidays as well as Movember, Veterans Day, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Green Monday, December Solstice, Boxing Day and New Year’s. Note: On sensitive occasions such as Veterans Day and Christmas, avoid promoting yourself and instead offer heartfelt messages.
  3. Zero in on the customer reactions you’re seeking so you can craft your messages accordingly. Could your product solve a problem for them? Appeal to their confidence or self-image? Keep them competitive? Make them cutting-edge? Protect them from a threat? You’ll want to limit your calls to action to one per email, but experts advise repeating each message three times, in three separate emails, to optimize results.
  4. Vary your topics according to what you’re trying to achieve. Possibilities include holiday newsletters; holiday shopping guides; holiday-themed videos; appealing photos and descriptions of key products; announcements about sales, coupons, special events or contests; offers of free samples; deals of the day; gift card promotions; reminders about holiday hours or shipping deadlines; customer success stories; reports on your holiday giving; incentives for joining your social media sites; suggestions for last-minute gifts or summaries of your business changes in 2017.
  5. Be strategic with your subject lines, which will highly impact whether your emails are opened. Aim for short, catchy and accurate regarding the email content.
  6. To encourage recipients to respond with a phone call, incorporate easy-to-remember phone numbers and/or click-to-call buttons that jump out from the page.
  7. Select photos and other visuals that are clear, compelling and relevant to appeal to the 65 percent of us who are visual learners.
  8. At the end of each email, ask recipients to join your social media sites and/or add in social sharing buttons. Then cross-promote your email offerings on your website, social media and in-house media.
  9. When sending recipients to a website landing page, make sure the page is as professional and appealing as the email itself.
  10. Ensure your messages can scale and download quickly on every kind of device. Some 54 percent of all emails are already viewed via mobile device, a number that continues to rise.
  11. Set deadlines for curating and sending all your content, and assign tasks accordingly. Depending on your industry, it’s likely in your best interest to have everything ready before the holiday season really gets rolling.

With a little planning, your holiday email campaign could soon be taking off like the down of a thistle.

Dial800 can set you up with everything you need to optimize inbound sales calls. Ask us how elfishly easy it can be by calling 1-800-700-1987.

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