Christmas is a make or break time of year for many businesses to drive revenue, which makes it crucial to plan your Christmas email marketing strategy in advance. The benefits you can reap from a successful Christmas period are immense, which explains why many marketing teams start planning for Christmas as soon as possible.
So if you’re looking to boost your email marketing performance and increase your revenue this festive season, keep reading as we share our top five Christmas email tips.
What are the benefits of Christmas email marketing?
Email marketing is widely known as one of the most cost effective marketing channels with many brands attributing a significant return on investment (ROI). According to Moosend, 68% of shoppers say they pay more attention to emails they receive over the festive period, meaning this particular channel brings even more value over Christmas.
With this mind, sending Christmas email campaigns can result in a higher conversion rate for your business. Combine your audience’s high attention span with their naturally high purchasing intention, creating a killer Christmas campaign with an enticing offer means your chances of converting leads into paying customers sky rocket.
Our top 5 Christmas email marketing tips
It’s a no brainer for a business to hop on board the Christmas email marketing hype, but you should be mindful about how you approach sending effective Christmas emails. Here are our top five tips that are sure to have you making the most of this valuable channel this season as well as having your brand seen amongst festive mayhem!
1. Increase your frequency and broaden your audience
As mentioned, email marketing is one of the most important channels for driving revenue and this is only amplified at Christmas. Therefore you should increase the amount of emails you’re sending and broaden the audience that’s receiving it.
As inboxes become more crowded during December, you should consider sending five times as many emails you normally would to ensure you’re noticed. However, if you plan to send multiple campaigns, be sure to keep an eye out on your unsubscribe rates and your engagement rates don’t drop.
A few ways you can avoid this is to make sure you’re including an enticing offer within your campaign and give your audience a reason to visit your website. It’s also vital to make sure your email layout is engaging and eye-catching.
2. Create a sense of urgency to increase conversion
There’s a variety of Christmas specific persuasion tactics that can be used by digital marketers to encourage opens and click-throughs. Building a sense of urgency is a really effective tactic which can be done through time-specific offers. By applying a live countdown timer and seasonal discount codes for example, you can increase your engagement and conversions.
There are many other tactics you can utilise that are effective, such as offering teasers, including magic questions in your content, implementing loss aversion, taking a direct approach and adding personalisation. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is also another great tactic to use during the festive period, especially when subscribers are already in the buying mode.
3. Use Christmas emojis and wordplay
Getting creative with your Christmas subject lines can really make a difference as to whether someone opens your email or not, especially with the increase in inbox competition. Don’t be afraid to cut through the noise with festive puns, witty wordplay and anything else that will make your emails stand out.
Using festive emojis is another great, quick win tactic to stand out in the mailbox as your subscribers will be more inclined to open an email with an emoji in the subject line.
4. Target previous Christmas buyers and utilise rewards schemes
Whilst you want to broaden your audience when sending Christmas emails, you should also create an audience of just the subscribers who purchased last Christmas and send them targeted emails. Amazingly, a huge number of businesses don’t individually target their most lucrative subscribers.
Retaining loyalty and nurturing customer relationships is extremely important and therefore you should send personalised messages to show you appreciate your loyal customers. You could show your appreciation by offering them exclusive discounts or end-of-year rewards for example.
5. Offer seasonal giveaways and run Christmas competitions
Open and engagement rates are massively increased by giveaways and competitions. Christmas is a busy and expensive time of the year and your audience are probably more inclined to engage with promotions or the chance to win a free prize.
Consider offering a Christmas giveaway or competition to win one of your products or a free trial of your services. You could further promote your competition on your social media channels and drive even more traffic to your website.
Need help with your Christmas email marketing?
We hope our festive tips help you to push your Christmas emails to the next level, boost your email performance and ultimately, drive more revenue for your business. If you find you need a helping hand with your Christmas email marketing, get in touch with us today. Our digital marketing experts can put together a seasonal email marketing strategy for you and even do all the hard work for you.