From Data to Design: Holiday Email Marketing That Works
The holiday season can be one of the most rewarding — and most chaotic — times of the year for people working on holiday email marketing campaigns. Timelines are tight. There are more eyes on every send, but there are also extra opportunities for creativity and new ideas. Whether you’re optimizing last year’s approach or trying something new, these tips can help ensure your holiday emails get results.
Start with a clear strategy for holiday email marketing
Before you dive into the fun creative elements of your holiday email marketing campaigns, you need a strategy. Take a look at your metrics from last year’s holiday emails. Review prior content calendars, and set some goals for your holiday email marketing campaigns.
Will this year’s holiday emails look like last year in terms of total number, timing, messaging, and creative? Or are you planning to dive into something innovative for holiday email marketing strategies? Consider what has changed in your business since last year. This will help in planning your holiday email marketing calendar.
Taking the time to create a strategy is a critical first step for successful holiday email marketing.
Be festive, but stay on brand
‘Tis the season to be jolly, but that doesn’t mean breaking your own brand standards with email copy or design. Yes, it’s a great time to add some festive flair. Yet it’s important to stay on brand to keep building authentic connections with your customers.
Consider adding a holiday-specific section to your brand style guide. Ensure everyone on the team knows what’s okay and what’s not for your holiday emails. Is “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” the preferred language for your brand? Is it okay to add a Santa hat or a snowflake to the corner of your logo during the month of December? What additional colors, if any, do you include in your color palette for the holiday season?
You’ve worked hard to build your brand and create a consistent experience for customers. So be sure you don’t shake things up too much with your holiday emails by deviating from your holiday email marketing plan.
Personalize the email experience
If you started with a strategy, then you know what data is available for use in your holiday email marketing campaigns. Now it’s time to use it! For enterprise email marketers, personalization goes beyond inserting a first name and three product recommendations. Think about the bigger picture of the customer journey. Use what you know about their behavior and their intent. You can personalize subject lines, offers, creative, send times, and more. This will help you better connect with your customers and stand out in their crowded inbox during the holiday season.
If you don’t have a personalization strategy in place already, take the opportunity to add some to your holiday emails. Just don’t overdo it. Think through what types of personalization work best with what you know about your customer, the data you have available, and the capacity of your team during the holiday rush.
Optimize for mobile devices
Every person on your list is getting flooded with holiday emails in Q4. Around half of all emails get opened on mobile. This means people might be opening your email at a stoplight, while watching TV, or when walking their dog. In other words, you only have part of their attention and an incredibly short window of time to capture more of it with your holiday email marketing efforts.
If your font size is too small, or the images don’t load fast enough, or it’s not coded correctly for dark mode, you miss your chance to capture their full attention. They’ll swipe to delete and move on to the next email in their inbox. Optimizing for mobile is crucial. Thorough testing across multiple platforms and devices ensures a consistent user experience for your holiday emails and every other email you send.
Make accessibility a priority
Did you know that approximately 8% of the US population has some level of visual impairment? That percentage is even higher when looking at the global population. This means every enterprise company has email subscribers with a visual impairment.
While digital accessibility isn’t specifically addressed in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it’s commonly understood now to apply to digital spaces as well. Accessibility should be a priority not only because of potential legal implications, but also because you want customers to have easy access to the information they need. That means designing with accessibility in mind — font size, color choices, descriptive alt tags for every image, clear calls to action, and a well-defined structure to the email.
The good news? Accessible design is easier for everyone to read, so it’s a win for everyone. If you’re curious to learn more about accessible design and why it matters, download our white paper on accessible email design. Applying accessibility principles enhances your holiday email marketing initiatives.
Test, learn, and adjust
Holiday email marketing campaigns are a great opportunity to try new things, but be sure to allow plenty of time for testing. Ensure you have the necessary data connections between systems in place before any year-end code freezes begin. Do extensive testing to ensure your personalized content displays as expected. Leave plenty of time to fully test how any new design ideas render across platforms as well.
Go back to your strategy to review your holiday email marketing goals. Be sure you have the right tracking in place to evaluate the success of your holiday emails. Otherwise, you could spend time on new ideas and not really know if they worked.
While making changes in the middle of the hectic holiday season isn’t ideal, there may be some things you need to adjust quickly based on your metrics. Again, check your strategy and your goals to identify your KPIs and any thresholds that might require quick attention. And go ahead and schedule that post-holiday debrief meeting now. This will help you review the results, capture any lessons learned, and be one step ahead for next year. Such evaluations will enhance your holiday email marketing strategy.
Final thoughts for successful holiday emails
Whether you’re testing new ideas or leveraging previous wins, successful holiday email marketing requires a solid strategy, careful execution, and the ability to adapt quickly. Take the time now to review your goals, create a plan, and have some fun with festive holiday email ideas. The holiday season moves fast, but with the right plan in place, you can get great results from your holiday email marketing campaigns.
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