Now that the dust on the Black Friday season has just about settled, we’re thrust halfway into December and it’s time to plan, design and polish those holiday marketing campaigns already. Needless to say, Holiday emails will be a big part of your holiday marketing strategy and we’re here to help you a little bit with email marketing tips, hacks and holiday email examples to not only rack up a good email revenue but end the year on a positive and engaging note with your customers.

For those not familiar with the western world, Holiday marketing usually involves campaigns around Christmas, Boxing day (a day after Christmas) and of course New Year’s Day a few days after. The entire 10 day period is usually referred to as Holiday and any marketing around these days is bunched under “Holiday Marketing”.

With that out of the way, let’s just jump right into the best holiday email marketing best practices and holiday email examples that our A-team of email strategists has put their collective email wisdom into compiling for you!

1.  Create a Christmassy or winter theme in your design but be different

Yes, not all Christmas related emails have to be red with snowflakes on them! The design has been done to death and can actually get lost in all the other Christmas material and cause “Christmas Fatigue” (it’s a thing!)
How about add subtle holiday details or use unusual colour palettes in your design theme like one of our clients did here?

2. Curate a Christmas-themed look book or collection in your campaign

You can infuse all things Christmas in your marketing email without needing to do it with design. Instead you can create a Christmas theme by curating products from the store in the Christmas color palette with products in colors red, green and white. Or you can deliberately design content that compliments your products like Blendjet’s Christmas Recipes in this newsletter.

3.  Time your emails according to the shipping timelines

This is the most important holiday email marketing tip to keep in mind. For anyone looking to buy products from your store as a Christmas gift, it’s important to know by when the product will be delivered and when is the absolute last day to order.

Create a flow of emails accordingly so that none of the promotional emails are going out post the last date for holiday shipping. For example if the last date of order is one week before Christmas, then have your emails start going out weeks before Christmas so the customers have enough time to see the emails and order in time.  You can even create a dedicated  holiday shipping calendar like we did for a client here.

4.  Offer a Christmas wish list

A Christmas wish list campaign never fails!  A Christmas wish list email includes showcasing the all time favorites, most bought Christmas gifts, or all the christmassy items the store has to offer. It can either have the angle of “gift yourself” or gift others (or both!)

5. Create bundles

Create special bundles as Christmas gifts. Not only is this an excellent hack to sell more product, but it really helps those customers that struggle to shop for Christmas gifts without assistance. To make it even easier for customers you can name them accordingly like “special gift for her” or “gift for mother”, etc. Also, it is crucial to send your best deals before the actual Christmas day, because people buy stuff for holidays, not during them. Usually during the actual holidays ORs and conversions are lower.

6. Create newsletters with useful content that don’t try to sell 

Every marketer worth their salt knows the magic formula for selling. 1. Offer content + 2. offer content + sell.

Which basically means that for every one piece of marketing trying to sell, offer two pieces of useful content. Same goes with email. For every selly promotional email, send a curated newsletter with nothing but useful, interesting or entertaining content. One of our clients

7. Don’t ignore a non-selly, just-wishy email!

Just because your customer can’t or won’t buy from your email anymore since the deadline to order a Christmas gift is well past doesn’t mean you stop your emails right before or on Christmas. It’s important to treat your customers like a personal relationship and send a non-promotional email just wishing them for the holidays to create a feeling of genuine engagement and warmth. It’s not all about selling with every email!

7. Exclude recent shoppers

This may be a no-brainer, but to the newbies in the email marketing world, this may be golden advice. Exclude buyers who bought from A to B where A is start of your sale and B is current date. You do this to avoid spamming them. IF they just made the purchase with big discount offer they don’t need the same email the next day.

8. Make a year-end report

This is a great idea for a non-cliche year end or new year email. If you have the resources and data, and you can pull this off, nothing like a year-end report to get the engagement rate soaring by offering your audience interesting stats that make them go aha or learn something new. Make a review card on the lines of   “All the things ordered this from us this year pointing to trends”, or “this is how many trees you helped us plant this year with your purchase.” in case your product is tied with a cause.

Check out this beautiful email from a food delivery company who got the year-end review card on point:

9. Add cute gifs in your holiday email design

When it comes to email template design, few things can match the charm of a well done GIF that adds life to an otherwise static email. Luckily, holiday marketing offers the opportunity to get really creative with gifs. You can animate simple elements such as Christmas decorations, sparkling lights, gift boxes like the below holiday email or create more complex animations.

10.  Schedule your campaigns in advance

Last but not the least and we can’t stress this enough. Holiday marketing can be tricky when you realise that your campaign coincides with your own vacation, your designer’s or other colleague’s time off. Last minute tweaks can prove to be disaster when you don’t have the resources you need to plan, design or send a campaign on the D-day. Trust us, you don’t want to be surfing in Bali or worse sitting with your family on a Christmas table with one hand on your laptop, running your Christmas campaigns.  Plan your holiday campaigns at least 15 days in advance, keep them ready and schedule them a few days before they’re to be sent.

With these tips, we’re sure you’re in a good stead of rock your holiday email campaigns this year and bring the year to a close it deserves.

Need experts to manage your last minute Christmas email campaigns?  We got you. Get in touch with us and we can help you create some warm and fuzzy Christmas campaigns for your store. If not, we can always chat and discuss your email marketing plans for the next year.

Either case, we wish you a very successful holiday season and happy holidays for you and yours.