The flowers have bloomed, and the days are getting longer and warmer, which means summer is arriving. But guess what needs to be hotter than the weather? Your summer email marketing strategy is what! Summers are usually the time that sees a general business lump due to a lack of significant occasions and red-letter days. So it becomes even more imperative that you work extra hard on and experiment with your content for your summer season campaigns. So in this post, we get you summer-ready with tips, hacks, and email ideas to boost your sales during the sunny season.
1. Make your design scream summer
Grab the attention of your subscribers with a new refreshed design that’s still on-brand but summer-themed. Danny, our very own hustler, and Design Lead, shared with us her expertise on how to make your summer email campaigns scream summer:
- Use bright summertime colors. Now’s your chance to be bold and go with eye-catching shades. Some trending colors for the season that you can incorporate into your design are blue, lime, orange, cerulean, yellow, and green.
- Add elements that remind your audience of the laidback feeling we all get this time of the year, tropical leaves, flowers, the sun, water, and even margaritas are a go-to for the season.
- Transmit excitement through copy and design, summer is outdoorsy and exciting, and your designs should be as well.
- Highlight your product. At the end of the day, and besides all the fun and games we want to sell products, so make sure your product stands out and is still the main character in your design.
2. Showcase your best summer products
Talking about highlighting products, dive deep into your product library, and create a new collection with your best picks for the summer season. This super simple hack will help your summer email marketing strategy a lot.
You can use your Summer Collection link in your email’s CTAs. This improves the customer experience and journey since you are redirecting them to a collection with products that are adequate for the season, instead of them having to scroll through all your products to find the best picks for summer.
With your summer collection, you’ll have a better understanding of what you have to offer. This will help you plan your email marketing strategy for summer: create an educational newsletter about your summer products, create a summer lookbook or go a step further and create amazing summer bundles.
3. Make personalized recommendations in your summer campaigns
A hand-picked summer lookbook is always great. But, what if you go one step further and make personalized recommendations in your summer campaigns? If you use Klaviyo for all your email marketing efforts, doing so is super easy, and we’ll go through the process step by step in this article.
Let’s learn how to pull up a curated data feed from Shopify into your Klaviyo emails.
Remember that summer collection we suggested you created? That’s step one. Now that you have that ready, log into Klaviyo and open the Data Feeds tab.
Click on the “Add Product Feed” option.
Give your product feed a name and choose from which collection Klaviyo can pick out products to give out recommendations. You can include and exclude as many categories as you want. Select what information you want Klaviyo to consider when giving out the recommendations, you can choose between Viewed Products, Ordered Products, or both.
Now, create a template and add a Product Block. Adjust the setting of the block, including the Data Feed you want to use. In this case, you’ll want to use the Summer Collection feed. Choose how many products to showcase, in how many rows and columns and what product information you want to include.
Once you send out your email campaign, this is what the final result will look like.
Not only can you use this for promo email campaigns, but also for your nurturing emails. Of course, not every email needs to be a salesy email. But, who’s to say you can’t add a little blurb about your summer favorites into your newsletters?
4. Plan a summer sale
Sales are a great way to boost your sales and drive up revenue. Especially when seasons are changing, people are in the mood to buy and get ready for the new seasonal activities that can only be truly enjoyed once a year. So, don’t miss out on the opportunity and plan a sale. Here are some ideas:
- Storewide Summer Sale
- Flash Sale on your Summer Collection
- BOGO on your summer best sellers
- New Arrivals Sale
Build a bigger hype by sending an “Early Access” email campaign to your most engaged users and asking them to sign in on your Summer Sale VIP list to have exclusive early access to the sale or on your new summer arrivals.
You can also nurture your VIP segment by asking them which products should be discounted in the sale. Not only do you give them a little bit of power over what happens with the brand they love so much, but also, they’ll be so glad you heard them, they’ll have to buy with the offer they chose.
5. Win-back seasonal shoppers
Create a segment with people that bought from you last summer and haven’t bought in the last x days, but have shown any kind of engagement whether through email or your website and include them on your summer-themed email campaigns. If they bought summer products from you once, maybe they will twice.
6. Plan around important holidays
There are a number of important holidays that occur in the midst of summer. Take a look at them and see which are relevant to your brand, you’ll want to create content around them for your summer email marketing strategy.
- Memorial Day (May 30th). This is not actually during the summer, however, a lot of brands like to get ahead and plan their summer sales and summer-related email campaigns before summer actually starts.
- Children’s Day (June 11th)
- Fathers’ Day (the third Sunday in June)
- World Oceans Day (June 8th)
- Pride Month (June)
- Picnic Day (June 18th)
- The longest day of the year (June 21st)
- Independence Day (July 4th)
7. Use summer-themed attention-grabbing subject lines
Make people open your amazing summer emails with some attention-grabbing subject lines that make them excited about the new season and what you have planned for them. Use summer-related language and emojis.
- Get Ready for Sunny Days ☀️
- Summer is almost here! Keep them cool with our Summer Collection.
- Summer Sale keeps on giving! 😎
- We’re dropping prices like it’s hot. 🔥 [Coz it is].
- The Countdown To Summer Is On!
- Must-Have Summer Skincare ☀️🛍
- 🌻 Going on a Summer Holiday?
- 🏊♀️ Summer Fitness Goals
- Ready For Summer Vybes?! ☀️ 😎
- Chic City Looks For Summer ✨
8. As always, optimize, optimize, optimize.
Now that you have your summer email marketing strategy ready, your subject lines are attention-grabbing, your summer-style design is on point, and your personalized recommendations are ready to go, you are going to want your email campaign to be seen exactly as you intended it. So don’t forget that optimizing for mobile and optimizing for dark mode is always a must.
9. Get inspired by these summer email marketing ideas
Educational Newsletter
This supplements store educates its subscribers on one of its summer must-have products. The design is bold and reflects the season.
Product showcase
This eCommerce brand showcases its Product Of The Season with a summer-inspired email that grabs the attention.
Summer Collection
You thought only apparel brands could create and promote a summer collection? Think again! This brand of snacks hand-picked its favorite summer bites.
New arrivals
Star the season with the right foot, by showing off your new additions with a Summer New Arrivals email.
Nurturing content
Nurture your relationship with your subscribers by providing hot tips for summer.
Summer Sale
Boost your revenue with a Summer Sale!
If you need more content inspiration for your summer email campaigns, check these 7 types of email campaigns you can add to your content strategy.
Are you ready to boost your sales with your new and improved email marketing strategy this summer? If you need help, book a free call with us and hear from our most experienced hustlers.
