The holiday shopping season is when marketing campaigns kick into high gear for most businesses. This year is no different. If you plan to improve your sales, email marketing should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. Here, we will discuss five reasons why you should incorporate email marketing this holiday season.
The coronavirus pandemic may have dampened consumer sentiments for a short period. However, people are still enthusiastic about buying products, services, and gifts during big shopping days and festivals such as Black Friday and Christmas. It is also the time for businesses to maximize revenues and start the new year on a high note. As such, businesses offer various deals and offers and run carefully designed campaigns to attract more customers during this season.
A key component of holiday season marketing campaigns is email marketing. According to the 2020 State of Email, Fall Edition reportOpens a new window by Litmus, 77% of marketers said that email is one of their top two most effective marketing channels. Email marketing offers you several benefits. Through emails, you can gather more leads, reach out to already engaged consumers, run well-targeted campaigns, and improve your probabilities of conversions.
Learn more: Holiday Marketing Checklist 2020: 10 Essentials To Ace This Festive Season
Let us dive deeper into a few reasons why you should have email marketing as part of your holiday marketing efforts.
1. Emails Allow You To Send Personalized Communication
Businesses can use various tools, such as emails and social media platforms, to communicate with their customers. However, studies have shown that emails offer them better opportunities to send personalized communication. From using the person’s first name in the mail subject line to providing product recommendations based on the person’s purchase history, emails offer various personalization options. Emails are also found to be the best way to nurture leads. According to Content Marketing Institute researchOpens a new window , about 31% of B2B marketers believe that email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads.
Further, personalized emails are known to improve open rates and conversion rates. According to a Dynamic Yield survey,Opens a new window 71% of consumers say that personalized experiences impact their decisions to interact with brands’ emails. Here are a few ways to personalize your emails.
- Identify the different types of emails you will send this holiday season
- List down your customers and subscribers and group them into various segments. Doing so will help you send them relevant content and deals
- Use various personalization tactics in your email. This includes using the person’s first name and having a personalized subject line. You can personalize the email body text and product images or use dynamic content based on the demographic and geographic data of the customers
- Advanced personalization tactics include product recommendations based on recent purchase history, VIP deals for regular customers, and offers based on customer’s behavioral data
2. They Can Reduce Cart Abandonment
Not all shoppers who land up on your product or checkout page end up buying your products. In fact, cart abandonment is a typical challenge retailers face. It is more common during the holiday shopping season as customers have various options and alternatives to choose from. According to a studyOpens a new window by Statista, about 88.05% of online orders were abandoned in March 2020.
Emails play a crucial role in reducing shopping cart abandonment and improving sales conversions. Cart abandonment emails are known to have high open and conversion rates. According to researchOpens a new window by Barilliance, the email open rates over the last five years have been above 43%, and conversion rates have been above 8%. These consistently good rates indicate that retailers can bring back a decent percentage of their lost sales.
Cart abandonment email conversion rates
Source: BarillianceOpens a new window
Learn more: 6 Best Practices To Create Highly Effective Exit Intent Pop-ups
Here are a few cart abandonment email best practices.
- Get your email timing right. Do not wait for too long to send an email as customers may have forgotten you by that time
- Use a subject line that converts. You can offer discounts and deals in the subject line to compel customers to complete their purchase. Check out this subject line from Chubbies
Attractive subject line from Chubbies
Source: OptinMonsterOpens a new window
- Include the product image in the email to remind customers what they were shopping. Here is an example of how ASOS does it
Product image in cart abandonment email
Source: OptinMonsterOpens a new window
- Add a clear call to action (CTA)
- Offer assistance and guidance with the cart abandonment email
3. Email Is The Best Tool for Your Promotions
You can make the best use of emails to send promotion-related communications such as deals and offers to your existing customers, subscribers, and potential customers regularly. You can also use emails to invite subscribers to attend various holiday events and participate in contests. Businesses can also use emails effectively to share promotional content such as gifting ideas or a recipe handbook. If the deals extend over several days, you can send emails to communicate the deals of the day. The possibilities are endless for businesses with emails. By using emails effectively, you can stimulate engagement and sales.
Here are a few ways you can improve your promotional emails.
- Use images, color, and themes as per the holiday to grab the attention of your audience
- Highlight your offers such as a discount or a gift in the subject line to improve open rates
- Send an email with a pre-sale announcement. They are useful for generating hype around your products
- Share gifting guides for holidays such as Christmas and Boxing Day. It is a way to showcase your products in front of your customers
- Mention offer and free shipping (if any) deadlines clearly. Customers can plan their shopping if they know the deadlines
4. It Is a Great Companion for Mobile
Research shows that mobile commerce has gained much importance in the last few years. During the 2020 shopping season alone, the total mobile commerce revenue is expected to touch $71.3 billion in the U.S. alone, a growth of 20% over 2019. These numbers show that shoppers are increasingly using their smartphones to make purchases during the holiday season.
Growth of mobile commerce during the holiday season
Source: ForbesOpens a new window
Shoppers use their mobile devices for shopping and to gain information about products and services. Another researchOpens a new window by Emailmonday shows that mobile email will account for 26-78% of email opens in 2020. Hence, creating a mobile-friendly email can help you improve your conversion rates during the holiday season.
Here are a few ways to create mobile-friendly emails:
- Use responsive email templates
- Use shorter subject lines. While a desktop inbox displays 60 title characters, mobile devices display about 33-43 characters depending on the email client. Hence, keep the subject line below 40 characters. Here is an example
Difference between a long and short subject line
Source: Campaign MonitorOpens a new window
- Format your content to be mobile-friendly
- Make the linked text larger to make it easier to click on them. Also, set it apart from the remaining text. Here is an example of a bigger CTA button for a mobile device
Bigger buttons for a mobile device
Source:Â Clever TapOpens a new window
- Test your emails on your mobile screen
- Use analytics data to see how your emails perform on mobile devices and optimize them accordingly
5. Emails Allow You To Showcase Your Cause
Holidays and the shopping season are good times to tie your marketing campaign with a social cause you stand for, such as supporting the needy or saving the trees. For example, Patagonia’s campaigns support the brand’s environmental vows. As such, the brand donated all the profitsOpens a new window made during the 2016 Black Friday to environmental NGOs. Email is a creative and reliable way to inform your customers of what you stand for. An email is a powerful tool that allows you to share a story around a particular cause, creating a better emotional connection with your customers and improving their buy-in while improving sales.
Learn more: 5 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices You Can’t Afford to Miss
Here are a few ways you can incorporate cause marketing in your holiday marketing campaign:
- Use a banner image that showcases the cause
- Showcase in your email content how your customers can be part of your cause by buying a product
- Send periodic emails to show how your customers have made a difference to your cause by making the purchase
- Ask your customers to share their purchase with others so that more people can support your cause
- Make sure that you reinforce how a customer completing the purchase will help your cause in your cart abandonment emails
Wrap Up
Emails have a significant role to play in connecting with your brand audience, telling powerful stories, nurturing your leads, and improving conversions. Naturally, marketers consider it one of the best marketing channels. Hence, if you want to get to your target customers’ radar and improve sales this holiday season, email marketing is one channel you should invest in.
What other reasons do you think you should use email marketing during this holiday season? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .