Last-Minute Ideas for Holiday Email Marketing

It always has been a challenge to be all set for the holiday season, especially for email marketers. The brick-and-mortar setups are easily prepped, but what about your online efforts? Given the current scenario across the globe, email marketing is the brightest ray of hope for your holiday sales.

The biggest advantage of email marketing is its adaptability. No matter if you cater directly to end customers, or deal with other businesses, or even run a nonprofit organization, you can always reap benefits from a well-crafted email marketing campaign even if you are late to the party. Today, we’ll learn all things important about sending last-minute emails before the year ends. So, let’s get the party started.

Business-to-Consumer

The holiday season is probably the best time in a year to get that much-needed consumer attention. A well-planned email would make your brand stand amongst others and would eventually benefit the sales process in the long run.

Here are three ideas for businesses that cater to consumers:

Sale

A sale is the best thing that could happen to anyone in the holiday season. As a business owner, you need to narrow down a day (or some special days) for offering exclusive deals to your customers during the holiday season. For this, you can shoot emails consisting of a coupon that your customers can redeem in-store or online. If your plan is to have ‘daily’ or ‘weekly specials’ deals, you can leverage your email list to promote them.

Free shipping

If you are into e-commerce or let your consumers order over the phone, you can lure customers by sending them emails about the free shipping offer for the holiday season. You can also shoot emails to remind the customers about the upcoming shipping deadlines so as to make them place the order soon.

As per a report, “More than 60% of consumers who abandoned their carts did so because of shipping costs.” Here’s the perfect email template example of how you can join the free shipping bandwagon by shooting emails such as the one mentioned below.

Giveaways

It’s holiday time, and what could be a better way to celebrate than to reward your most loyal customers. At the same time, you would also be generating sales during the holidays. Promote a giveaway through email marketing and let the word spread.

Getting professional services on board like Mailchimp specialist or Marketo certified expert would definitely help you chalk out an impeccable email strategy, even if it’s at the last moment.

Business-to-Business

The holiday season is all about strengthening your bonds, so why not use your emails to do so? Even if you are not into an end-customer-facing business, you can still connect with clients or leads that can support your business in the long run. Here are a few ways to do so:

Client appreciation

It’s always a good practice to appreciate your hard-earned clients, and it’s even better in the holiday season. You can express your gratitude towards them in a number of ways.

Discount

It’s not necessary that a business can offer discounts only to the end customers. Not necessarily discounts, but even in a B2B setup, you can offer a special holiday promotion to strike the right chord with your stakeholders while also meeting the sales targets. You can also use these emails to create the buzz around your brand if the market is about to step into a slower sales season.

Here’s how GoPro has beautifully clubbed the holiday theme with their discount offer. Having a discount is a good thing but having a discount presented nicely is a different thing altogether. See for yourself!

Previews

Holidays emails can also be used to create anticipation about your future business plans. Clients love sneak peeks into upcoming projects and deals. The holiday season is the right time to strike the right chord with them. The email can be about anything, be it new products or a service expansion. You can summarize the past year and reveal your plan for the new year.

Nonprofit

For nonprofit organizations, December is a crucial month. Email is a great way to connect to your supporters if you’re in the middle of your year-end fundraising planning or just want to be in touch with them before the holidays arrive. Here’s how you can do so:

Reminder

Accelerate your endeavors by sending a fundraising email to get more people on board. You must update them about your fundraising goals and inform them about the different options to get involved.

Thank you

Ending the year on a note of gratitude is a great way to thank all the contributors towards your success during the entire year. Shoot a  thank you email to every contact on your email list. You can even create a personalized message of gratitude if you are involved with a not-so-big group of people.

Remember, your note of gratitude might motivate someone to contribute more. Hence, it’s crucial to deliver the message in an impactful way, just like the below-mentioned email.

Wrapping Up

In a nutshell, the holiday season is all about reaching out to people and radiating positivity, especially in the current difficult times. So, irrespective of the segment you are in, just craft an email and spread smiles.