The holiday season is the best time for businesses to engage their intended audience and boost their revenue.
The holiday spirit often causes people to spend more and make quick purchase decisions, presenting an opportunity for brands to grow their sales.
This is the reason why we regularly see businesses launch different campaigns when the holiday season approaches and come up with tempting offers.
To convey the message to the intended audience, many leverage email marketing, as it’s an effective way to foster engagement.
However, creating an holiday email marketing sequence that generates promising results may be easier said than done, especially when it’s your first time doing it.
Here’s how you can create an email marketing sequence to engage your audience and boost sales during the holiday season:
Why Email Marketing?
Before we get started, let’s discuss what makes email marketing an efficient strategy to reach out to your audience during the holiday season.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to convey your message to the intended audience. A well-thought-out holiday email sequence has the potential to generate a return on investment of up to 4400%.
That’s why businesses around the globe use email marketing to engage their respective audiences and promote their solutions.
So, it’s a no-brainer that email marketing serves as an efficient tactic to push holiday campaigns during the season.
Types of Emails Sent During the Holiday Season
There are different types of emails that businesses may send during the holiday season. These emails may represent diverse use cases, but their goal is to foster engagement.
The following are the types of emails generally sent during the holiday season.
Promotional Emails
Most of us are familiar with this type. As said earlier, people are likely to spend more during the holiday season, and that serves as an opportunity for businesses to boost their revenue.
In fact, these emails are much-awaited by people, as they expect their favorite brands to come up with exclusive offers and discounts during the holiday season.
Most people just wait for the promotional offers in order to purchase things that they may need.
Therefore, if you plan it right, a promotional campaign during the holiday season has a high likelihood of helping you attract the right audience and grow your sales.
The email above serves as a great example of a promotional campaign that attracts people by offering them heavy discounts on the solutions available.
Retargeting Emails
This type of email is designed to engage people who are inches away from becoming your customers.
These people were considering the solutions you offered them, but due to some reasons, they changed their minds at the last moment and didn’t complete the purchase.
A common example of such email campaigns are abandoned cart emails sent by companies to potential customers who couldn’t complete the transaction.
To make these emails work, you have to find out what went wrong in the shopping experience of your potential customers and come up with the best-suited solution.
A common tactic used by most businesses here is offering a discount. It often acts as a push that many people may need to make a buying decision.
The above email serves as a really good example of a retargeting campaign where the company asks the recipients to take the solutions offered for a spin, highlighting the estimated worth of the offer.
Welcome Emails
Of all the emails you may send to your current or potential customers, welcome emails probably have the highest open rate.
It’s reported that 60% of recipients open welcome emails when they receive them. So, this email type represents a greater engagement likelihood.
Welcome emails are like a first handshake between you and your customers, paving the way for you to acknowledge lasting relationships.
Plus, they serve as a great way of reminding your audience that you will always be there for them at every phase of their journey and help them leverage the offered solutions to their fullest.
The email above serves as a great example here, as the company gives a warm welcome to its new customers. Plus, it guides them through a step-by-step process about how they can use the offered solution to its fullest.
Tips to Create a Holiday Email Sequence to Boost Sales
When it comes to creating a holiday email sequence that converts, there are a variety of things that you may want to consider. Here are a few recommendations that may help you generate more sales:
Offer Value
Offering discounts may be an effective tactic during the holiday season. However, that doesn’t mean that you should always offer price cuts to get positive results from your email campaigns.
To make your offer stand out from the competitors in your respective industry, sometimes all you have to do is offer value.
For example, you can offer your customers free shipping on the products they purchase from you during the holiday season.
Seeing an additional amount for shipping added to the total at the time of checkout can be a huge turn-off for many people, which may lead to cart abandonment.
So, letting people know via email that they can purchase from you without having to pay for shipping during the holiday season may help you score more conversions.
However, you can stick to the old school ways and send discount codes through email. It doesn’t matter which way you choose as long as you get the desired results.
You can also let your audience know about the variety of payment options you offer by showcasing different payment methods in your email.
Leverage Social Proof
Leveraging social proof or customer reviews may help you boost your conversions through email this holiday season.
People are often reluctant when it comes to trying products or services offered by new or unfamiliar brands.
In that case, users rely significantly on genuine customer feedback or insights to guide them in making informed decisions, whether selecting a vacation destination or investing in a significant item such as a new home.
This is one of the reasons why 99.9% of them seek reviews and recommendations from others before shopping online. Check out the example below on how Athletic Brewing is featuring customer reviews to engage their audience via email.
Showcasing the positive experiences of your customers in the emails you send may be a great way to give your audience a push that they may need to consider your offer.
Knowing about the positive experiences of others who have tried your solutions can be reassuring and give your potential customers the courage to try your products or services.
Create a Sense of Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency through your email is an effective way to grow your conversions during the holiday season.
This can be done with ease by mentioning the number of items left in stock. Doing this will not only create a sense of urgency but also help you showcase a high demand for your products or services.
So, in a way, you will be leveraging the fear of missing out, which may be an excellent catalyst to stimulate a buying decision.
You can also consider making your exclusive offers time-bound to create a sense of urgency and inspire a buying decision.
However, the strategy may backfire if you plan to restock the items almost immediately once they have sold out or continue offering the deals after the time runs out.
It may cause a breach of trust, and your audience may not take you seriously anymore.
So, always stay true to your word. Use the sense of urgency as a strategy, not a gimmick, to get what you want.
Be Mobile-Friendly
It’s less likely for people to sit behind their desktops during the holiday season. They will always be on the go, whether they’re on vacation or just hanging out with friends.
Therefore, ensuring that your email templates are mobile-responsive is probably the best move and may help you score more conversions during the holiday season.
Ideally, your email templates should be optimized with respect to different screen sizes in order to cater to the diverse device preferences of your target audience.
However, if that seems overwhelming, the least you can do is offer a hitch-free experience through mobile screens.
This not only applies to the design aspect but also to the copy of your email.
For example, if the character count of your subject line exceeds 30 characters, the rest of the text may not appear on mobile screens.
Around 47% of emails are opened because of attention-grabbing subject lines. So, it’d be wise not to risk a cutoff.
Furthermore, it’s best to avoid using heavy images in your emails, as they may compromise the load time of an email on a mobile device.
The size of the buttons in your email also matters. They should neither be too big nor too small—just the right size to make them easily clickable on mobile screens.
Also, you need to consider making your email copy properly stacked and avoid sending emails that require recipients to scroll endlessly.
Personalize Your Subject Lines
Personalizing the subject line of an email alone can boost your open rate by up to 26%.
So, it may be a great strategy to boost your sales, especially during the holiday season. You’re not the only one who will be sending emails to your recipients during the holiday season.
Their inboxes will be flooded by a variety of senders, including your competitors.
So, to make your emails stand out and catch the eye of your recipients, personalizing the email’s subject line is probably your best bet.
Email subject lines are the first thing recipients see when they receive a notification or are checking their mailbox.
So, personalizing them may go a long way and help you engage the intended audience through your holiday email sequence.
Be Creative
Using tried-and-tested methods to grab your recipients’ attention may be great. But don’t let that stop you from being creative and conducting new experiments.
The holiday season may be the best time to spice things up a bit and set you apart from other brands.
Whether it’s the copy of your email or your subject line, you can try creative ways to make things work and see if you generate better results.
Adding humor to your email copy may be an excellent tactic to grab the attention of your recipients.
Plus, you can also experiment with your subject lines by making them witty or adding festive emojis as per the occasion.
You can also consider using a conversational tone compared to a formal one to be relatable or surprise your recipients by adding interactive content to your emails.
There may be a number of ways that you may consider. So, try thinking outside the box this holiday season and see if it works for you.
To the Right People at the Right Time
Sending your messages to the right people and selecting the right time to dispatch them play a vital role in ensuring the success of your email campaign during the holiday season.
Knowing your recipients makes it possible for you to tailor your message as per their preferences. This has a strong impact on the email open rate, which eventually translates into more conversions.
Plus, being acquainted with the behavior of your potential customers allows you to come up with personalized offers that are likely to foster more engagement.
Another thing that you need to carefully consider is the timing of sending emails to your recipients.
Your goal is to engage your target audience during the holiday season. And this time of the day is when most people plan their vacations.
It’s not like they’d be away from their phones for good, but the probability of them checking their emails is quite low.
Therefore, it’s important that you schedule your emails smartly to increase the chance of your recipients reading them.
The ideal time for you to dispatch your emails may vary based on your audience characteristics or the holiday season.
For example, for some, targeting late-night shoppers or people who use their phones during late hours may be a viable strategy. However, it may not work for everyone.
But, using the information about your target audience and insights from your previous holiday email campaigns, you can come up with a promising email delivery schedule.
Final Words
The holiday season is the best time to capture quality leads for your sales funnel or boost your sales.
During the season, people are more willing to spend and purchase from their preferred brands compared to the rest of the year. This gives you an opportunity to amplify your revenue and reap more from your efforts.
Of all the ways you can reach out to your target audience, email marketing is possibly the most efficient and cost-effective. So, leveraging it to generate traction and engage the intended audience may be a viable strategy.
If this is your first time creating an email sequence to engage your audience during the holiday season, or if you want to improve your campaign’s performance, the recommendations in this article may come in handy.
