It’s that time of the year when inboxes are inundated with holiday marketing campaigns, making it even harder to stand out in the crowd and inspire customers to act on your offers. Before you hit the send button on those holiday email campaigns, here are tips to make the most of your efforts this holiday season.
Analyze past performance but don’t assume what worked last year will work this year.
It’s easy and tempting to dust off last year’s successful campaigns and simply change the date and a few words. Yet just because a campaign worked in previous years doesn’t mean it will necessarily be successful this year. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for consistency and ROI when a specific approach has been proven to work. It’s not always easy to know which campaigns will hit the right notes this year, despite applying sophisticated analytics to your audience segments. To help you figure it out, here are two questions to ask yourself before you repurpose your existing holiday campaign.
Is the campaign consistently delivering a high ROI? Some campaigns have become an annual tradition that customers look forward to receiving while others haven’t aged as well and have become tired or cliché. As you analyze past performance, dig deeper into your audience analytics to determine if you’re effectively expanding your reach to your target buyers. Additionally, look for year over year trends in engagement, open rates, shares, and conversions.
What are the primary marketing channels that customers prefer to hear from you? It wasn’t that long ago that Snapchat was the top way to reach your audience. These days, it might be Instagram stories or customers might prefer that you reach them directly in their inbox. As you execute cross-channel promotions, make sure you understand if there’s been a shift in the way your customers consume information or want to hear from you. Then make sure your campaign is optimized for the customer’s preferred channels of engagement.
Know what currently triggers spam filters.
As most digital marketers know, single phrases and key words no longer relegate a message to the spam folder. Yet spam filters are getting more sophisticated. With this mind, here’s a list of five most common triggers for spam filters today.
- If the message resembles current or known phishing scams.
- Hushbusters: These blocks of text, which are sometimes invisible to recipients, are often used in the mail structure itself in an attempt to deceive the filters.
- Hiding text in HTML comments or by using fonts, colors or backgrounds to reduce their visibility.
- Incorrect or suspicious code.
- A skewed image to text ratio.
Confirm you and your agency are complying with GDPR requirements.
When GDPR first took effect, consumers inboxes were flooded with requests from businesses to confirm they still had permission to email them. The volume of requests wasn’t easy for customers to keep up with, therefore leaving gaps in contact lists. These gaps are potentially missed opportunities for marketers during the highly lucrative holiday shopping season. This is why it’s critical to cross-check your subscriber lists for GDPR compliance, identify any customers that have not responded and reach out to confirm their opt-in status. As part of your GDPR due diligence, make sure your agencies are also following the regulations or your business could be held accountable.
Write click-worthy content.
When customers are looking at their unread email, they’re going to quickly delete anything that isn’t timely, relevant, compelling, succinct, or personalized. And when you consider that most email is read on a mobile device, you better be sure that your subject line and summary sentence will prompt them to take action. Here are three ways to do this.
Avoid a “click bait-y” writing style. Sensational teaser headlines have become cliché and can alienate your audience. Instead, write concise, direct messages in the active tense that include action words.
Make the most of pre-headers. Typically, pre-headers only have a link to the online version of the message. This is helpful since some providers may automatically block the link. Since that small space next to your subject line is valuable real estate, use it to expand on the subject line or illustrate a campaign benefit though the pre-header shouldn’t steal attention from your subject line. Instead, use it to complement it by mentioning your offer.
Simplify your call to action (CTA). Make your customers’ decision to take you up on your offer easy by creating a CTA that is:
- Personalized: using the recipient’s personal or company name.
- Eye catching: use contrasting colors so the button stands out.
- Balanced: the size of the button and the white space around it should be easily clicked, especially on mobile.
- Attention grabbing: Use GIFs.
- Original: Write creative copy that replaces the standard “buy now” or “download” language with fresh content.
It’s easy for messages to get lost in the crowd and yet so simple to take the right steps before you launch a campaign to boost its chances of success. Apply these recommendations and you’ll see your results soar.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Courtenay Worcester
Director of Marketing, GetResponse
Courtenay is a one-person functionality when it comes to handling and heading the marketing team of GetResponse. She insures customer success through her strategic planning and marketing probes. Prior to starting out in GetResponse, she has worked as a Event Marketing manager with Seismic software.