6 Ways to Crush Your Fall & Winter Holiday Email Campaigns

As Starbucks has shown with the early debut of their Pumpkin Spice lattes this year (in August!), it’s never too soon to get ready for Fall. That’s especially true when it comes to prepping your email campaigns for the holiday buying season.

 

New data from Omnisend based on over 100,000 email campaigns sent by more than 7,000 brands yields some great insight on this topic. My top takeaways from their report include:

 

• Get Ready to Bring Your “A Game” -  Most brands will be targeting customers and prospects during the early holiday buying season and special shopping days such as Black Friday (11/23) and Cyber Monday (11/26). The Omnisend data verifies this: November is when most email campaigns are sent, although November open rates are also among the lowest of the year (15.7%) while click rates are, relatively speaking, pretty good at 3.2%. That means, in a crowded field, email marketers will need to bring their “A games,” be creative and unique, and offer real, significant value to stand out as attention spans become immersed in offers.

 

• Be First Out of the Blocks - According to the report, the absolute best day for open and click rates is the first of the month. As a result, email marketers should be ready out the gate with a compelling offer. Not surprisingly, the lower email open and click dates fall near the end of the month, as busy, overwhelmed professionals and consumers struggle to get through their monthly to-do lists.

 

• Think in Terms of Three - Email marketing is rarely a one and done effort. In fact, it often takes multiple emails to reach and hear back from prospects. The Omnisend report shows that sending a series of three emails can lead to 90% more orders, compared to single emails. My takeaway: consider planning your Fall campaigns in threes, keeping the primary offer(s) the same but changing up the subject lines, copy and sense of urgency.

 

• Don’t Be Afraid to Ask - While keeping your prospects’ needs front and center, it’s OK to collect some information in exchange for what you plan to offer. The Omnisend data says marketers can achieve higher conversion rates – 10% on average – if they ask for three pieces of information on their sign-up forms. By collecting the ideal pieces of information for you to best segment your customers, you’ll be able to craft highly targeted messages and generate greater engagement as a result.

 

• Automate Wherever Possible - I’m a big fan of automated emails. They can be easy to set up and can deliver fantastic results -- much higher than standard email messages. The report data verifies this: automated emails generate 309% higher opens and 455% better click rates than standard bulk newsletter campaigns. Automated order confirmations have the highest open (64.4%) and click rates (18.1), while automated cart recovery messages deliver the best order rate (2.4%). A few ways to use automated messages include to cross-sell your other products and services, to offer additional assistance to your prospects, or to push a special promotion to your satisfied customers to refer their friends and family members.

 

• Win Black Friday - Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer unique opportunities for email marketers. The Omnisend data shows email results spike at these times: automation on Black Friday is even better than at other times of the year for customer reactivation click rates (1.9%) and were shown in the report to bring in 106% more orders. That’s impressive! These popular sales dates are so important for many email marketers – even in the B2B world -- that they often warrant their own dedicated campaign strategies unto themselves.

 

It’s no secret that the Q4 holidays represent a crucial time for most email marketers. They can have a powerful impact on a brand’s ability to hit important revenue generation goals. For those marketers who see the final quarter as “the most wonderful time of the year,” planning ahead and getting ready early is essential. How about you – are your holiday email campaigns ready to go?

 

Outward Media’s accurate, targeted email data can enable you to achieve better email marketing ROI by targeting your best prospects – including top-level executives -- and, ultimately, converting more prospects into customers. Take a look at our case studies to find out more