The holiday season is just around the corner. While it’s a time for family, friends, joy and celebration, it’s also a time where consumers spend a lot of money. Between gifts, decorations, food and travel, the holidays add up. In fact, the average American spent over $1,000 during the 2018 winter holidays.

If you don’t have a plan in place for engaging customers during one of the highest-spending times of year, you’re missing out on a huge revenue opportunity. Email is an easy way to reach potential customers, raise awareness and push purchases.

Fortunately, there’s still time to get an email campaign strategy in place—and we’re here to help.

Preparing for the Holiday Season with Impactful Emails

Make sure to incorporate these essential elements into your holiday email campaigns:

1. Segmentation

Every person has different items on their holiday wish list. On top of that, they have high expectations from brands and little patience when finding the products they want. Segmenting your audience using data you have across channels and devices－demographics, interests, purchase history and online behavior－allows you to provide more targeted communication with members of your email audience and relevant product and promotional content they need to take further action. Ultimately, segmentation is the catalyst for personalization.

2. Personalization

Speaking of which, personalization is crucial for engaging consumers during the holidays. Overwhelmingly, 90% of marketers working to create a personalized experience report a measurable lift in results. Segmentation is a start, but leveraging the customer data in your arsenal, you can add another layer of personalization with dynamic content.

Dynamic content refers to email content (i.e. images, featured products, recommendations) that is dynamically generated based on user preferences and behavior. When subscribers feel that you understand them and are offering value, they are more likely to engage and stay loyal to your brand.

3. Automation

Let’s say a site visitor browses a product page on your site, adds the item to their cart, but never checks out. Imagine being able to send them the right message at the right time to get them to purchase. With triggered emails, this is possible! Send the visitor an email within an hour, while you are still top of mind, reminding them to check out. Automated emails can be established and sent based on various criteria.

As part of your email optimization strategy, set emails to automatically send to individual subscribers at the time they are most likely to open and read emails in their inbox. Your ESP should have this capability built in.

4. Fun

Finally, the holiday season is all about happiness, so your emails should fit the occasion! Use light tones and language, exciting imagery and other content that associates your brand with the cheer of the season. Just don’t forget to view these email campaigns at the same level of seriousness as any other, taking your audience and goals into account to persuade them to purchase.

Emails are the gift that keeps on giving for businesses looking to boost awareness and revenue during the holidays. When strategized properly, you will see great success and have something to celebrate come the new year!

Want to learn more? Check out additional tips for impactful seasonal emails.

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