Quick tips for making the most of your December campaigns...
Send a card
Completely free of sales messages, a Christmas or Happy Holidays card sent by email is a valuable brand building exercise, and may actually still generate revenue. You could:
- promote your green credentials and corporate social responsibility by using email rather than paper cards, and making a donation to a relevant charity.
- send this also to contacts who have not expressly given permission for marketing messages as it's a sales-free message (though you'll want to think through the implications carefully first).
Send an incentive
This holiday season is shaping up to be more competitive than ever, with price wars breaking out all over the retail space. Offering an incentive may be an effective way to clinch that sale. To make sure your incentives work for you:
- encourage purchases of products that are harder to shift, where there is more competition.
- incentivise purchasing at times when capacity is generally lower.
- promote additional purchases and offer discounts or free delivery on bulk orders.
Send at the right time
Most consumers will receive more marketing messages in December than at any time of the year. However, just because you're not in the office doesn't mean your messages can't land in your subscribers inboxes, ready to nudge a purchase:
- get as much detail into your subject lines as possible to make your message stand out and appeal to as many subscribers as possible.
- consider time-sensitive offers and messages, such as "Order today for guaranteed Christmas delivery".
- schedule your messages for December 25th or 26th - last year £102 million was spent online on December 25th and with many sales timed to start on Boxing Day, Hitwise frequently reports spikes on December 26th. You may not be in the office then, but your messages can still be deployed on those days to bypass the search environment and link your existing customers directly to your site.
- Don't forget the New Year period - many office workers at work between Christmas and New Year and/or in early January have a bit more time on their hands to browse and read online. Take the "New Year - New You" concept and apply it creatively to make your content stand out from similar messages - so long as you offer value, your communications are likely to be well received.
Happy Christmas or Happy Holidays?
Every year we hear the same arguments about whether it's politically correct to wish people a Happy Christmas. On the one hand, there are those who bemoan the decline of organised religion; on the other there are those who want to see messages that include people of all faiths and none.
What no one argues about is that for people of all creeds and cultures, this time of the year counts as a special season that's different from any other month. Along with all the religious events, schoolchildren are on holidays, many offices close down completely, and there's always a huge uplift in retail activity and sales promotions.
Commercially, it's a completely different market that requires a different approach regardless of any religious beliefs. Because your job is to reach as many of your subscribers as possible, we suggest addressing them in as inclusive a way as possible.
So while we thought that "non-religion-specific celebration of the winter solstice holiday" was going a bit far, this email focuses on the phrase "holiday season" - the preferred wording in the US and increasingly prevalent in the UK too.
