The end of the year is shortly approaching and with revenue goals needing to be met, the fastest and most efficient way to make those extra sales is by sending out emails. This isn’t a secret anymore as your inbox sees an increase in emails during the holiday season. With many companies trying to push that last sale and gift guides, how do you make your emails standout?
As the Director of Retention Marketing at Acadia, I work with our clients to make sure we are sending the right message at the right time. Here are my top tips to help you cut through the noise this holiday season.
1. Don’t forget the Preview Text
Of course the subject line is important, but don’t forget about the valuable real estate with the preview text. In mobile, this becomes particularly important. The last thing you’d want is to miss out on including copy that would help encourage your subscribers to open your email. What messaging is important to include? Discounts, deadlines, sales or product details, or any extra info you’d like the subscriber to be informed about.
2. Consider Frequency & Segmentation
It’s fine to send an email out every day, but this doesn’t mean that everyone on your email list should receive an email every day. You don’t want your subscribers to be overwhelmed by the volume of emails and then unsubscribe. This is where segmentation is key for the holidays.
For example, if you are sending out an email about Dog Sweaters, it might make sense to create segments to include and exclude in the email. You want to make sure that dog customers and those who might be interested in receiving products about dogs are receiving your email. But if someone has been actively buying and looking at cat products on your site and then receives an email about dog products, they might be turned off by your email messaging and feel like your company is out of touch.
3. Improve Deliverability
If you are going to send an email to your entire list (especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday), we would recommend being very mindful about deliverability. Since many other companies will be sending out emails, if the email provider is seeing a higher rate of unsubscribes and emails not being opened by your email domain, you risk being put in the spam folder, which is the last thing you want during the holidays. We recommend segmenting out your email list to make sure the most active subscribers are receiving your email first, that way the email provider recognizes the email engagement and increases your chance of the next email making it to the inbox. Below is an example of the segments