The Gist
- Email relationships. Previous engagement boosts holiday email performance, increasing subscriber interaction and revenue during Cyber 5.
- Social proof. Highlighting top search terms and popular products in holiday emails can inspire and guide subscriber purchases effectively.
- Clear messaging. Simplify holiday email content with clear, direct messaging and seasonal imagery to capture hurried subscribers’ attention.
Everyone wants to have their seasonal email strategies stand out during the Thanksgiving-to-Cyber Monday time period, called Cyber 5. And for good reason. Based on an examination of email campaign performance among retailers and ecommerce brands using Oracle Responsys, campaigns sent during the Cyber 5 weekend routinely generate the highest revenue per email for the whole year — by far.
However, marketing emails aren’t ads. They’re not about shouting the loudest, flashing the brightest colours or being the most sensational or shocking. They’re also not about abusing trust with misleading or vague copy.
There are two components in the battle for holiday email marketing attention.
Seasonal Email Strategies: Half the Battle for Attention
The truth is that the battle for attention during the Cyber 5 is already half won long before your Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaign arrives in inboxes. That’s because seasonal email strategies are relationships, so previous engagement has a major impact on future engagement. If your email program delivers value to lots of subscribers during August and September, then they’re much more likely to engage during the holiday season. And the more frequent and substantial that engagement is, the better off you’re likely to be.
ZeroBounce research recently confirmed this, finding that 47% of people say they open a brand email not because of the subject line, but because that brand always sends them good emails.
In my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I call this the zero stage of an email interaction. This is why sender names are more powerful than any subject line you can come up with. Your sender name brings to the surface all of your subscriber’s feelings about their recent interactions with your brand. If those feelings are positive, it leads to positive results.
The Other Half of the Battle
The rest of the battle is about your seasonal email strategies themselves. But here, brands sometimes have misconceptions, in part because subscribers behave differently during the holiday season. Consumers have different goals than the rest of the year, and they’re also generally much more pressed for time in the inbox, in part because they’re receiving more campaigns.
Here are some tactics to dial up and to dial back on during the holiday season to maximize performance.
Dial Back Personalization
Personalization is perennially among the top email marketing trends. And new opportunities that are fuelled by customer data platforms and advanced AI are likely to keep it at the top of marketers’ to-do lists for years to come.
However, during the holiday season, subscribers are (mostly) shopping for others, so the zero- and first-party data you’ve been collecting all year isn’t likely to be very useful for tailoring messages.
Dial up Social Proof
Instead of focusing on what each subscriber did months ago, focus on what your customers are doing collectively now. In your email campaigns, highlight:
- Top site search terms, so subscribers can understand and be inspired by what others are looking for.
- Most browsed product categories, which encourage subscribers to explore categories they haven’t shopped recently or ever.
- Most social buzz, such as likes on Instagram or pins on Pinterest.
- Most purchased products, which is probably the ultimate barometer of popularity.
Dial back Interactivity
Interactive emails bring common web experiences into the inbox, enabling product carousels, tabbed interfaces, hotspots and more. However, interactivity typically isn’t worthwhile during the holiday season because subscribers are in such a hurry. It’s also tough to do because it increases production times when marketers are creating more campaigns than ever.
Dial up Clarity
Even more than usual, clear and simple wins during the holiday season, because people are in such a hurry. Front load your subject lines with the most important words, and pay extra attention to your message hierarchy, ensuring your most important message points stand out from your less important ones. Especially if you’re promoting a strong offer (and I hope you have plenty of those), you don’t want to undermine it by having cluttered messaging or an overly busy design.
Dial up Scarcity
When something is in low supply or likely to sell out, let subscribers know. If you’re able to include real-time inventory numbers for the products featured in your emails using live content, that can be powerful.
But don’t fake it. Your most loyal customers will see that you’re lying to them if you perpetually claim something will sell out and it doesn’t or, worse, you’re faking real-time inventory numbers by manually including them. And it’s your most loyal customers that you can’t afford to offend.
Dial up Seasonal Imagery & Content
Let your subscribers know you’re in the holiday spirit and hope they are, too. Consider:
- Adding holiday imagery to your header, including snowflakes, holly leaves or sparkles.
- Add a “Holiday” or “Gifts” link to your navigation bar.
- Add a gift services footer that highlights gift guides, gift return policies, gift wrapping options, order-by deadlines and other important holiday details and policies.
Dial up Automation
Triggered campaigns are likely the silent heroes of your holiday season. They’re quietly rescuing abandoned carts, following up on product category interest, notifying customers of back-in-stocks, welcoming seasonal subscribers and more. And their ROIs are through the roof.
Before the holiday season arrives, have a plan to ensure your triggered emails perform their best. If nothing else, make time to review and QA your automations, checking for out-of-date language, broken images and broken links. But also, consider adding seasonal imagery and content blocks to these emails, just like you would to your broadcast promotional emails.
The Big Picture
If you’re anything like our retail and ecommerce clients, you’re already well on your way to planning your seasonal email strategies, including your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails.
But as you do that, recognize that the email experiences you create and the value you deliver to subscribers over the next couple of months will have a big impact on how your seasonal email strategies perform.
By Chad S. White
Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Digital Experience Agency, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.
