Winning Christmas Campaign Strategies to Increase Revenue
Christmas Cross-Sells
Cross-selling is a useful technique for any E-Commerce site, and that’s most definitely the case at Christmas. Think about it: if your customer orders something that’s obviously a present or is obviously for decorating their house in the festive spirit, then you know exactly what else they’re likely to want. Use this opportunity to push decorations: Christmas lights, baubles, dancing snowmen or whatever else you sell. Make sure that you update your transaction emails to favour Christmas gifts and deccies.
…But It’s Not All About Sales
Sometimes a simple ‘Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays’ on an E-Shot or banner can work wonders. Even though Christmas is a great time to increase your sales revenue, it’s not always about making the sale. Christmas is a perfect time to enhance your image, expand awareness of your brand, and show how you reward your customers’ loyalty. So set up your template to include a Christmas banner, or some fake snow piled around the edges of your newsletter!
Bonus Points for Puns
Everyone loves a great Christmas pun; clever Christmas copy is one of the most effective way to generate a buzz around your brand. Remember to keep it in keeping with your brand identity, and if it’s not too daunting, give a pun a go… It all depends on what you sell. How about some elf-help books?
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Flash sales and limited availability offers are often the best way to turn vague interest into a completed check out. The options are endless, you can run promotions on particular products or run your sales from anywhere from 1 hour to the weekend. Provide E-Shots of the exciting items that can be snapped up in your emails which will only take a second to look over. Other innovative ideas include creating 12 Days of Christmas campaigns to put your customers in the festive spirit.
Last Chance
One of the most successful emails in your automated email series will be ‘Last Chance for Express Shipping’. You can catch your readers when they are checking through their inboxes in last-minute panic buying mode. Letting your customers know the last order time is not only an effective way of ensuring your customers aren’t disappointed when they don’t receive their items in time for Christmas it also creates a sense of urgency in placing their order.
Reward Loyalty
As Christmas is a time for giving, show your loyal customers how much you appreciate their custom, reward your most loyal customers with exclusive first access to sales and first looks to exciting new products. Use your customer data to see who’s bought the most this year, or who’s spent the most on your site, and send out a mass email to the top 10% to reward them!
Get the Timing Right
Getting the timing right is crucial to the success of your Christmas email marketing strategy. If you start firing off emails before Halloween is over, this might not go down too well for your recipients who don’t get into the Christmas spirit before they’ve even brought in their pumpkins.
On the flip side are businesses who leave it way too late to get their mailing lists excited by their Christmas offers, gift ideas and countdown to final deliveries. From the first of December it’s definitely fair game to excite your customers about your business on the run up to Christmas. In fact, it has been found that the most engaging Christmas campaigns are in the 5 days before Christmas – so make sure to change your service email schedule before it’s too late!
That being said, avoid sending emails on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. People have better things to do than be in their inbox on Christmas Day—the average engagement rate drops by a staggering 72% from December 23rd.
Keep In Touch
After you’ve sent your first automated email, you’ll have to ensure you’re keeping in continuous contact with your customers. Keep your products fresh in their minds while they search for last minute gifts by sending them regular updates on deals and just-in products. Emails like these are going to be especially useful if you aim them at regular customers, but use your CRM software to find out who hasn’t been buying from you lately, and send some tailored emails to them too: ask them if they’re struggling for gift ideas, and suggest some.
Don’t Forget to Test
A/B Email testing has been proved as one of the most beneficial tools to email marketers looking to perfect their marketing strategies. As consumer behaviour shifts drastically on the run up to Christmas, pinpointing what works against what doesn’t straight away is vital to the success of your campaign. You can play around with variables such as subject lines, personalisation, sender name, time sent, day sent… The options are endless.
Christmas Email Automation Stream Checklist
- Have a clear plan for your campaign starting from Black Friday to New Year’s Day.
- Use segmentation to ensure your emails are as relevant to each recipient as possible.
- Update your brands image for the holidays, and show your customers you’re in the festive spirit.
- Use A/B Testing to play around with the different variables in your Emails prior to starting the campaign.
- Schedule your automated emails for times your audience is likely to open them.
Christmas is probably the best time of year to up your marketing game: everyone’s looking to grab a bargain and do some last minute shopping, more so than any other time of year. And with automated marketing techniques, you can do even better than you would otherwise. So if you haven’t given CRM a go yet, make this Christmas your first time!