Holiday Email Marketing Strategies

I spent Sunday afternoon at a local apple orchard in Bellingham with my family. The smell of apples, cider and caramel reminded me instantly that Autumn has arrived. As someone involved in marketing and email, the smell also reminded me that it’s time for holiday email marketing campaigns.

My daughter Aoife at the pumpkin patch

Christmas is 101 days away, but holiday email marketing campaigns are well underway.

If you want to run an effective holiday email campaign, it’s time to start now. Holiday email campaigns are not defined by a company sending out a single special offer email in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Effective holiday email campaigns involve months of planning, preparation and implementation. A holiday email campaign is built around a series of messages using multiple channels to communicate your holiday story to your customers and potential customers.  Chad White writes about the 18 Phases of Christmas:

“…The first salvo of holiday email marketing has already been fired, with 8% of major online retailers having already mentioned the holidays in their email campaigns. While most of those were running “Christmas in July” campaigns, a few were just getting in early references to be top of mind later in the season. August is traditionally a non-event for holiday marketing, but September will mark the beginning of a continued effort to win holiday sales that will continue into January.

As discussed in the recently released Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season, holiday messaging goes through 18 phases…” keep reading

A comprehensive holiday marketing strategy will leverage Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years themes. It will respond to the season as it unfolds and offer the following things repetitively – excellent value, easy ordering and timely and accurate fulfillment.

My wife and I have already begun our holiday shopping. Here’s what we look for (in no particular order):

1. Low prices
2. Free shipping/delivery
3. Unique items
4. Good customer service
5. Special offers
6. Local products
7. Green/non-toxic/environmentally friendly products
8. Customer feedback/reviews

What do you look for?

Of course, the most important part is being visible. You are competing with so many products and services that will be stuffing inboxes like Christmas stockings during the holidays. What makes yours stand out?