Article: Six Steps to Holiday Success
by Ross Kramer
Published on Shop.org
The National Retail Federation is predicting a 2.8% increase in sales this holiday season, meaning retailers will rake in $465.6 billion in the fourth quarter. We all know that last year broke every sales record out there so retailers should prepare for another busy year.
Preparing in advance is the key component to a successful holiday season. But you must remain flexible to adapt quickly. And nothing provides greater flexibility than email.
Email drives sales. Period. It might not be as sexy as social marketing or as exciting as mobile, but it is the real workhorse that gets shoppers visiting your website and buying your products. Email is still the ROI champ with an average return of $42.08 for every dollar spent, which is nearly double the ROI of search marketing – the next highest returning channel.
This holiday season fine tune your email strategy to capture more sales and revenue. Here are six steps you can follow to increase your holiday sales.
Step 1 - Review
As you plan your holiday email campaigns, take some time to review last year’s holiday strategy and results, your triggered campaigns, and your current processes. Doing so will not only help you identify what worked (and what didn’t), but you’ll have the opportunity to update the creative on your triggered campaigns to make them more seasonal. After all, your welcome messages and shopping cart abandonment campaigns have the highest open, click, and conversion rates; but, because they are automated, it could be easy to overlook them during your busiest time of year.
Also, review your bounce and unsubscribe lists and, if needed, use an email change of address and email append service to update your lists. The more engaged customers you have on your lists, the more
you’ll sell.
Step 2 – Acquisition
Finding engaged subscribers is the real secret to increasing sales. Statistically speaking the more customers on your lists, the more you’ll sell. But we all know batching and blasting emails to every subscriber is not the answer. We’re talking about sending relevant and engaging campaigns that deliver what each customer needs and expects. But, to do that effectively you need email addresses and preferences of your target audience.
A sweepstakes focused on acquisition is the fastest and easiest way you can grow your list with the right kind of subscribers. The key is to give away your own merchandise as prizes. While you might get more entrants if you give away cash, you’ll attract people who are actually interested in your brand and more likely to become a customer if you give away your own merchandise.
Some of the largest online retailers run several sweepstakes a year, so follow their leads. Entrants can sign up on their websites, in-store, through social channels and online ads, etc. The entry forms allow people to receive a second entry if they forward the contest to their friends to enter, adding a viral component to the campaign.
Be sure to include a notice letting entrants know that they will receive ongoing email communications from you, and give them a way to opt-out of the deployments up front. Upon subscription, send a welcome message that links to your preference center. This will work two-fold as it will validate email addresses to protect your deliverability and it will give new subscribers the opportunity to customize the messages they receive to increase the relevancy of the campaigns. The sooner you begin acquiring new subscribers, the better off you’ll be!
Step 3 – Put a Strategy in Place
Planning in advance is key to a successful holiday season. Don’t wing it. You know that there are several days that you simply must send campaigns – Black Friday and Saturday, Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day, etc., so start there. Then, decide on your holiday campaigns – are you going to run a 12 Days of Christmas campaign, sale of the day/week, shipping countdown, all of the above? Are you planning to resend emails to non-openers to maximize campaign ROI? Do your campaigns coincide with social and mobile campaigns and in-store events? Knowing what types of campaigns you want to send will help you determine your deployment schedule and will give you the opportunity to let subscribers opt-in to receive the special holiday campaigns. That way, they can opt-down instead of completely opting-out of your lists if they’re receiving too many messages.
Step 4 – Create Templates, Campaigns and Deployment Schedules
One of the best ways to get a jump start on your holiday email campaigns is to pre-design templates. It will help you keep your email campaigns consistent, and you can reuse the templates throughout the holiday season – decreasing the time needed to create campaigns. Creating the templates in advance gives you the ability to create and schedule your campaigns for deployment, while still providing the flexibility to quickly make changes when necessary.
Step 5 – Monitor Results
As your workload – and sales – pile up during the holidays, it could be easy to overlook the most basic email marketing function: analytics. By neglecting the email deployment results you are limiting your success. Your emails will likely be converting at a higher rate, which could give the false impression that everything is working properly. However, if you don’t look at the reports, you could have deliverability issues at a specific domain or you could fail to notice that particular subject lines have higher open rates. Carve out some time every morning to review your reports to stay on top of potential problems. It could make the difference between average and spectacular sales this holiday season!
Step 6 – Tweak Campaigns
Emails, even ones created weeks in advance, aren’t written in stone. They’re written in code, which is easy to change. Follow the trends and adapt your messages throughout the holiday season as necessary. Remaining flexible will help you increase your campaign ROI for each and every email deployment.
Following these six steps will ensure you maximize the reach and return of your email campaigns this holiday season.