Successful holiday marketing requires planning ahead because your competitors will be ramping up their efforts as well. Taking the time now to work on your email optimization can make a huge difference in how well your campaigns perform.
Clean your list
First, give your subscriber list a thorough cleaning. Remove or try to reengage with inactive subscribers before the season starts. If it’s already too late for a re-engagement campaign, but you want to try reengaging at a later time, segment out inactive subscribers. Don’t email them during the important holiday season. Try re-engaging with them after the season has passed.
Mailbox service providers filter email based on a number of factors. One of the most important for them is engagement with your emails. To greatly simplify things, if you’re sending 100 emails to Gmail and only one person is opening, you have 1% engagement. Most mailbox providers have an engagement threshold that determines where emails are placed. If that threshold for Gmail was 2%, then your 1% engagement could mean that all of your emails are sent to the spam folder or even blocked altogether. Removing inactive subscribers increases your engagement rate without any extra effort.
Mobile first
Last holiday season, more people opened emails and shopped on mobile devices than on desktops. When designing your holiday emails, think mobile first. Some tips for mobile email optimization – Make sure fonts are big enough to display properly on mobile devices. Do not overload your emails with images. Your call-to-action should be big, bold and easy to tap with a finger. Test, test and test some more.
Stand out
Virtually all companies ramp up email marketing for the holiday selling season. Make sure your emails stand out in a crowded inbox. Craft subject lines that get attention. Keep the content of your emails brief and to the point.
Schedule ahead
Get your emails planned out as far in advance of the season as possible. Schedule them out on a calendar and queue them up for sending as soon as possible.
It’s not too late for holiday email optimization. Contact Active Web Group today and learn how to increase open rates, improve conversions, and drive more sales this holiday season.
