The holiday season is almost here: a time when businesses can count on customers lining up to give them their money. After all, if your direct advertising throughout the rest of the year has done its job, there shouldn't be anything to worry about, right?
Guess again. The holiday season is no time to get sloppy with how one approaches potential customers. If anything, it's the worst possible time to do so. With peoples' schedules already amped up no one has time to wade through email promotions and advertising that they don't want or which they no longer find relevant. With that in mind, let's look at ten bulk email tools of particular relevance during the holiday shopping season.
Make subscription appealing
Clicking “subscribe” for a website's newsletter and email promotion campaign is automatic or an afterthought for many shoppers. This can lead to them forgetting about subscribing five minutes after they've done it and becoming annoyed when your emails show up in their box. Don't just make it another box for them to click, get your customers actively engaged in the process of receiving your promotions. Give them an idea of the special offers they'll receive and get them looking forward to what surprises and bargains your emails will bring.
Your customers have welcomed you — Welcome them in return
A welcome email — perhaps with a special offer available only for new subscribers — will go a long way toward maintaining the customer interest you built up in getting them to subscribe. They signed up because they wanted to see the offers you had in store, so don't let them go days or weeks without hearing from you.
Get on their long Christmas list by keeping your list short
The mind finds ways to economize when people are busy, and people who are checking email at work or while getting together a holiday list are often quite busy indeed. People can and do only read a few words of every sentence when they're in a hurry, picking up only the most necessary information. And the longer something is, the less attention they pay. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short to make sure your readers get the most information at their maximum level of attention.
Spammers get coal in their stockings — Don't be a spammer
Spam has never been popular. Thanks to the CAN-SPAM act, it can now come back to bite you in a big way even if you didn't mean to spam people. Become familiar with the act and make sure that the only people on your bulk marketing list are the ones who have properly agreed to be.
Your customers will be out shopping — Make sure you're mobile enough to go with them
More and more holiday shoppers go out with their mobile devices in hand to compare deals and offers. Make sure your emails are optimized for mobile so that yours will be the deals they are looking at.
You've made your subscriber list, now check it twice
There's not much point in getting into unlimited email marketing campaigns, if you're not going to look at the numbers. Watch those unsubscribes. They just might be your best indicator of how well a campaign is doing.
Content quality and consistency equals customer comfort
Keep the tone of your emails casual and friendly, and don't wear out your welcome. Nobody wants to receive canned, tasteless ads every day. Make sure your special offers really are special and not just constant visual noise telling your subscribers to Buy! Buy! Buy! Ads that are too garish, too frequent, and not enticing get ignored or worse, unsubscribed by your customers.
Don't keep the holiday email party private
If you're in marketing then you've probably heard it a thousand times: satisfied customers are the best advertising a company has. Your customers will forward your offers to their friends. Adding a simple “subscribe” link to your emails can turn that friend from a one-time shopper into loyal clientele.
Don't send fruit cake — It winds up in the trash
Fruit cake in this case meaning email ads that are heavy on graphics or animation. Spam filters love to snap these up even when the user is subscribed. Straightforward text with elegant links to your site has a far better chance of reaching your subscribers.
Editing is not optional
The most important point, saved for last. It applies throughout the year and more than ever during the final quarter. One typo in an ad can kill a sale. They're sloppy, unprofessional looking, and there's really just no excuse for them. Proofread relentlessly and the extra time you've taken will turn into higher holiday profits in your pocket.