Christmas is a time of celebration and merriment. It’s also the time of year when people are most willing to spend money. The holidays are a challenging time for email marketers. The stakes are high since this channel has the greatest conversion rate. We can all agree that the holiday season has unparalleled potential for a Return On Investment (ROI) as well as a surge in sales.
The Christmas shopping season is the busiest time of year for businesses. Even with recent inflationary concerns, consumers are anticipated to spend freely throughout the holiday season; the National Retail Federation predicts that November and December retail sales will increase by between 6 and 8 percent over 2021, reaching $942.6 billion to $960.4 billion. Last year’s Christmas sales of $889.3 billion were a record-breaking 13.5% increase over 2020 levels. Over the previous decade, holiday retail sales have increased by 4.9% on average, with the spending surge in the wake of the global pandemic in recent years accounting for most of the rise.
It’s to be expected that during the holiday season, the majority of retailers will send more emails than usual, making the already-hectic inboxes even more so. You’ll need top-notch email marketing to break through the holiday commotion.
Ride the Yuletide with Personalization!
Put some holiday spirits into your emails to make your readers happy. You may add magical content created by what other customers have provided by using personalization over photos, automating suitable click-category follow-up email messages based on past in-email action, and sharing with your network. Make your emails more engaging by using timed pictures to include a live advent calendar and a “countdown to Christmas.” Incorporate these ideas into your holiday mailings to provide subscribers with an automated, enchanting, and personalized email experience.
Email Personalization Strategies For Christmas 2022
Here are the strategies used by top brands that have been shown to work. If you want to see a significant uptick in your email’s overall performance, it’s time to upgrade your content with personalization.
Image Personalization
The days leading up to Christmas see an increase in emails. Your email must jump out to the reader right away. This message must reach them, and they must know it. It’s hard to ignore the impact and interest generated by a photo that’s been personalized just for you.
Having the recipient’s name prominently displayed on a picture of a hero will grab their attention. An easy way to jazz up your communication in a flash. Images that are specific to the user don’t have to be huge. Even little customization in images, such as adding names to images of items or calls to action CTAs, may have a significant effect. Keeping the typeface consistent throughout the message ensures that it reads smoothly and naturally.
Personalization Using CRM Data
By using CRM personalization, you may quickly and easily display items to customers based on their preferences and past purchases. If a customer has previously seen gowns, we may use that information to recommend further dresses they would like.
Instead of manually creating each category variant via your email provider, sophisticated dynamic content may develop hundreds, if not thousands.
Achieving this degree of automation would be impossible via either human coding or creating rules in your ESP. It eliminates the need to tailor your offering to each customer manually.
Using a customer’s date of birth to send them emails like the one below is a great way to have some fun with CRM data and reach out to your audience uniquely.
Product Recommendations Based on Behavioral Personalization
Implement dynamic, personalized product suggestions that evolve in response to the customer’s actions on the site. Include a list of what they’ve lately seen in the email to grab their attention.
AI prediction engine powers surface product suggestions in email, increasing sales and giving customers their virtual Christmas storefront in their inboxes based on their activity on your site.
Use the popularity of “frequently purchased together” products to your benefit by including them in your holiday emails.
Using a customer’s purchase history, you may include related products in each email, increasing the likelihood that the recipient will find something they like. If you add additional items that are comparable in this manner, the buyer has a greater chance of locating the item they really must have.
Product Specific Review Feed
While searching for the greatest deals, customers may give more consideration to a broader selection of brands than usual while doing their Christmas shopping.
Putting up your most recent brand review is an easy way to increase confidence in your company’s dependability and quality.
Link the feed of your review partner, create a custom “live” graphic to showcase your most up-to-date rating and review count, and even showcase reviews of goods that are highlighted in the email itself.
The best reviews for the product should be shown in the recovery email; thus, sorting by rating is recommended. Putting customer testimonials in an email’s footer may seem like an afterthought, but it may profoundly affect conversions.
Customer Loyalty Programmes
Marketers emphasize customer retention, so loyalty programs provide invaluable information that can keep members engaged in brick-and-mortar locations and e-commerce websites via creative marketing.
Providing incentives to local consumers is a smart strategy for boosting retail traffic. Everything from invitation-only parties to special discounts for paying customers is fair game. Provide them with an incentive to join your members-only club.
A simple strategy to encourage members to make more purchases is to send them monthly email updates detailing their point totals and the number of points they need to achieve the next level.
Consider including an eye-catching element, like the digital loyalty card seen in this email, to attract the reader’s attention.
Location Based Content
Adding a location recommendation for in-store purchasing is a potent addition to email, especially for brick-and-mortar stores. The nearest shop is shown on the default map app after you click it. We really like how these cases highlight the shops themselves.
Make it simple for those who like to buy in person to locate outlets in their area this holiday season. Create your own pins and use them in all of your store’s support emails for a unified and personalized message.
Weather Targeted Content
Communicating to large territories with varied weather conditions is easier with weather-targeted content, and emails containing this kind of component are more relevant overall.
It’s helpful to have a good idea of what the weather will be like for the season-opening, and weather forecasts promote purchasing for the weather. You can easily slide this strategy into product recommendations for your Christmas emails.
Countdown Delivery Timers
You may use a countdown timer for more than simply sales. They may also serve as a visual representation of crucial data. Timer displays are highly effective when used to show how much time is left for Christmas delivery. By combining these two data sets with delivery timers, you can easily tell how much time is left for standard delivery and how much time is available for next-day delivery. Change the timer to a Merry Christmas greeting after the window for delivery has passed.
Day Parting
Although day splitting is a standard practice in pay-per-click advertising, it is still a novel notion in the realm of email marketing. What this means is that the broadcast day is broken up into smaller chunks, and the most appropriate or targeted content is shown in the email at those specific times. Website data, such as greatest sales right now, or insight into what email content works especially well at specific times of the day might be used to choose what to show.
The notion of dividing the week into two halves works well. For example: If you are a retail brand wanting to send an email, but want to change the content based on when it is opened, you may. On Mondays, showcase products ideal for the first day of the week. On Friday, show products ideal for weekends.
End-of-year wrap-up
We all like Spotify’s annual year-end playlist, so why not give your consumers something similar? Create a visual picture of your relationship over the year using customized photographs and data. By utilizing CRM data, you can easily reveal your customers’ spending habits throughout the year.
Your year-end wrap for your customers can outline the following::
- How many times you’ve shopped this year
- How much you usually spend
- What you’ve recently bought
- What you like to buy
- Where do you like to shop
Add Polls
Polls are a great way to get readers interested in the topic right away and get them to click. Including polls in your emails is still an effective way to boost traffic and conversions (and collect data). Some of the popular Christmas polls are:
- What are you most excited to shop for this Christmas?
- What discount/offer/deals would you like to shop for?
- Are you shopping for Secret Santa?
- What brands are you interested in?
- Who are you shopping for? Him, Her, kids or even yourself? · What’s your budget?
- Are you ready to shop for Christmas presents?
Poll layout matters; indicate that the numbers straightforwardly represent votes. Instead of just presenting the number 43, a phrase like “43% of people can’t wait to buy handbags” is far more compelling.
Live polls may be useful, but only if used properly. Take advantage of the clicks in subsequent emails by making them more relevant. This email includes X since you voted that you wanted it! You may even write. Create the impression that the opinions of your customer matter.
Keep in mind that the words you choose to frame a poll significantly impact whether or not people choose to participate. Messages like “have your say,” “vote for what you want,” and “what’s your favorite” are excellent hooks for attracting openers.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of this wholesome guide! We hope you found some effective and unique strategies to boost your Christmas sales through personalized email marketing.
There is a lot of competition in the eCommerce marketing space, so every edge you can get over the competition will help your business expand more quickly. When planning a marketing strategy for the Christmas holidays to give your business the boost it needs, sending hyper-personalized offers through email marketing is simply the tip of the iceberg. You must tap the larger picture by powering your emails with tools like RetainIQ. Book a demo with us if you’re ready to take your email content to the next level and increase performance across the board.