5 email tips for holiday and beyond

The holiday shopping season is finally here, and merchants have high hopes it’s going to be a good one. Enhancing your email marketing program can make the big season a better one.

These five tips can help you increase revenue, recover lost purchases and build customer loyalty. And you can certainly use these tactics beyond the holiday season.

  1. MAKE IT EASY TO SUBSCRIBE

    As they visit site after site looking for that one perfect gift, holiday shoppers are an ideal source of new email subscribers. So make it easy for them.

    Be sure every page on your website features a benefit-driven email opt-in form. Gathering email addresses not only adds interested subscribers to your database, it enables you to follow up later with remarketing messages.

  2. GREET ONLINE SHOPPERS WITH A HOLIDAY-THEMED WELCOME PROGRAM

    Holiday shoppers often have different interests, motivations or concerns. Send a welcome message that addresses this frame of mind, and use content and design that sets it apart from your standard welcome message or program:

    • Include information on email frequency if you plan to increase it during the holiday season.

    • If you offer frequency options, remind subscribers they can reduce the number of emails they receive and manage their email preferences via your preference center.

    • Focus your content on assuring subscribers that you understand the pain points of holiday shopping online.

    • Include information about shipping promotions and schedules, how to return items, gift-card promotions, call-center hours and other holiday-centric concerns.

  3. DRESS UP YOUR TRANSACTIONAL MESSAGES

    By applying branding and adding cross-sell and upsell offers at a time when recipients are thinking most favorably about you, you can transform an already engaging message into one that is even more memorable, appealing and useful.

    Leverage personalization and recommendation technologies to dynamically add accessories, most popular and recommended products into your order and shipping confirmation emails. (Focus on the transaction to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.)

  4. REMIND SHOPPERS OF ABANDONED ITEMS THEY’VE LEFT BEHIND OR PAGES THEY’VE VISITED

    Shoppers will turn your carts into wish lists, parking items there and leaving your site. A timely email reminder will bring many of them back to complete checkout. Prepare now by optimizing your cart-abandonment program:

    • Create a multi-email series that follows up with messages distributed a few hours after abandonment, a few days later, and one week later.

    • Adopt a service tone, asking if the shopper had a problem at checkout.

    • Offer to complete the transaction in other channels, such as through live chat or a call center.

    • Refrain from offering incentives in the first message, but add them in ensuing messages as needed to entice shoppers to follow through. Of course, test for what works best.

    Many retailers have also begun sending browse-abandonment messages, which note that the shopper looked at certain products or categories and then left the site. These visits provide important data about his or her interests that you can incorporate into subsequent messages.

  5. KEEP THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT GOING STRONG WITH A POST-PURCHASE STRATEGY

    Turn your new holiday buyers and repeat purchasers into engaged and highly valued customers by following up on holiday purchases with a series of triggered or targeted messages that reflect your customers’ activities and preferences. These can include:

    • Post-purchase survey on the product/buying experience

    • Invitation to review the purchased items and see reviews that have been posted

    • Cross-sell recommendations based on purchases or behavior (“since you purchased that, you might like this”)

    • Bounceback offers

    • Out-of-stock and replenishment reminders

    • Purchase anniversary recognition

Follow these tips and you’ll go a long way toward ensuring that each email message you send this season lands in your subscribers’ inboxes like a holiday gift of your own — eagerly anticipated, opened and acted on.

Loren McDonald is vice president of industry relations for email systems provider Silverpop.