Christmas; ’tis the season to be jolly and ’tis the season to be giving. You’ve been sending out your emails all year round as part of a sustained email marketing campaign, providing your dedicated subscribers with original content and exclusive offers in exchange for their loyalty (and hopefully, their custom!). Then Christmas arrives, you’ve left all your present buying late and you want to finish for the season and spend time with your family. So you compose a quick Merry Christmas message, hit send and leave the office until the New Year. Oh, intrepid email marketer, you should know so much better.

Christmas is a vital period for just about any business and this extends to all departments, including marketing. While you should definitely send your customers’ season’s greetings, Christmas provides the opportunity to do so much more for the average email marketer. Last minute buyers, one-off sales, gift ideas – the potential conversion rate of your campaign over the holidays is huge and with a bit of planning, you can make the most of it!

Everyone complains about Christmas coming ‘earlier’ every year, so timing is key to any email marketing campaign. No-one wants a message about Christmas in August and it will undoubtedly get deleted, so target November as an absolute earliest starting point for Christmas themed messages. That’s not to say you can’t mention Christmas earlier though – maybe through a small picture or link.

We’ve all been in the position where we need to buy someone a present and simply don’t have a clue so give your subscribers a helping hand. Put together a gift guide separated into sub-categories – for him, her, kids, etc. Send one out a day towards the end of November/start of December and provide obvious links to products. Use your subscriber list to determine how to target these gift guides.

As Christmas Day approaches, start ramping up your efforts – you want to be catching any stragglers and last minute buyers. Check your analytics to see who has converted as a result of your emails and if there’s a particular demographic that seems to be lagging behind, target them. Offer discounts, feature items and one-off codes. Make sure you ramp up the pressure too; put in reminders about delivery dates and limited stock, but offer the customer hope by letting them know you can provide them with what they need and save their Christmas!

The best part of an email marketing campaign is that you don’t even need to be sending emails out physically on the day – so long as you’ve put together your content in advance, you can schedule all your Christmas emails to send out on particular days, even if you’ve left the office long ago! It is worth keeping an eye on things just in case, however – you don’t want to return to the office only to find that your emails haven’t sent or aren’t fulfilling their purpose.

The final step to a great Christmas email marketing campaign is to thank your customer for their loyalty and wish them a Merry Christmas. Don’t just send them a text email though – invest some time in designing an personalised e-card to make them feel extra special! E-cards allow you to personalise text, photos and even add video, but for the most pizzazz go for animated e-cards!

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision, specialists in animated ecards

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), specialists in animated ecards

Author Bio: Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision, specialists in animated ecards

Category: Marketing
Keywords: email marketing, christmas ecards