7 Tips To Supercharge Your Ecomm Holiday Email Strategy

Nov 24

Black Friday and the holidays are coming up very soon. For many ecommerce brands, this is the biggest sales opportunity of the year. While you should’ve peppered some holiday cheer into your campaigns well before November, you still have time to catch up.

If your holiday email campaign isn’t in full swing just yet, we’ve prepared some tips to help you supercharge your strategy, increase your sales, and stay ahead of your competitors.

1. Personalise your email content based on segments

If you haven’t been segmenting your audience on your past campaigns, now’s a good time to start. For the holidays, it would be a great idea to segment your audience by:

Purchase history
Sale redeemers
New subscribers
Inactive users

This simple audience segmentation example will allow you to customise the email content based on customer behaviours.

For example, if you have a list of inactive subscribers, you can add customised copy to encourage engagement. A subject line like “Since we haven’t heard from you in awhile…” or anything similar is often used to reengage customers. A subject line that piques curiosity will encourage your audience to open the email.

If you’re targeting frequent shoppers, you can lead in with a subject like “A special gift for our favourite shopper.”

With the right segments, you can deliver impactful messages that will resonate with your audience and convince them to make more purchases.

2. Send gift guides

Your subscribers are likely in the middle of their holiday shopping. While giving them the ability to shop online is a convenience in itself, having too many options can get overwhelming for anyone. Help your customers decide by creating gift guides.

Keep in mind that your guide should make decision-making easier for customers. Give them too many ideas, and you’ll confuse them even more. Don’t fall into the trap of organising your guides by product categories or they will just look like your regular product listings. Categorising by price and customer personality is also a great option.

3. Add countdown timers sale emails

According to Upland, a dynamic countdown timer can lead to a 4X increase in conversions on Black Friday. A dynamic countdown timer shows the exact time your sale will start or end (depending on your messaging) from the time any customer or a new sign-up sees your email.

We also recommend implementing this to your landing page or website so that your messaging is perfectly synced.

This sale countdown email by Harry’s places the timer top and centre. The placement of the timer ensures that it’s the first thing subscribers will see when they open the message. The “Shop Now” button right below the timer and supporting sales copy encourages shoppers to take action immediately.

This 3-minute read from Klaviyo has all the steps you need to add the countdown timer to sale emails.

4. Get creative with your subject lines

Avoid words like “free,” “promotion,” or anything too hard-sell. Google has spam filters that send emails with certain words straight to your spam folder.

Be creative with your subject lines to increase your open rate. The subject line “I think you left something behind…” works really well to get your customers curious. Something creative like United by Blue’s headline “Finish what you carted” is also a great example.

This abandoned cart email by Homes Alive Pets uses a personalised subject line “Hey (name), did you forget something?”. Adding your subscriber’s first name on the subject can increase your open rate by 26%.

5. Differentiate your holiday sale flows from regular emails

If you’re using the same automation from your regular emails and not making any tweaks for your holiday sale flows, you’re missing out!

Your holiday sale flows need to be adjusted simply because email cadence, timing, and messaging are different during this peak holiday season. For example, during Q4, abandoned cart flows should be activated earlier as your customers are likely actively browsing your competitors’ websites too.

If your abandoned cart flow normally sends after a few hours, you can adjust to half the time during the holidays.

If your usual email automation goes:

Abandoned cart reminder (sent four hours after)
Second reminder (sent two days later)
Free shipping or discount offer (a few days after the second email)

You can cut the flow into two emails and offer the discount after the second email, which should be sent earlier.

During the holidays, you can also add an extra email to your sequence to tap inactive customers for “last-minute” shopping.

6. Focus on the season, not the sale

Your customers will likely have hundreds of emails from brands capitalising on the holiday rush. Make your email too sales-forward, and you’ll easily get lost in the clutter. Instead of going all out on aggressive sales copy and promotions, try to focus on what your customers are feeling during the holidays.

This beautiful email by Artifact Uprising focuses on the message of Thanksgiving rather than the chance to make a sale. The subscriber has to scroll all the way down to see anything sales-related.

A simple holiday message can strengthen your customer’s trust in your brand and promote future transactions.

7. Follow up with a post-holiday email series

Now that you’ve built up cadence during Q4, don’t forget to follow up with a post-holiday email strategy. Even if you’ve missed out entirely on a Q4 email strategy, your post-holiday email series can help you end the year strong and set you up for success next year. It’s a great opportunity for you to ride on the momentum from the holiday season and build loyalty with new customers.

Your post-holiday email series should also involve cross-selling/up-selling to different segments. Dive deep into the data and understand who your VIPs, your seasonal purchasers, or your one-time bundle gift buyers are. Consider their AOVs while you’re segmenting these audiences, and craft specific product recommendations which will tailor to their interests.

This personalised product recommendation email by Epic is a great example. Sending product recommendation emails based on your customer’s behaviours and past purchases can increase your chances of conversion.

The end of the holidays doesn’t mean that the intent to shop has died down. In fact, 45% of shoppers plan to do their shopping in January, with many anticipating post-holiday sales. It’s interesting to note that shoppers who look forward to post-holiday sales are those looking to shop for themselves.

What you learn from the holiday season can equip you with useful information that you can use for the next full year of email campaigns.

Get started

A robust email marketing strategy is one of the most important parts of your ecommerce business. If you’re struggling to kick this into high gear, our team of experts at Content Mogul is ready to help. Book a risk-free call with us to find out if you qualify for our offer.

Nadiah Nanni