Tis’ the season to be jolly…well it will be very soon, so now is the ideal time to plan your Christmas promotions. Online retailers in particular can greatly benefit from strategically planned, cross channel sales promotions, which can be easily launched via an email marketing campaign.
To make sure you achieve maximum impact with your Christmas campaign, your email needs to be eye catching – don’t just stick to your usual design or template. Now is the time to really grab peoples attention, so go to town and give it a seasonal look and feel that will capture peoples interest and stand out.
For maximum traction from your email, make sure that you create a customised landing page on your website that echoes the messaging in your email. Not only does this give you the ability to provide a depth of content that might not be suitable for your eshot, but it also provides you with more website content that will be crawled and listed by search engines, providing you with another potential touch point.
Christmas Email Marketing Ideas
1. Free Delivery Voucher Code
Voucher codes are often an effective way of bringing forward planned purchases and are the ideal way to benefit from impulse buyers. Introducing a minimum order value is a great way to stimulate a short-term increase in average basket value. Take a look at your average order, and stipulate a minimum order value that is just above this.
Make sure you time limit your voucher code but make sure people have a reasonable amount of time in which to use their code. A window of a few hours is unlikely to gain much traction but a code valid for a full week or longer will have more appeal, especially if you time it to coincide with most peoples end of month pay day.
2. Christmas Gift Wrapping Service
Some people want as much of the hassle taking out of Christmas as possible, so buying gifts already pre-wrapped can be appealing. If you don’t currently offer a gift wrapping service, consider launching this as a special seasonal promotion; or even better, offer it for free on all, or selected products subject to a minimum order value.
As with all offers, make sure it is time limited to stimulate sales – you’ll also find that putting a time limit on promotions introduces a sense of urgency that will help to positively influence purchasing decisions.
3. Christmas Gift Guide
A Christmas gift guide not only allows you to showcase a selection of your products, but will also add real value in helping to give people ideas for Christmas presents. The most effective way to do this is to create a high impact website landing page. Show a small selection of gift ideas in an initial email, then get people to visit the landing page to see more.
Give people a helping hand by selecting products that would make popular or unusual Christmas gift.
When choosing items, make sure they have broad appeal and make sure you have a good mix or items, from silly, quirky or fashionable stocking fillers at low price points right up to premium ‘main’ gifts. If you have a vast product range, you could split your guide up into categories (For Him, Best For Teens, Kids etc.) or you could categorise by price range or product type.
4. Seasonal Company Information
Whilst this isn’t quite as fun or interesting as some of the previous suggestions, it is important that you take steps to let people know when you are open over the holiday period and for online retailers, when last order dates are and what your returns policy will be on gifts that are purchased.
The last thing you want is people ordering on 23rd December and expecting your usual next day timed deliveries to be operating – I have known this to happen!
As well as updating your website to reflect any seasonal changes to your delivery schedule, sending customers an email makes sure you reach the maximum number of people. Back this up with a news post on your website and also make sure you are regularly posting related information on social media too.
5. Christmas Gift Vouchers
Christmas is a great time to promote or launch gift vouchers on your website and they are much easier to set up than you might think. Gone are the days when a physical voucher or card would need to be purchased and then posted out to the buyer, to pass on to the recipient. E-vouchers can be instantly generated and easily emailed straight to the buyer or even the recipient.
Make sure you clearly outline all the benefits of choosing a voucher as a Christmas gift; in particular the fact that the recipient gets to spend it on exactly what they want, rather than being stuck with a gift that they potentially don’t like or need!
As a retailer, don’t forget that you are likely to find that a good proportion of purchased vouchers never actually get used, as they will expire or simply be forgotten.
6. Christmas Competition
Everyone likes the opportunity to win free stuff, so use Christmas as a time to launch a big competition as an effective way of focusing attention onto your business.
Running a Christmas competition means that you not only gain extra visibility (especially if the entry mechanism is based around sharing your content on a social network) but you are also reminding existing and lapsed customers about your business.
When it comes to competitions there are lots of seasonal ideas that you could run with, from an interactive online calendar where the winner needs to open a certain number of doors in the right sequence, through to a Facebook Share/Like/Win competition or a simple refer a friend prize draw.
Prizes can range from a desirable consumer product with mass-appeal, to a gift voucher to use on your website/in store, a Christmas stocking filled with a selection of smaller gifts or you could even team up with a supplier to give away something really big.
The bigger the prize the more appealing it will be, but also remember that giving away a larger number of smaller prizes is also very attractive, as people feel they have a better chance of winning when there are multiple prizes on offer.
Summary
The key to all of these ideas lies in making sure your promotion or competition achieves maximum visibility. This means you should:
- Promote across multiple channels.
- Use eye catching custom design, whether it be for your eshot, website landing page or to accompany your social media posts.
Still need more Christmas Marketing Ideas? Check out our FREE eGuide which is packed full of ideas to help you get the most out of the festive period. Get the Christmas Marketing Ideas eGuide here. Need custom email or landing page design for your Christmas promotion? Get in touch!