6 Email Marketing Tips to Make Your Holiday Sales Surge

No matter what industry you’re in, if your business isn’t connecting with customers by email, it’s time to get in the game! Email newsletters and promotions are one of the most effective ways to connect to customers—your marketing initiatives go straight to their inbox. As the holidays are quickly approaching, it’s time to begin promoting your holiday sales through email. Here’s how you can boost holiday email open rates:

Put the promotion in the subject line. Seems simple, right? Many businesses bury the lead and wait until the bottom of the email to announce their biggest promotions of the year. Put the promotion in the subject line of the email and make it the most prominent part of the email itself. Give customers a reason to open your email! For even more impact, mention the most important number first in the subject line. For example, “25% Off Everything, Today ONLY” creates both a sense of urgency with timing and curiosity with the sale price.
Use subject lines under 45 characters. In the most popular email viewers (Gmail, iPhone, Android, and Outlook), the number of subject line characters that can be viewed without clicking through to the email is between 41–66. Ensure that your customers are seeing your entire message by keeping subject lines under 45 characters.
Don’t forget gift cards. For nine years now, gift cards have been the most requested gift in the U.S. Especially in the final two weeks before Christmas, when shopping in stores becomes complete chaos, gift cards can be your gold mine. Ensure you send one or several emails promoting gift cards specifically. Even after the holidays, gift cards remain a driving force behind sales. Many consumers will receive gift cards from Visa or Amex, which can be spent anywhere. In early January, send an email reminding customers to spend their gift cards!
Optimize your emails for mobile. This might be the most important strategy for any email you send. Fifty-three percent of users will open your email on their phone or tablet. If it’s not easy to read and navigate your email via mobile, you will quickly lose a mobile user’s attention and a potential sale.
Send emails at optimal times for each of your subscriber lists. Some email platforms, such as MailChimp, will calculate your subscriber lists’ optimal times for sending based on open rates and times for you. If your email platform doesn’t have this feature, it’s simple enough to do the research yourself, although it won’t be as exact. Take a look at MailChimp’s research, and examine your old emails. Take note of which emails had the highest open rates and the times they were sent.
Don’t be too enthusiastic. Sending too many emails will only guarantee you one thing: they’ll end up in the spam folder. Consumers receive far more emails during the holiday season, and sending too many will result in being filtered for spam or unsubscribes from your list. Limit emails to no more than two per week during peak seasons.