Christmas is and will remain one of the year’s most popular times of the year. It is a long-awaited event for the consumers and for the brands. However, due to the coronavirus epidemic, Christmas will be different this year. 

In this article, we will give you some tips for your email campaigns to boost your sales and improve your visibility in front of your competitors. 

Determine the objectives of your emails

During the festive season, it is essential for a company to include email marketing in its digital marketing strategy. According to SaleCycle, 59% of consumers say that emailing influences their purchasing decisions. The return on investment (ROI) of emailing is one of the highest of all marketing and communication tools. Indeed, the ROI in email is estimated at 28.5% according to Chief Marketing.

Before creating your campaigns, establish your email marketing objectives for Christmas. Setting goals will make it easier to measure the results of your campaigns. Use SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) to optimise the performance of your marketing campaigns. 

Even if the objectives are specific to each company, here are a few examples:  

Increase your sales

“Increase my sales” is quite general and not specific enough. Your objectives must be clear and understandable in order to have a better organisation within your teams: 

“To increase sales by 15% during the Christmas and New Year holidays”. 

” To achieve a monthly turnover of $20,000″.

Improve your opening rate 

We encounter the same situation here, “Improving my opening rate” is not SMART. It is essential to be more precise in order to know, in particular, whether the objective has been achieved. To determine a quantitative objective, you can, for example, base yourself on the previous results of email campaigns. 

For example, you can use the following example:

“Increase the opening rate by 5% for the December 2020 newsletter”.

Increase your website traffic 

In life, whether professionally or personally, being ambitious is a good quality. Therefore, your goals should be ambitious but also achievable. It makes no sense to set goals that are too high for your company. 

Example of an achievable goal:

“Increase website traffic by 20% over the Christmas period”.

Discover our examples of emails for Christmas

It is not always easy to find the right email subject that might interest your prospects and customers. That’s why it is essential to know your target, their expectations, their hobbies… 

We have therefore selected a few ideas for email content for the festive season. 

Give Christmas gift ideas 

Consumers often find it difficult to find THE right gift idea. It is therefore only natural for you to accompany them in their choice and advise them on different products and services. 

In your email marketing, highlight your top products with CTAs (Call to Action) in the form of a button to your online shop. The aim is to create brand attachment but also to encourage people to buy. 

You can find this email template directly in the template gallery of the Jackmail plugin.

Announce bargains and promotions

During Christmas, we want to please our loved ones but the budget can quickly explode. To do this, consumers are looking for good tips. It is therefore interesting to highlight your promotions in your email campaigns dedicated to Christmas. However, avoid being too commercial and talking only about your promotions. Indeed, we advise you to also give them advice and then offer them a non-exhaustive list of promotional products.

You can find this email template directly in the template gallery of the Jackmail plugin.

Establish a climate of trust with your customers 

Your customers do not necessarily have time to buy their Christmas gifts in advance. Sometimes they are uninspired and prefer to buy at the last minute. But this makes them anxious: will my order arrive in time for Christmas? 

We recommend that you include delivery times in your Christmas emails to reassure your customers.

Wish your customers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

To maintain a relationship with your customers and create a strong emotional connection with your brand, send them a newsletter to wish them a Merry Christmas and present them your best wishes for 2021. This campaign is also an opportunity to share with them an overview of your best 2020 results and your success stories.

You can find this email template directly in the template gallery of the Jackmail plugin.

Email marketing best practices for Christmas 

Email is an excellent marketing and sales tool because a lot of conversions are made through this channel. This direct marketing tool allows you to inform, build loyalty and boost your sales.

However, it is necessary to apply best practices in order to obtain good results for your Christmas email campaigns.

Segment your database

Having a qualified contact base, good segmentation and targeting is essential to ensure the success of your marketing campaigns. Your database has to be opt-in. It means that your recipients have given you their consent to receive your communications. 

Before creating and sending your newsletters, we recommend that you segment your database in order to better target and be more relevant in the content of your messages. Create different contact lists based on your recipients’ criteria (gender, age, place of residence, interests, frequency of purchase etc.). Segmenting your contacts allows you to get to know your customers better and increase the performance of your marketing strategy. 

However, during the Christmas period, it is probable that your segmentation characteristics will change because the purchases made are destined for their family and friends.

Optimise your email subject and preheader

Do not minimize the importance of the step to choose the subject of the email. The subject of the email is one of the elements that has the greatest impact on the opening rate. The aim is to arouse the recipient’s curiosity and capture his or her attention. 

– First of all, the subject line of your email should be short because it is important to get straight to the point but also because webmails have a limited number of displayed characters.

– Favour action verbs to encourage them to open the email, such as “Prepare your Christmas presents”.

– Personalise the subject line of your email so that recipients feel unique, like “Mathilde, your gifts delivered in time for the holidays”.

– Use smileys to engage your contacts like “Create your wishlist in advance 🎁”.

– Avoid using spamwords in your text content to improve your deliverability. However, if you have to mention any reduction or any price in your campaign or any words that could be considered as a spam (like “Free”, “promotion”, “paypal”, “Euro”, etc.), we advise you to include these words in a picture. This way, it won’t impact your deliverability.

The preheader also plays an important role in opening emails. The preheader is the sentence that appears in the preview of your inbox next to or below the subject line of the email. It allows you to expand on the subject line of your emails. 

Here is an example of an email subject and a preheader :

– Subject : Discover our original gift ideas for Christmas

– Preheader: Make your loved ones happy

Create effective and relevant email content 

Your customers receive thousands of information per day, so it is important to get to the point. Indeed, the content of your Christmas emails must be concise. The message must be clear and explicit. 

You can also personalise the content of your emails to build customer loyalty and convert your prospects. To create a personalised email, you can use the elements you know about your customers, such as their purchase history, first and last name… 

Follow the mobile first trend. Your newsletters must be responsive, i.e. the content adapts to the screen regardless of the device used (smartphone, tablet, desktop computer).  

Christmas email templates : our best ideas and examples

Our team of webdesigners have designed responsive email templates for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. 

Opt for a colorful template to bring the joy of the holidays and the magic of Christmas to your recipients. Don’t forget that your Christmas template must also remain in line with your graphic charter. It helps your contacts to identify your brand. Jackmail’s templates can be modified and personalised (text, images, colours etc). To use these templates, you don’t need any technical or coding knowledge, you just have to use  the EmailBuilder, our intuitive and user-friendly email editor.

You can find this email template directly in the template gallery of the Jackmail plugin.

Don’t forget the golden rule: test your campaigns!

Before sending your Christmas email marketing campaigns to your contact lists, make some tests on different king of inboxes (email clients, webmails, mobile apps). For example, testing your email campaign helps you to identify potential issues with your deliverability, the display of your email, the links of your CTA, or your personalisation…

Analyse the detailed statistics of your emails

After sending each email campaign, measure your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in order to improve the performance of future campaigns. For example, take into account the opening rate and the click rate …

Conclusion

Christmas is just around the corner, it is an important time for retailers and brands. Therefore you must prepare your marketing strategy in advance in order to obtain good results and to be present at every step of your customers’ journey.

We wish you much success in your sales and marketing actions related to this Holiday season!