Successful Holiday Email Marketing - Adestra Webinar
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In this webinar we gave some actionable advice to use in campaigns right now, as well as help in planning for next year. Not only for Christmas, but other public holidays as well. There'a also be some terrible Christmas-related puns. You have been warned.
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Successful Holiday Email Marketing - Adestra Webinar
- 1. adestra.com Successful Holiday Email Marketing
- 2. adestra.com Welcome! Page 2 • You can hear us, we can’t hear you • There will be time for questions at the end • Use the question panel in the sidebar to ask • Or tweet us @adestra
- 3. adestra.com Your Presenters Page 3 Anca Nicolaescu Digital and Content Marketing Email enthusiast Dan Bond Head of Digital Marketing 10 years in email
- 4. adestra.com Contents 1. Important dates and timing 2.Making things easy for customers 3.Email ideas to grab attention
- 5. aaddeessttrraa..ccoom A wonderful Christmas time… Page 5
- 6. adestra.com Key Dates Page 6 • Thanksgiving November 27th • Black Friday November 28th • Cyber Monday December 1st • Manic Monday December 8th • Delivery Cut-offs • Christmas Day December 25th • Boxing Day December 26th 2015…
- 8. adestra.com
- 9. adestra.com Keep customers informed Page 9
- 12. adestra.com Think about… Page 12 External factors • What are the key buying occasions? • When do people get paid? • When do people panic? • What other events prompt buying?
- 13. adestra.com Think about… Page 13 Interrogate your data… • What day of the week do people buy? • What time of day do people buy? • Are there buying patterns? • Can you create segments?
- 14. The nightmare before Christmas… Page 14 adestra.com
- 17. Page 17 ‘Tis the season to be testing… adestra.com
- 18. adestra.com Testing matrix Page 18 Hypothesis Sample size Timeframe Result Action Significance
- 19. adestra.com Subject lines Page 19 • Wrapping +56.4% • Presents +25.1% • Christmas +16.8% • Santa +15.5% • Gifts +8.1%
- 20. adestra.com Keyword Checker… Page 20 adestra.com/keywordchecker
- 21. Page 21 adestra.com Limited Offers
- 22. Page 22 adestra.com Price-based CTAs
- 23. adestra.com Persona-based CTAs Page 23 Gifts for coffee-lovers Gifts for chocoholics Gifts for amateur chefs
- 24. adestra.com Discount-based CTAs Page 24 30% off wine 20% off kitchen equipment 10% off tablets
- 25. adestra.com Discount-based CTAs Page 25
- 26. adestra.com Benefit-based CTAs Page 26 Make your home look festive Host a great party Treat yourself
- 27. Page 27 adestra.com Bundles
- 28. adestra.com The Problem with Presents Page 28 • 1 / 10 broken by New Years • 4 / 10 broken by March • 7 / 10 broken by next Christmas
- 29. Walking in an email wonderland… Page 29 adestra.com
- 30. Page 30 adestra.com Short & sweet
- 31. adestra.com Festive design Page 31
- 32. Page 32 adestra.com …but simple
- 33. adestra.com Festive products Page 33
- 34. Page 34 adestra.com Image personalisation
- 35. adestra.com Add a bit of sparkle Page 35
- 36. adestra.com …and some festive cheer Page 36
- 37. adestra.com Lifecycle Publishing campaigns Page 37 • Establish a time limit • If no response, email recipient
- 38. adestra.com Potential for growth Page 38 • £1.5 billion lost sales • £7.9 billion predicted UK spend
- 39. adestra.com Abandoned baskets Page 39
- 41. adestra.com Thank you Anca Nicolaescu @Adestra Dan Bond @DanAtAdestra
Editor's Notes
- Dan Hello everyone and welcome to this Adestra webinar, Successful Holiday Email Marketing.
- Dan A few house-keeping things before we start You are all on mute so we can’t hear you. So feel free to say whatever you like, although watch out for who is standing behind you. We’ll have some time for questions at the end, but you can ask them at any time by using the questions panel in the sidebar You can also ask questions on Twitter to @adestra
- Dan So, let’s introduce ourselves. My name’s Dan Bond, I’m the one on the left. I’m Head of Digital Marketing at Adestra, and I’ve been working in email marketing for almost 10 years. I know what you’re thinking, I just don’t look old enough. That’s very kind of you to say. Anca And I’m Anca, I help Dan with Digital and Content Marketing and I love everything to do with email. Also, you can tell from the photo that I balance the grumpiness levels in the team.
- Dan Here are the main topics we’re going to be covering today. The important dates and how to think about timing How you can make things easy for your customers And we’ll share a few email ideas to grab attention
- So, let’s begin! Let’s talk about timing
- Dan Here are some of the key dates coming up this holiday season. There are a couple of reasons to know about these dates. So you know when to focus your promotions So you know when promoting probably wont work so well Although it would be interesting to see if you could stimulate sales on Christmas Day – something worth testing. Christmas shopping used to peak at the beginning of December. But retailers are starting to see spikes in spending across the entire month. Last year, Manic Monday (9th December) spending eclipsed Cyber Monday (2nd December, traditionally thought of as the peak spending day) for the first time ever. And Boxing Day broke retail records for the sixth consecutive year. The takeaway? You need to run a Christmas marketing campaign (or multiple campaigns!) that spans the entire festive season.
- Dan Then there’s the January sales, email is great for relationship building, not just selling. Why not send your customers an email a free eGuide/download on the B2B side, or a voucher/promo code to use on Boxing Day? Chances are that they would have received some money and when they think what they’re going to spend it on, it will be your brand. Also, when January comes, why not send an email to all your subscribers who bought something from you this Christmas with an exclusive voucher or promo code? But make it clear to them that it’s exclusive to email rather than a sale for everyone and they’ll appreciate it more.
- Dan And this applies to more than just this holiday season. Think about all the key dates for next year too. When will be your biggest opportunities to maximise sales? Women’s Football World Cup Rugby World Cup Cricket World Cup It’s the year Marty McFly travelled to in Back to the Future Part 2, film fans When are the public holidays? When are the big cultural, celebratory or sporting events? Maintain a calendar to ensure you’re planning well ahead.
- Anca And this a great example of keeping your customers informed about dates too. Tell them exactly when they have to order for the different levels of shipping. Simples!
- Anca In this email, Harley Davidson targeted those who wait until the last-minute to do their Christmas shopping. They avoided customer frustration and contempt by being very clear about shipping expectations.
- Anca One thing to keep in mind is that not everyone celebrates Christmas. And I’m not talking about Mr Grinch, but parts of the world like Saudi Arabia, China and so on that don’t have the same holidays as us. So make sure you let them know when you’re closed and unavailable for support. Being clear and transparent about these things will make your customers happier. And this goes for the whole year, not just Christmas.
- Dan There are 2 main types of factors that can establish these key promotional dates. Firstly, external factors like we’ve already mentioned. And also things like when is pay day? When do people panic buy for occasions? On Valentines Day you could send a “Hey, I hope you didn’t forget – but if you did…” email.
- Dan The other factors come from your data. I am a big fan of using data, and you should find you can do a bit of interrogating and find out all sorts of useful insights. Which day of the week do people usually buy? What time of day? Do people who buy one thing then go on to buy something else? Are there patterns? Do people buy certain products at certain times of year? And of course, can you create segments around these to send targeted campaigns.
- Anca
- Anca Some of you might recognise this character. His name is Sheldon Cooper and he’s part of a popular American TV series called The Big Bang Theory. In this instance, he illustrates consumers’ biggest pain at Christmas. It’s not variety – in fact, we have too much of it. It is picking the right present for the right person within the set budget. In this case, he’s trying to choose a present for his neighbour Penny.
- Anca And because he couldn’t choose, he bought all of them. Of course, this doesn’t happen in real life. But by helping consumers and making it easier for them to pick the right present, we can convince them to choose our brand over our competitors.
- Anca I love testing. I even love it when it proves me wrong. It just shows that our preconceptions and opinions mean nothing unless the receivers’ of our messages agree with them.
- Anca So for the year to come, I challenge you all to setup a testing matrix. Decide in advance what you’re going to test and at the end of next year, bring all the lessons you learned in a super-charged piece of communication. And test that too. Here’s how it works: Every test should start with a hypothesis. Something like: ‘I believe a blue call-to-action button will bring me more clicks than a red call-to-action’. Then decide on the sample size that you’re going to test this on. Very important: make sure it’s statistically significant. There’s plenty of calculators online to help you establish the number you need. Establish a timeframe – how long do I need to run this test for? Once you get a result, you need to make sure it’s statistically significant to prove or disprove your hypothesis. Otherwise you might change the colour of the button when it wasn’t actually the case. Decide what action you’ll take: change the colour? Repeat the test? Try a different test? It all depends on the result. Then start again with the next test.
- Dan As email volumes go up and our customers’ inboxes are flooded things like, 20% off, sale and free delivery are going to appear over and over again in the subject lines so we need to think beyond this in how we’re going to attract attention and opens. We publish an annual subject line report, and from the data I’ve pulled out a few example words around Christmas and the results they achieved. People generally hate wrapping presents. So maybe offering a free wrapping service upfront will get you noticed? It’s certainly worth testing.
- Dan I’m sure there’s other words you want to test, and you can. You can use our keyword checker to test any words you like. See if they are likely to get you a boost in open rates. But don’t take the checker’s words as definite – always test your ideas. This is the best time to be testing your campaigns as you’re sending so many.
- Anca Once you get that email opened, make sure the email it helps you boost those sales. One strategy is to create urgency like RadioShack did here with a real-time countdown clock. Subscribers know exactly how much time they have left and this generally appeals very well to impulse buyers. And you can replace the clock with a different text once the time has run up.
- Anca Another great way to boost sales is to separate your products by price. With Christmas office parties starting soon, everyone will be looking for a Secret Santa gift. And once they’ve clicked through to your website, you can tempt them with different products there.
- Anca Another strategy that works great is to have persona-based calls-to-action. I know my mum’s a coffee lover, but my little brother loves chocolate and my dad pretends to be a chef…that’s all the family sorted. That easy. Remember, The more helpful you are, the more time you save them, the more likely they are to convert.
- Anca Discounts are a general strategy around the holiday. But you can be even more targeted by segmenting your offers. You could have something in the coffee category by offering 25% off coffee capsules when you buy a Nespresso, or BOGOF on DVDs when you buy a DVD player.
- Anca Sometimes the discounts don’t need to be necessarily about your products. See this F&M example which offered something of value exclusively to their email subscribers. In this case, £5 tickets for ice-skating.
- Anca You can also have CTAs based on the benefits they bring your subscribers. If I get an email like this on Christmas day, I’ll definitely click to treat myself using the money I received for Christmas. There’s no such thing as too many presents!
- Anca Similar to the previous point, suggest bundles that would save them time. Buying a French Press, why not take our special coffee selection or a set of cup and saucers with us. Suggestions make our customers’ life easier.
- Dan I loved these little facts we found out. Apparently 1 out of every 10 items given as a gift at Christmas is broken by New Years. And a massive 7 out of 10 are broken by the next Christmas. What can you smell? You can smell opportunity. Seems like a good reason to offer extended warranties – or you could offer the same products to people the following Christmas too. There are some items you can sell to people more than once.
- Dan Now let’s look at some creative email ideas to grab attention.
- Dan The key is to keep things short and sweet. Peoples attention spans are short, and so is the time they have. Get to the point, and make it clear what the email is about.
- Dan This is a good idea to test. How do festively-themed images stack up against ordinary ones? Will you get more sales on something because it’s sitting in a pile of snow? Will holly perched on top of your key product lead to bigger success?
- Anca Well, yes Dan, but remember to keep things simple too. Too many reindeer and snow flakes and the subscribers will miss the message. This email from Monsoon shows exactly how you can be subtle and festive at the same time. A little holly there, a little sparkle here and you’re done.
- Anca And don’t just make the images festive. Make use of copy and call-to-action buttons too. Like we have in this example from Starbucks. Instead of saying: ‘try our new drink’, they’re enticing me to ‘drink up the season’. But don’t just trust me, test! Which things convert more customers for you?
- Anca If you want to be a bit more advanced, and go beyond copy personalisation, use image personalisation. Costa – Starbucks’ equivalent in the UK - did this last year for a competition: Asked the public to submit festive photos to be included in a national campaign Then notified the winners by email with the exact photo they had submitted and their name Doesn’t that feel a bit more personal? I love it when email impresses me.
- Anca Or you can add some sparkle by using animated GIFs. Monsoon did this very subtly with the sparkle on the dress…
- Anca ..or you can bring more festive cheer like Costa did. Either way, it will draw the attention of your subscribers and help you cut-through in the inbox.
- Anca A lot of people buy subscriptions for their loved ones to their favourite magazines for Christmas. Why not make use of the data you have and make that part of your lifecycle campaigns? Email the person who bought the gift ‘Would you like to gift this magazine again?’ Establish a time limit when you’re going to wait to see if they purchase it again If they don’t, email the person who received the gift to see if they’d like to renew instead
- Anca Last year, £1.5 billion was left on the table by retailers this holiday season in the form of abandoned baskets. (From http://internetretailing.net/2014/01/despite-mobile-christmas-boom-payments-loses-retails-1-5bn-in-abandoned-carts-suggest-study/) But technology can help us gain those sales back by sending a simple email reminder. Make it creative, you could have a subject line like : ‘A present fell of Santa’s slegh’ And take those sales back. According to the Centre for Retail Research, the UK holds the biggest mobile commerce market in Europe, with a predicted spend of £7.9 billion this year. Go get them! (http://www.offerpop.com/resources/blog/uk-christmas-marketing-trends-matter/)
- Anca Our research has shown that 67% of customers abandon baskets. But after sending them an automated email with a.b. technology, about 20% return to purchase.
- Excellent! Time for some questions then.