The vacation season represents a time of heightened anticipation—whether or not you’re a shopper or a marketer. For retailers, November and December account for about 19% of complete annual gross sales. And the Nationwide Retail Federation estimates American companies will earn over $960 billion throughout the 2022 vacation push. In different phrases, the stakes are excessive. 

There’s nonetheless time to formulate your e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan and get your candy piece of the pie. With the correct e mail advertising and marketing automation technique, you may sit back by the fireplace very quickly, sipping cocoa in fuzzy pajamas whereas the techniques you’ve put in place execute your campaigns to success.

Earlier than we leap into this text, learn this piece first in case you want a primer on what e mail automation is—and why you must use it.

3 advantages of e mail advertising and marketing automation

Writing and sending particular person emails in a series-long vacation advertising and marketing marketing campaign is usually a tedious, time-consuming course of. Nevertheless, the perfect e mail advertising and marketing campaigns are automated, as software program now exists to free you from the mundane execution-related duties. 

Among the essential enterprise objectives automating vacation season emails might help with embody boosting top-funnel consciousness, conserving sources, or setting a powerful basis for achievement in 2024.

1. Enhance model consciousness in a customized means

Get your model title into shopper inboxes to remain prime of thoughts as customers put together their lists.

Because of its cost-effectiveness and attain, e mail stays the first buyer acquisition technique for retailers over the 2022 vacation season—employed by 89% of enormous firms and 96% of small firms. And whereas social and textual content advertising and marketing stay fashionable, 70% of customers say e mail continues to be their most well-liked channel for communication.  

2. Save money and time

With $36 returned for each greenback spent, e mail advertising and marketing offers cost-effective promoting. What’s extra, research present e mail automation will increase productiveness by 20%—supplying you with much more bang on your buck. With e mail campaigns working within the background, you’ll have extra time to focus your consideration on inventive and strategic work. 

3. Construct repeat success

Automated or not, constructing an e mail advertising and marketing plan does require effort and time. The excellent news is that your e mail advertising and marketing automation technique is reusable. Save templates, course of automations, and deployment schedules to make use of subsequent Black Friday and Cyber Monday—or maybe sooner with Boxing Day, Valentine’s Day, and Presidents’ Day gross sales proper across the nook. 

Presents that maintain giving: 10 automated vacation e mail examples

Your e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan could embody a single kind of e mail or many. Listed here are 10 inspirational vacation e mail advertising and marketing concepts to make your vacation season merry and shiny.

1. Arrange deserted cart triggered workflows

Many automated emails are behavior-triggered, that means a system tracks consumer searching, clicking, and shopping for actions throughout your web site and allows you to know when to ship advertising and marketing emails. For example, you may set your system to ship an deserted cart e mail as soon as a number of gadgets have been sitting within the cart for twenty-four hours. 

Consumers could abandon their carts for quite a few causes—higher choices elsewhere, a irritating checkout course of, a scarcity of cost choices, or pricey delivery, for example. So in your abandonment e mail, take into account together with a coupon code or a free delivery supply to beat objections. 

Plus, the festive vacation season has many customers feeling beneficiant. It’s a really perfect time to achieve out to contacts you haven’t engaged with shortly, as knowledge suggests buyer reactivation tends to extend beginning round Black Friday.

2. Clear up and section your contact lists

In case you’re continuously attempting to e mail invalid or inactive e mail addresses, mailbox suppliers could begin sending your correspondence on to spam folders. For that reason, cleansing your contact lists must be a precedence quite than an afterthought. In fact, guide cleansing could be tedious and time-consuming work. 

Fortuitously, you may automate:

• Deliverability troubleshooting: With Twilio SendGrid’s deliverability insights, you may automate the e-mail record cleansing course of and establish problematic addresses earlier than compromising deliverability. 
• Buyer segmentation: With SendGrid’s e mail record administration, you may import buyer knowledge to achieve full image visibility. Then, use these buyer insights to create strategic segments. For example, you may tag audiences into segments based mostly on demographics, geographic location, matters of curiosity, or reward tier.
• Engagement monitoring: With SendGrid, you may observe outcomes to yield the perfect e mail advertising and marketing campaigns, as you’ll know when to ship advertising and marketing emails and which messages are most probably to resonate.

3. Create a vacation e mail calendar and schedule your campaigns

By outlining vacation emails weeks, if not months, prematurely, you may set up your groups and set the tone with customers for a season of promotions, bulletins, and communications. 

When to ship advertising and marketing emails is a traditional quandary. Nevertheless, spacing out your messages ends in a well-choreographed marketing campaign you may dazzle and maintain captivation. 

For example, you may create an e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan based mostly on huge gross sales days like Black Friday, Small Enterprise Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day. Otherwise you may launch a “12 Days of Christmas” promotion sequence that runs each day all through December.

Need assistance planning? Let SendGrid’s e mail advertising and marketing calendar be your information. When you resolve on a sending schedule, SendGrid offers 3 methods to advance-schedule your emails, whether or not by means of Advertising and marketing Campaigns, the SMTP API header, or the API itself.

4. Automate a welcome sequence for brand new subscribers

Customized welcome emails boast a mean 50% open price, so take into account this set off a greatest follow in e mail advertising and marketing automation technique. Past a thanks, your welcome e mail ought to, on the very least, present an attractive nugget of invaluable info and invite subscribers to browse. 

Contemplate this easy welcome e mail from Harry’s, a shaving equipment model for males:

Otherwise you may resolve to sweeten the e-mail additional with useful suggestions, how-to tutorials associated to a purchase order, customized content material suggestions based mostly on searching historical past, or a particular supply. Even an incentive as modest as free delivery can encourage seasonal patrons to spend 30% extra. Take a look at Chapter 2 for step-by-step directions on find out how to implement welcome emails with SendGrid. 

5. Set up a drip marketing campaign round your vacation present information or e-book

Holidays supply distinctive alternatives to design and write inventive content material that customers discover helpful. For example, an unique gated content material obtain is a simple automation set off the place leads enter their contact info to obtain entry to a vacation present information. Do you know present guides yield 48% extra transactions than a typical promotional e mail? 

Take a look at this present information from Carter’s, which breaks down fashionable buys by class:

After giving customers a day or 2 to digest your present information, you may proceed your e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan by sending buyer evaluations and testimonials, associated weblog posts, or a particular supply to solidify the sale. See Chapter 4 for step-by-step instructions on find out how to arrange a customized automation based mostly on downloaded content material. 

6. Ship a thanks and share a deal

This time of yr, everyone seems to be in search of a deal—and a deal could be the distinction between buying with you and buying with a competitor. It’s straightforward to get wrapped up within the shiny lights—focusing all of your efforts on shiny, new customers—but take into accout, present clients spend 67% extra on common than new clients, making them value courting. 

Meaning maintain tabs in your most frequent clients and large spenders. Present your appreciation by automating a purchase-triggered e mail that makes reward members really feel like VIPs with unique, tier-based promotions and experiences. 

Need assistance designing your thanks message? Take a look at SendGrid’s free vacation thanks e mail template.

7. Enhance engagement on your vacation occasion with a drip marketing campaign

Need to plan an in-person occasion this yr? Remember to develop a enjoyable e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan to construct consciousness and attendance. Your message ought to supply a preview of what customers can browse and what offers they’ll discover. And today, most emails additionally supply on-line buying options to in-person occasions.

As you may see with the instance above, e mail is a wonderful medium for breaking down advanced promotional tiers forward of time to assist customers plan their methods and alleviate confusion at checkout time. See Chapter 3 for particulars on find out how to arrange your occasion promotion e mail sequence. 

8. Use vacation e mail templates with built-in personalization

Make the most of e mail advertising and marketing templates to automate the design course of. And inside a couple of minutes, you may have the right vacation e mail able to go, whether or not you’d like to advertise present concepts or supply last-minute reductions.

SendGrid’s e mail editor permits you to construct with drag-and-drop instruments, code, or a hybrid. Plus, there are many responsive vacation e mail templates to select from, regardless of your type desire.

9. Accumulate analytics knowledge to establish top-performing emails

The e-mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan is barely a part of automation’s full vary of worth. Automation is about rather more than merely scheduling and sending advertising and marketing messages. In actual fact, a number of the Most worthy automation work occurs behind the scenes as customers open, click on, and browse your vacation advertising and marketing emails. The perfect e mail advertising and marketing campaigns are decided by knowledge. 

With SendGrid’s e mail statistics, you’ll seize invaluable viewers insights, maintain tabs on deliverability, and perceive how emails carry out. To not point out built-in testing means that you can check completely different e mail topic traces, presents, and call-to-action buttons, making success repeatable.

10. Comply with up after the vacations to encourage connection

It’s straightforward to consider December 25 because the grand finale of the vacation season—but Google discovered 20% of on-line retailer visitors in December occurs within the 6 days after Christmas. However earlier than respiration an enormous sigh of aid, take into account how one can maintain the momentum of the height buying season going.

“Purchase your self the present you didn’t get” promotions could be very profitable, particularly when paired with a particular supply that encourages customers to deal with themselves or buy for the brand new yr. 

See how slippers model mahabis retains the celebration going:

Automate your emails to spice up vacation gross sales with Twilio SendGrid

From design to deliverability, Twilio SendGrid has all the e-mail advertising and marketing automation technique suggestions and instruments it’s essential to efficiently navigate the vacation push. Spend a couple of minutes establishing and let our infrastructure care for your campaigns.

For extra e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign plan suggestions:

With the vacations already underway, there’s no time like the current to get began. SendGrid’s Advertising and marketing Campaigns Free Plan permits you to create a sign-up kind, ship single emails, A/B check, and automate as much as 6,000 messages monthly—freed from cost. That’s proper, scaling your e mail advertising and marketing automation technique is reasonably priced and straightforward. Contact our Gross sales staff for particulars.