Holiday email marketing resources 2011
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Open rates, are you rising?
Fewer folks, unsubscribing
A beautiful sight,
We’re happy tonight,
Walking in an email wonderland.
It’s that time of year again…the 5th annual collection of articles and reports that help you plan and implement a winning holiday email marketing strategy.
Christmas and Kwanzaa occupy their traditional dates on the calendar (no surprises there), while Hanukkah begins this year on December 20th.
The following resources are all new for 2011. Below them you’ll find collections from previous years, which are obviously still worth exploring. Got suggestions for other resources? Just use the comments.
Happy Holidays. And keep this bookmarked: I’ll be adding new resources as they come online.
- Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season 2011: the big 51 page report from Chad White…full of information on what top retailers did last year, plus advice on how to approach timing, frequency and an array of seasonal email tactics.
- 6 tips and 6 sources of inspiration: big collection of links to sources of design and campaign inspiration, supplemented by a few tips on squeezing more out of the days leading up to December 25th.
- Planning for the holidays: a long list of questions to ask when reviewing what you did last time…thus laying the foundation for this season’s campaigns.
- Holidays ahead of time: advice for (small) business on what might go into holiday emails, with an emphasis on standing out from the typical “X%-off” promotions.
- Holiday retail email ideas: tips, suggestions and warnings on how to ramp up your email marketing in time for Q4 and then make more use of the seasonal opportunity.
- Top 10 steps: ideas for planning and preparing campaigns in advance of the holiday season.
- Top 12 dates: list of key dates and events around which to plan appropriate holiday messaging.
- A holiday marketing story: access a 10-page download outlining specific tactics and approaches to follow to get the most out of seasonal email campaigns.
- Here come the holidays: suggests you get optimization and testing done before the holiday rush.
- Holiday preparedness: 4 tips to help ensure seasonal success isn’t hampered by delivery issues.
- Holiday season will be bigger: brief tips on the overall approach to take to Q4.
- Retail email campaign planner: access a free and cute .pdf holiday campaign calendar off this (sales) page.
- Holiday email trends: offers predictions on the tactics retailers will favor and/or should take a closer look at.
- Holiday opt-ins: reviews all the places you should be promoting your email list to take advantage of increased interest in the holiday season.
- Ten steps: another collection of tips and suggestions.
- Everything holiday: a collection of resources for holiday email campaigns, such as clip art, templates, useful dates, downloadable guides, etc.
- Prepare for the holiday season: an eclectic mix of tips on strategy, design, copy approaches, etc.
- 7 holiday predictions: um…very detailed predictions of how holiday email marketing will pan out. Not just interesting in their own right, but also including optimization advice and tips.
- 12 days of Christmas: 12-part series on how to best exploit Q4 with email, with accompanying tip sheet. The link takes you to Part 1.
- The early emails: examples of the kind of emails that you might send to kick off the long holiday season.
- Interview with Linda Bustos: the e-commerce expert offers advice on a slew of topics, including timing, incentives, mobile, post-holiday messaging and much more.
- Tis the season to email?: Q&A feature covering themes like frequency, timing, “holiday value” and more.
- Holiday inbox planning: example of one company’s standalone “add us to your address list” campaigns, possibly designed to ensure good delivery rates over the critical shopping season.
- Ten email marketing tips: …for the holiday season. The title is a bit of a giveaway.
- B2C success: highlights a few key trends for the season and offers a few tips on what to offer, when and how.
- Festive foul-up or seasonal success: advice on strategy, design, frequency, use of data and much more. Includes a few animated examples of festive campaigns as well.
- Now is the time: …to increase volume. Lots of interesting ideas on extra emails you can send before the holiday season gets into full swing.
- Christmas email marketing: whitepaper with the results of a survey of consumers on their online Xmas shopping habits and email preferences. Also includes lots of tips on optimizing your Christmas email campaigns.
- 5 quick wins: as the title suggests, some quick tips to keep you on course over December.
- Top 5 tips: ditto, covering seasonal behavior, pricing preferences and more.
- Getting the most…: lots of advice and suggestions for how to answer a key question…just how do you differentiate your messages from all the other seasonal emails out there?
- Black Friday /Cyber Monday: how to prepare you and your team to get the most out of the email opportunity.
- Holiday copywriting and content: tips on ideas, structure and style for both email and social media.
- Christmas lookbook: 50 examples of seasonal emails, plus advice…nice!
- Holiday checklist: lists 12 things you need to have covered before you can send out that holiday email campaign and design.
- 7 weeks and counting: gives important dates and deadlines in November and December, while tying them into email campaign ideas.
- Understanding seasonality: suggests the topics and issues you need to cover when reviewing your holiday efforts in 2011, so you can do an even better job next year.
- Advice for the email marketer: a little different this one, since it offers tips on how to prepare for stressful holiday-related situations, such as email mistakes and unrealistic demands from senior management.
Previous “Holiday email marketing” editions:
The first four editions:
In 2008, I also interviewed various retail email experts for their specific advice:
- Getting ready and role models
- Frequency and focus
- Final days and follow-ups
- Not everyone buys/sells Christmas presents
Find related articles:
Permalink | September 23rd, 2011 | 11 Comments »
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11 comments on “Holiday email marketing resources 2011”
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Another great collection Mark;
Although it’s fairly common sense, I can’t see the dates for the ‘black days’ pre Christmas – ie: the last big on-line purchase date in time for delivery? Would that be worth listing here?
Andy – It’s a good idea, but I’m going to bow to the might of the Retail Email blog who seem to cover those dates and others better than I ever will!
There’s always one isn’t there?
(Not referring to the helpful Pre-Xmas discount incentive from Max, honest)
We did very closely controlled Multi-Variate testing last year across subject lines and offer types that shoe-horned in on-message and off-message references to “Holiday” terms and saw a very clear corrolation.
If the offer/content was not directly Holiday related and the content was “re-packaged” in an attempt to ride on the general interest, it significantly reduced interaction rates (opens and clicks) and increased opt out rates.
We saw the same effect when including “marketing industry” terms when addressing consumers (i.e. Black Friday).
There was no discernible difference in results even when using “Holiday” terms appropriately in subject lines and content, in fact differentiation came just ahead.
This resonates with your previous post Mark on the similarity of subject lines – try to avoid (over) popular serach terms as “faux” personalisation in email content and subject lines.
That’s very interesting Robin, thanks for sharing.
I wonder how many marketers are doing similar tests to see how “holidization” is working.
It reminds me of a local budget supermarket here that advertised their gift vouchers as “the perfect present for the person who has everything”. I don’t think I ever shopped there again.
P.S. Max’s kind discount offer has now fallen victim to my ever-ready finger and the “mark as spam” button.
I’ve never really thought of you as spam…
And to avoid confusion within the pedantic sections of the email community I suggest re-branding the posting of “holidized” promotions masquerading as comment as “Unicorn Meat”
http://bit.ly/rt6HsR
It could be (spuriosly) argued there is a degree of permission to post – just diffences of opinion on the content.
LOL.
I’m sure I have a policy somewhere on what constitutes comment spam and what does not. But it likely changes daily depending on how much sleep I got the previous night.
Hi- do you think this also goes for travel sites (like expedia, orbitz, cheapoair, etc) do you have any examples that would help?
I know it definitely relates for retail.
Great article!
Jen
great resource – useful to book mark for planning
Great article! We encourage our clients to significantly decrease the amount of emails they send to their customers, amongst other things, during the holiday season. Here are a few other tips:
http://www.drivingretention.com/holiday-email-marketing
Thanks Jessi – I added the link to the main post.
Email marketing is undoubtedly a very good strategy to exploit especially in holydays, it’s really interesting trend in sales for those special occasions, people taking advantage of these resources are exploited, while many others do not even know .
Great contribution Friend
Greetings.
que es el amor