I recently had an opportunity to chat with some small business CEOs and the conversations merged into "Have you made your holiday promotional plans?" They urged me to do a column on giving some tips for this task.
My first tip is this. Now is the time to finish the plan. Yes, I know it is August, but you have a lot of potential income resting on your business's success over the next few months.
You may have created a killer holiday promotion – now it's time to let people know about it. Email for marketing is the perfect vehicle for your message, but, like all vehicles, you have to know how to drive it.
Sending an email is easy, right? You've probably sent or received one within the last 10 minutes. But sending out a promotional message along with millions of other companies can be tricky. How do you get people to open? How do you know your message is getting to people? SCORE content partner Bryan Caplan works with entrepreneurs around the world, learning and teaching digital marketing topics to help small businesses grow and succeed. Here are some of his key tips:
Set Goals. The holiday season is chaotic, and it's easy to lose your marketing focus amid all the hustle and bustle. To stay on task, you'll want to start by setting SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound – goals for your holiday marketing program. The beauty of SMART goals is that they make you accountable for any aspect of running your business.
Setting SMART goals starts with asking yourself a few questions about your email campaign:
- What do you want your recipients to do?
- How quickly do you want them to do it?
- How can you help them take that action in the inbox?
Understand your audience
Laser focus on your promotion. When you are crafting your marketing messaging, simplicity is key. These holiday consumers are overwhelmed with buying options, promotions, and sales; you do not want to contribute to their analysis paralysis by stuffing multiple thoughts into your email campaign.
Fight the urge to add in additional information, too many images, or other sales or promotions, so you can keep your reader laser-focused on the promotion at hand. By staying simple and avoiding analysis paralysis, you prevent overthinking and confusion.
Have a strong call to action. Every email, promotional or not, should have a clear call to action. Telling your reader exactly what you want them to do is especially important when you consider consumers' shrinking attention spans.
A call to action is simply a text link or button with instructions. Before you send, you'll want to decide what your call to action will be. Some effective calls to action for driving holiday purchases include "Buy now," "Shop now," "Claim your offer," "Grab yours today" and "Click here to buy."
Use that call to action in two or three instances in your email campaign to remind your readers what you want them to do.
Sense of urgency. If you want to capture the attention of a holiday shopper, consider adding a sense of urgency to your email campaign. You can do this with some good old-fashioned wording.
Use an exploding offer to lean into the "fear of missing out" on the deal: "This offer ends at midnight on Black Friday!" If time isn't the issue, you can allude to limited inventory. By leveraging a sense of urgency, you let the reader know they must act fast.
Send more. This may seem counter-intuitive, but you need to ramp up your email marketing efforts, especially during the holiday season. People expect to get emails, so don't think you're annoying them.
Each year about 40% of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween according to the National Retail Federation, so you should start sending more frequently — think weekly — starting in late September or early October.
By November, make it twice per week, and in the week leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you should send almost daily with a morning and evening email on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Then, ratchet back down to twice a week until Christmas.
Is it a lot of email campaigns? Yes, but you need to remember that your competitors and other businesses vying for holiday spending budgets are also increasing the volume of email for marketing their products, so to stay relevant, you need to send more.
Conclusion. Email marketing for your holiday promotions is a great way to get your message to prospective customers. Before starting, always make sure you set goals for your campaigns and do some research to better understand your audience. Keep your emails focused on your promotion with a clear call to action. And once you start sending, keep sending to stay relevant and top of mind.
Dean Swanson is a volunteer Certified SCORE Mentor and former SCORE chapter chairman, district director and regional vice president for the North West Region.
Comments
Post a Comment