7 Tips for Writing Effective Holiday Sales Emails
Despite the financial losses induced by the pandemic, the 2020 winter holiday season brought in 777.3 billion dollars worth of retail sales — an increase of 58.7 billion dollars in just one year.
Though the ‘holiday quarter’ tends to be the most profitable of the year, brands can capitalize on holidays all year long.
The problem? Millions of brands race to compete for market share during the holidays — fighting for consumer attention.
So what does it take to stand out in a sea of other brands marketing during the holidays?
The answer is simple: Get as close to your ideal customer as possible.
One of the best ways to do that is by creating an email marketing strategy. In fact, high converting sales emails are one of the most effective methods used in b2b marketing today.
Getting in front of your ideal audience directly in their inboxes during the holidays is a great way to boost sales.
But not if your emails are too salesy and fall flat. So in this article, we’re sharing seven tips for writing effective holiday sales emails.
1. Conduct consumer behavior research
Conducting consumer behavior research before planning your holiday marketing emails is a must.
There’s no point in trying to sell someone something they don’t want when you can sell them something they’ve been eyeing for weeks.
Conducting consumer behavior research gives you the insight you need to understand your customers’ buying habits, preferences, and pain points.
It shows you what your customers are interested in buying, which products they’ve bought in the past, and what roadblocks they’ve faced in the process.
2. Research holidays you’d like to create content for
To have ample time to plan your holiday content, you’ll need to decide which holidays you’d like to capitalize on and why.
Start the process by researching all of the federal holidays coming up in the US for 2022.
Take a look at other holidays coming up, too, such as religious holidays and calendar holidays like Halloween or National Cupcake Day.
Then, consider your target customer and your brand. Which holidays do your customers value most? Which holidays apply to your brand in a meaningful way? For instance, if you sell organic coffee, National Coffee Day is an important holiday for your brand.
Next, jot down a list of holidays you’d like to target and why they make sense. Include a specific goal for each holiday on your list, too.
Finally, use Google Trends to identify when your customers tend to start searching for holiday content. Refer to those time frames to plan out your email send dates.
3. Consider hiring a writing service
Effective content marketing is a giant process.
Between the research, strategic planning, and operational management it takes to produce content, companies can spread themselves too thin.
Not to mention the expertise required to produce high-converting sales copy.
Your emails won’t drive sales unless they’re written in a way that engages your audience and drives them to take action.
If you’re concerned your in-house team lacks the experience to write effective sales emails or other content marketing content, consider using a writing service.
4. Map out your holiday content and promotions
Mapping out email campaigns is important. But if your email campaigns aren’t strategically connected to your marketing workflows, they may be a waste of time.
Before writing holiday sales emails, take your entire holiday marketing plan into account.
Look at everything you’ve planned for your blog, social channels, website, ads, funnels — everything.
Then, consider how your email marketing strategy will fit into your holiday marketing plan.
In other words, look for opportunities to connect channels together.
For instance, it may be a good idea to weave your holiday contests on Instagram into your sales emails. You can also grab snippets from your holiday blog posts and reference them in your emails.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, consider hiring a marketing strategist that specializes in multi-channel marketing to design a plan for you.
5. Follow copywriting best practices
Considering all of the effort you’ve put into planning your holiday content, the last thing you need is poor email copy.
The right email copy is the nudge your customers need to come forward and make a purchase. It’s the magnet that draws your customers in and gets them interested in your offer.
- Think about what matters to your audience during the upcoming holiday.
- Come up with a relevant hook, like “order now for delivery by Christmas.”
- Edit and rewrite your subject line and call to action until they resonate.
If you don’t have the time to invest in mastering copywriting, we recommend hiring an experienced copywriter.
6. Create and include a holiday gift guide in your emails
Creating a holiday gift guide is an easy way to motivate your customers to peruse your offers.
Holiday gift guides help customers focus on your featured offers and help solve a major problem: gift buying fatigue.
Buying gifts can be a cumbersome, stressful process. By guiding your customers on which gifts to buy, you’re helping reduce their stress — and of course, boosting your sales.
Embedding your guide into your sales emails is a great holiday sales marketing tactic.
7. Use smart tools to optimize your sales emails
Optimizing your sales emails is pivotal to increasing your email open rates and reducing your bounce rates.
You can use smart tools to fix your grammar, reach the right recipient, and more.
- Double-check all recipient addresses: Use an email address verifier tool, like Email Hippo, to make sure your recipients have valid email addresses before sending sales emails.
- Proofread your email copy: Use a proofreading tool, like Grammarly, to make sure your email copy is free of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Use a readability tool, like Hemingway, to make sure your copy is easy to read.
Here are a few more tips for optimizing your holiday sales emails by hand:
- Always add a call to action: Include an easy-to-spot deal, lead magnet, or offer in every sales email.
- Evaluate your sender name and email: Build trust with your sender email by sticking with one sender name. Avoid sending emails from a ‘do not reply’ sender address.
- Embed social proof: Find natural ways to integrate customer testimonials, reviews, and comments from raving fans into your sales emails.
- Conduct subject line and preheader text research: Research high-converting holiday subject lines and preheader texts before adding them to your emails.
- Optimize for mobile responsiveness: Make sure your emails are optimized for mobile use.
Wrap up
Despite the financial losses induced by the pandemic, retail sales reached new highs last holiday season.
Though winter holidays tend to be the most promising, brands can capitalize on a wide array of holidays throughout the year.
To stand out from the competition, we recommend using email marketing to get as close to your ideal customers as possible.
Follow the seven tips we shared to get a leg up on your holiday marketing in the year ahead.
About The Author
Brad Smith is the Founder of Codeless (a content production agency) and CEO at Wordable.io. His content has been highlighted by The New York Times, Business Insider, The Next Web, and thousands more.
7 Tips for Writing Effective Holiday Sales Emails
Learn 7 Tips for Writing Effective Holiday Sales Emails
2022 Federal Holidays
A list of the Federal Holidays coming up in 2022
Multichannel marketing
A diagram of how multichannel marketing works
Holiday Gift Guide
An example of marketing a Holiday Gift Guide