The holidays are among us — is your business marketing strategy ready for it? ?
We’re in the mindset of finishing the year strong, and we hope you are too. Email campaigns (especially around the holidays) are an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. This is a great marketing effort to push your revenue dollars up, setting you up for success for the new year.

Not sure where to start? That’s what we’re here for.

With Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Christmas, and New Years around the corner — there are endless possibilities with the ways you can connect directly with your clients.

According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing drives $44 for every $1 spent. So for the naysayers who think email is dead (hint: it’s not!), let them know email is here to stay. In fact, there currently are over 3.7 billion email users in the world — this means the projected number of users by 2021 is 4.1 billion!

So if you’re hesitant about nailing down the perfect email campaign, we’ve got your back. We’ve gathered tips for you to implement a successful holiday email campaign.

1. Market to who matters.
What many businesses do wrong: they target the wrong audience. When your messages aren’t targeted towards the right people, you can actually be doing more damage to your brand than good. Commercial email, or ‘spam,’ irritates consumers (as it would for anyone who likes a clean inbox!) This can lead to unsubscriptions or negativity towards your brand name.

So, be sure to target your emails towards people who want to receive them and always follow data and privacy policies on your email campaign site.

2. Get personal.
Maybe you met your customer at your storefront, or maybe they’ve been a loyal client for quite some time now. Either way, the relationship is there and it needs to be maintained! Personalize your message. Share your story. Remind your longtime clients why you’ve been in business for so long or show your new clients the team behind the work. Being personal goes a long way and does wonders in improving customer relationships!

The details count — your brand is unique, so your emails should convey that too.

3. Offer a sense of urgency.
Giving your email recipients a deadline is one of the most effective ways to close a sale. Offering a sense of urgency can determine a faster conversion rate and captivate your target audience into taking action. However, it’s important to make sure your call-to-action holds value for the customer.

4. Promote new products or services.
Have something to promote? Here’s some good insight on B2C marketing statistics — 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. This is huge when considering the ROI your business can generate when crafting an email marketing campaign.

Additionally, be sure to add content that will engage your audience, rather than try to sell them on something. After all, 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success.

5. Gain insight on what works (and what doesn’t).
Another benefit of crafting an email marketing campaign is that it gives you metrics on how well your campaign emails are performing. These insights will help you market smarter and better in the future. Nowadays, many email campaign sites will let you see how many people clicked through on which links.

Maybe you’ll realize some links didn’t perform as well as others; when it comes down to decreasing unsubscription rates, this type of information is something worth investigating.

What many businesses do wrong: they don’t analyze the performance to improve future campaigns. Think you’re done once you hit send? Think again! There’s always room for improvement, especially when you have the unique opportunity to learn from your customers. By analyzing the performance regarding your email marketing KPIs, you’re able to find more innovative and creative ways to engage your audience.

The best part? Not only will analyzing your performance tailor better email marketing campaigns in the future, but it will help you learn key factors in improving every aspect of your business!

Nifty Tips!
Now that you know the benefits of launching email marketing campaigns for your small business, we have some nifty tips for those of you who want to go the extra mile!

* Pick a template and stick with it — it’s all about brand consistency!
* Include links to social media profiles in your emails.
* Send test emails to fresh eyes before officially hitting send to your audience — grammar mistakes can slip through the cracks (and decrease credibility!)

If you don’t have the time or resources to implement a successful email marketing campaign, connect with our team. That’s what we’re here for, and we’d love to help.