A guide to planning a Christmas email marketing campaign

The 10 weeks before Christmas are usually the busiest selling period for online retailers. It is also the time of year that retailers should stand out from other online stores to make the most of the shopping season. Take a look at this guide to planning your Christmas email marketing campaigns and maximise your selling potential.

• Send email campaigns early

Customers will be thinking about Christmas well before your busiest selling period of November - December. By emailing them early you can get them thinking about your products and services whilst they are thinking about what to get family and friends as presents.

• Send campaigns right up until Christmas

Customers will buy online every day of the year, including Christmas Day! Therefore, there's no need to stop sending email campaigns actually over the Christmas period.

• Alter your sales message

Your customers may usually buy your products and services for themselves, until Christmas when they will be buying them as gifts for others. You need to change your newsletters to reflect this. Perhaps feature gift recommendations for family members.

• Check what people bought from you the same time last year

You may want to try including similar products, upgrades, accessories or new additions to the range of products which sold well last Christmas.

• Implement a testing plan

Before your Christmas email campaigns are sent out, make sure that you have tested differentt subject lines, calls to action and product or service ranges to see which ordinarily give you good results. These should then work even better in the run up to Christmas.

• The subject line is crucial in Christmas email campaigns

Your recipients are likely to be inundated with promotions in the few weeks before Christmas. You therefore need to make your email stand out within their inbox so that it doesn't get lost amongst all of the others. By doing this you need to use a subject line that will make your recipient open the email. Try the following in your subject lines:

- Inserting relevant product names that may be of interest to your recipients.
- Creating a sense of urgency. Make your recipients feel that they must buy now before stock runs out or to make sure they receive their goods before Christmas.
- Including a unique selling point. Can you offer free delivery? Guaranteed stock?

• Drive further sales

Don't just stop emailing recipients when they have bought from your website. Keep sending them relevant newsletters to try and encourage further sales.

• Retain new customers

You may create a number of new customers over the Christmas period. Make sure you don't lose these...try offering them incentives to buy from you in the future. Perhaps offer a voucher for use in the new year to encourage them to buy from you again.

For more tips on email marketing visit the eShoutz website.