Email marketing tips for holidays

2. ‘TIS THE SEASON FOR BETTER EMAIL
It’s beginning to look a lot like…the holiday shopping season. And that means your Email,
Mobile, Social, and Sites campaigns should be in top form to capture the most engagement—
and revenue—from your subscribers. But no one has time to revamp their entire email
program with such little time left until the season’s actually here. Luckily, we’ve come up with
a list of quick wins you can complete TODAY—or even over your lunch break—to make a big
impact without spending more time or resources. Now that’s something to celebrate.
What's Inside?
4 Make Simple Design Changes to Increase Conversion
6 Include Clear Calls-to-Action
7 Enable Subscribers to Share Your Emails With Friends
8 Implement a Welcome Email Strategy
9 Extend Personalization From Email to Landing Page
© ExactTarget All rights reserved 01-092010

3. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS FOR QUICK WINS AND MORE REVENUE
HOLIDAY
It’s that time of year again. No, not the holiday
season itself, but the time to start preparing for
it. Every year, retailers across the world prepare
EMAIL
for the most anticipated—and most profitable—
time of their fiscal year. And as holiday sales for
online retail are expected to increase by a hefty
TIPS
15% this year1, it’s imperative that companies are
prepared with an effective email marketing strategy
to capture the most engagement—and revenue—
from subscribers.
Already have your holiday email marketing plan
“locked down?” Don’t have time to “break pace” with drastic changes? Not to worry. Our own “elves” here
at ExactTarget have been hard at work to bring you five easy, quick wins that you can complete TODAY
to make a big impact this holiday season. This report highlights the easy-to-implement tactics you can
make to quickly improve everything from email design, sharing to social networks, and personalization
of messages in order to make the 2010 holiday shopping season merry for your company—and your
bottom line.
So before you haul out the holly or hang any wreaths, use these five tips to get on “the good list” and use
your interactive messages to win more business this holiday season. Take our word for it—these small
things will make a BIG impact on your holiday sales this year.
1
Deloitte. “Deloitte Forecasts a 2 Percent Increase in Holiday Sales.” Retail Press Release. Deloitte Audit, Consult-
ing, Financial Advisory, Risk Management and Tax Services. 21 Sept. 2010. Accessed 30 Sept. 2010. <https://www.
deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/press/af4eb7a64b33b210VgnVCM3000001c56f00aRCRD.htm>.
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4. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
MAKE SIMPLE DESIGN CHANGES TO INCREASE CONVERSION
1 As consumers, we’re well aware of upcoming holidays. We see evidence of this in stores
everywhere as decorations and holiday-specific products hit the shelves two months (or more) prior to
the actual holiday. So between competing print ads, television commercials, and interactive messages,
how can you stand out in your subscriber’s inbox? Design.
By optimizing holiday emails with relevant navigation bars and graphics, holiday shopping will seem
more relevant to your subscribers, resulting in increased engagement and revenue. Consider some of
these helpful tricks:
ENGAGING SUBJECT LINES. Often, the subject
line is the only opportunity you have to influence the
subscriber before they decide to open your email—or PLAYING FAVORITES
delete it. Creating interesting subject lines, and giving Our latest SUBSCRIBERS, FANS &
readers a brief summary of what’s inside is imperative FOLLOWERS research reveals that 49%
for optimal click-through rates, engagement, and of consumers “always” open emails
(ultimately) profitability. This holiday season, instead from their “favorite” companies. Become
of using a generic subject line like “Holiday Savings one by delivering relevant content that’s
Inside!” try a more engaging—and enticing—subject specific to your customers’ interests. Text
line like “NAME, We Left A Gift In Your Stocking…” RESEARCH (space) and your email address
With personalization, subscribers will feel like they to 38767 (e.g. RESEARCH name@company.
have a better connection to your company, and the com) to receive the report today.
edgier copy will leave them more curious to open
your email.
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5. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
HOLIDAY MOTIF. Help your subscribers get in the holiday shopping spirit by creating winter and
holiday-themed graphics and headers. Consider enhancing your color scheme by adding holiday
colors or using your own brand colors in a seasonal light. With help from ExactTarget Platinum Reseller
Digital Evolution Group, Helzberg Diamonds enhanced their 2009 holiday campaign by optimizing the
navigation bar, which generated 37.7% of the overall unique clicks within the email (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Helzberg
Diamonds’ 2009
holiday email
campaign performed
better by optimizing
the navigation bar,
which received 37.7%
of unique clicks within
the email.
HOLIDAY COUNTDOWN. Not only will a “Holiday Countdown” on your emails excite your subscribers
about the approaching season, but it will also remind them that their time to shop is running out. It
doesn’t have to specifically refer to “days until the holiday” either. Your countdown can track the days
until your free shipping offer runs out or until they can order items and still ensure their package will
make it in time for the holidays. Either way, countdowns create a sense of urgency, helping you capture
revenue sooner.
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6. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
2 INCLUDE CLEAR CALLS-TO-ACTION
You’ve got their interest. Now what? Maximize your subscriber engagement with a clear call-
to-action. What is it that you want readers to do? Visit your website? Check out today’s deals? Update
their information in the subscription center? Ask and you shall receive. Subscribers won’t do what you
hope they’ll do unless it’s clear what the objective of the message is. You want your subscribers to
take action, so don’t be afraid to ask. Messages in the upper left quadrant of the email are seen first
and therefore perform very well. Attention-grabbing (but not overdone) colors and graphics, enticing
clicks, and relevant copy also enhance the email by drawing the reader’s eye to a particular spot you
want them to see.
Helzberg Diamonds and Digital Evolution Group know that calls-to-action can make or break the success
of a campaign. In a promotional email targeted at bridal prospects, Helzberg recognized a significant
increase in click-through rates based on the replacement of one word (Figure 2). By encouraging
subscribers to “Shop Now” instead of “Buy Now,” Helzberg saw a much better response from customers,
who were more interested in browsing first than buying right away. But, beware. Simply changing out
copy without reason won’t produce results for your campaigns—especially since different tactics work
for different industries. You must test verbiage, placement, hierarchy, and color of your messages, letting
the results of the call-to-action that performed best drive future decisions.
Figure 2: Helzberg tested copy in a promotional email to bridal prospects to find that customers were more
responsive to “Shop Now” than “Buy Now”
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7. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
3 ENABLE SUBSCRIBERS TO SHARE YOUR EMAILS WITH FRIENDS
Research shows that consumers are more inclined to open an email from a friend than from a WANT TO
company. And with ExactTarget Social Forward, subscribers can take control of the content you send
them by passing it along to their friends on Facebook, Twitter, and more than 20 other social sites. By
ADD 45,000
giving your customers this control, you can extend the reach of your marketing messages, drive deeper FANS ON
engagement with customers and their online communities, and build your subscriber list—all with less FACEBOOK?
effort on your part. So how can you start enabling subscribers to share your holiday emails?
In the first three
SHARE THIS INTEGRATION. Our integration with ShareThis makes it easy for your subscribers to days of Papa
share content to over 20 online networks and communities, while providing you the metrics you need to John’s use of
create a strategy around your social content (Figure 3). ExactTarget’s
Social Forward
feature in its
NCAA-themed
email campaign,
the company
added more than
45,000 fans on
Facebook, bringing
Figure 3: Within the ExactTarget application, you can easily choose which social networks to include in your emails the total number
with Social Forward. to more than
270,000.
FORWARD TO A FRIEND. Forward to a Friend enables subscribers to include a personal note about
your message and send it on to their friends via email (Figure 4). You’ll be able to track how many times
your message was forwarded and how many new subscribers you’ve gained as a result.
Figure 4: Including
the “Forward to a
Friend” feature in your
email headers enables
subscribers to share your
content with others.
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8. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
4 IMPLEMENT A WELCOME EMAIL STRATEGY
As new shoppers come across your site this
holiday season, they may be interested in joining your
email club or signing up for a special offer. How will you
engage them and ensure that they won’t later opt out? By
implementing a welcome email strategy, your customers
will feel appreciated and personally connected to your
company—encouraging them to continue shopping on
your site.
But don’t stop there. Use your welcome emails as an
opportunity to provide product recommendations, friends
and family discounts, and additional coupons—pleasing
your new subscriber and helping you drive more traffic
back to your site (Figure 5). Consider capturing user
preferences with your welcome emails to help you build a
database of subscriber information to keep them engaged
all year round.
When you’re ready to put your data to good use, make
your welcome email strategy even easier by implementing
an automatic drip campaign. With automation, you can
execute programs without the hassle of manual setup each Figure 5: ULTA Cosmetics entices subscribers to open the
and every time you send, freeing up time and resources to welcome email by offering a 20% off coupon, helping drive
traffic back to their site.
allocate elsewhere during the busy holiday season.
DID YOU KNOW…
According to a study by MarketingSherpa, your welcome email is likely to be the most-opened email
you send. Furthermore, our SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS research reveals that 67% of consumers
subscribe to email in order to receive discounts and promotions. Take advantage of this consumer
motivation by enticing subscribers back to your website with product recommendation, friends and family
discounts, and seasonal coupons.
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9. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
5 EXTEND PERSONALIZATION FROM EMAIL TO LANDING PAGE
There never seems to be enough time around
the holidays. And as a marketer, you’re probably busy
juggling ad campaigns and the stress of meeting
GET PERSONAL
rigorous holiday sales goals. So it’s time to figure Consumers expect—and deserve—relevant
out where you can save a few extra minutes. How do communications from you. After all, 41%
personalized landing pages in under a minute sound? of U.S. internet users threatened to stop
buying from companies that sent irrelevant
With ExactTarget Landing Pages, creating static,
messages, according to a recent CMO
personalized, and dynamic coupons for your subscribers
Council study. Personalizing your landing
to redeem online or in stores is easy. Rather than leaving
pages is an easy way to ensure customer
subscribers to delete your email or act on their own accord,
engagement—and with ExactTarget’s 60+
provide a personalized path to a Landing Page where you
integrations with the world’s top technology
can keep them oriented, accentuate your call to action,
companies, easily accessing the right
and capture a greater conversion rate. (Plus, subscribers
subscriber data is simple.
won’t have to waste time—and patience—printing off your
entire email. They can just go directly to a personalized
landing page with their coupon waiting.)
Take it from regional restaurant chain Eat’n Park, who
cut online coupon creation down to less than a minute.
With pre-set templates in ExactTarget, all Eat’n Park
has to do is swap out old content with new information.
And because landing pages and email are connected in Figure 6: With
one place with ExactTarget, Eat’n Park can incorporate ExactTarget
subscriber attributes into their coupons without leaving Landing Pages,
the ExactTarget platform (Figure 6). Since taking Eat’n Park can add
personalization
advantage of ExactTarget Landing Pages, Eat’n to coupons and
Park has saved time and boosted click-through birthday messages
rates from 9% to 55%. in under a minute.
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10. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
ENOUGH TALK. IT’S TIME FOR ACTION.
Regardless of your organization’s size, industry, or business challenge, these five easy tips leave you armed
with actionable ways you can improve your holiday email marketing program—TODAY. As the busy holiday
shopping season gets closer and closer, don’t forget to:
1. Make Simple Design Changes to Increase Conversion
2. Include Clear Calls-to-Action
3. Enable Subscribers to Share Your Emails With Friends
4. Implement a Welcome Email Strategy
5. Extend Personalization From Email to Landing Page
The results will be greater customer engagement despite holiday ad clutter, increased revenue, and boosted
ROI—all without taking up more of your time and resources.
NEED HELP PUTTING THESE 5 TIPS INTO ACTION?
We’re here to make it easier for you. Call 1.866.362.4538 or visit www.ExactTarget.com to learn how you
can achieve phenomenal business results today.
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11. 5 HOLIDAY EMAIL TIPS www.ExactTarget.com
READY TO GET REAL?
The smartest marketers know the key to joining the conversation is to understand who they’re talking to—using
real-time data to power all customer interactions across Email, Mobile, Social, and Sites.
With the launch of the ExactTarget Interactive Marketing Hub™, every organization will have the power to
engage in an integrated, real-time conversation with their customers across Email, Mobile, Social, and Sites—all
through a single, elegantly-designed dashboard.
Real [time] Manage campaigns in real time with an at-a-glance look at email status, automations, and
customer interactions—right as they’re happening.
Real [engagement] Turn customer data into meaningful interactions through 60+ integrations with the
world’s top technology companies.
Real [smart marketing] With instant access to your data, messages and in-process campaigns, you’ll
never have to worry about lost revenue or decreased productivity. Achieve real results with lightning speed and
unwavering performance.
VISIT WWW.EXACTTARGET.COM/HUB TO EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF THE INTERACTIVE MARKETING HUB™.
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