2022 Holidays: how to guide your recipients toward making purchases

Whereas during Black Friday we are looking for a deal to give ourselves a present, during the weeks before the Christmas holidays we are rushing to buy gifts as soon as Black Friday has finished.

There is not much to add about the opportunities that December 25 offers to brands: our customers are already ready to buy, all we have to do is set the right strategy to transform their interest into a purchase.

Also the data confirms this: according to the National Retail Federation in 2021 the sales related to the holiday period (from November to December) amounted to $889 billion. The forecasts for this 2022 are for additional growth, with sales that will be between $942 and $960 billion. A total average growth of approx. 4.9% in the past 10 years.

There are various types of campaigns to use to guide recipients who are already well prepared to make a purchase by setting a truly effective and competitive Email Marketing strategy. The key is to start early and have the right timing.

But MailUp will take care of this, as with its free trial of the platform, you can use all the functions of the Plus edition for free for a period of 2 weeks and create templates for your Christmas emails with a few clicks (thanks to ready-to-use templates and the speed of the BEE drag&drop editor). You won’t even have to lose time in activating the platform or importing your recipients, because with MailUp these operations are very fast and do not require any specific IT knowledge.

Here are the campaigns we suggest you prepare for Christmas 2022:

• Christmas season launch campaign
• Loyalty campaign for faithful customers
• Last change campaign, a few days before Christmas
• Abandoned cart recovery campaign

We will see the timing for sending the emails, the content, levers to use, best practices and practical examples for each campaign. You will have all the information you need for preparing your campaigns.

And if you use MailUp, you will also have the tool for creating them in a short period of time (less than an afternoon) and with the ease that the platform is known for.

When → the first week of December

Find an idea that is creative and functional for organizing your (online) storefront with products recommended for the holidays. You can create, for example, new sections of your e-commerce (for her, for him, low cost gifts, chic ideas, etc.) and indicate them in your emails to show your Christmas suggestions to your recipients or to create gift guides and have them previewed in your messages.

Let those who receive your emails see what products they can purchase from you, rather than keeping your products hidden, it is a good incentive to buy.

This is an amusing idea that becomes even more effective if communicated with segmented emails.

What do you need?

• 1 catalog dedicated to Christmas, a new page of your store or simply your site reorganized
• 1 email campaign
• Segmentation tools to understand what to send to which target
• Customization tools such as the  Conditional Display, that allows displaying different products based on the target to which the recipient belongs.

What is the Conditional Display? A MailUp function that lets your customize the content of messages automatically, showing recipients only the content most suited to them so you don’t have to create a different email for each group of recipients. Imagine for example that you want to create an email for the new jeans collection available in your e-commerce store. Thanks to this function, you can show the men’s collection for your male users and the women’s collection to your female users.

Operations

• Create two variants of the email campaign: the first is a more classic version with creativity attuned to Christmas; the second recalls December 25th without the usual stereotypes (lights, Christmas trees, gifts and ribbons), but that still transmits the warmth of Christmas. Here is a good example:

• Set up an A/B test for a sample of recipients to see which of the two obtains better feedback in terms of opens, clicks and conversations
• Decide on the winning email campaign and send it out

When → the first two weeks of December

This is a great way to generate conversations and give a special treat to your best customers. For a campaign whose success is basically ensured, involve only customers that have been loyal in the past 12 months in the campaign.

This campaign is particularly useful during the season between November and December because, taking advantage of the natural impulse to shop for Christmas (which involves basically everyone), it makes it possible to convert customers into loyal customers.

You can send selections of your best products: the most sold or most searched during the year or last Christmas. In this way you can play it safe, maximizing the conversations based on the spontaneous selection created by the public. An example of text?

We want to reward you for your loyalty (but don’t tell anyone else)

A 15% discount for you on your next purchase

What do you need?

• 1 landing page
• 1 “best customer” trigger

Operations

• Create a landing page that is in line with your brand and enter the promotional code in an immediately visible position.
• Identify your group of best customers by using the integrations that allow you to connect systems such as e-commerce and CRM to the MailUp platform.
• Create a simple email with a copy that focuses on the privilege reserved to a few customers; then link the landing page to the call to action button.
• Trigger the automatic sending of the Best customer email.

When→ December 17

This is the classic now or never. By setting an automation, you can send a reminder to everyone who hasn’t opened the opening campaign.

In general, this type of campaign makes it possible to detect the (desperate) needs of those who haven’t yet been able to find the right gift, because they don’t have enough ideas or because they can’t find what they have in mind; but also detect those gifts decided on at the last moment for people to whom they hadn’t planned on giving a present. The “last-minute gift” label is very vast and includes a large number of people.

What do you need?

• 1 email campaign
• 1 SMS campaign
• 1 discount code

Operations

• Create an email campaign that makes the concept immediately visible, something that sounds like “Last call, with an additional discount and shipping guaranteed by New Year’s Eve.”
  Kelty did this rather well, indicating the time constraints (date and time) of the order so that delivery is guaranteed by Christmas. The New Custom email was just as effective.

• Finally, do not forget about the SMS channel, which is fundamental for guaranteeing that more than 90% of the messages will be opened.

When→ From December 27

Even if the majority of sales take place before Christmas, the Christmas shopping season extends until the first days of January. There are many people who are thinking about the January sales already before Christmas. Take advantage of how receptive customers are during Christmas to prepare the terrain for January.

Target emotions: the new year is always an occasion for starting over, showing a new version of yourself. They know that very well at Daniel Wellington, as their emails show:

What do you need?

• 1 Email campaign
• 1 Messaging Apps campaign
• The right degree of programming

Operations

• Schedule the activity around the first days of December. With MailUp you have all the tools for planning the campaigns
• Create an Email campaign with a design that moves away clearly from Christmas aesthetics and, as for the email shown above, gives a neutral idea of purification, a new year, a new start.

If scheduling is fundamental, it is just as true that in order to implement the strategies we have just seen it is possible to start also now, at the end of November. You are more than on time.

What you need is an overview, which subdivides and emphasizes emails and launches in a well-thought-out editorial plan , and of course the technology: ask for a free trial of MailUp. You can create and send your email and SMS campaigns for two weeks.

You don’t need anything else to give momentum to your end-of-year sales