MindComet

Holiday Email Strategies

The word “holiday” reminds most people of decorated trees, candy canes and over-stuffed turkeys.  But as we all know, holidays are spread throughout the entire year.  Granted, November and December epitomize holiday sales for most businesses, but there are other holidays that businesses can take advantage of - especially through the use of email marketing strategies.

Holiday email strategies are based on the past customers, using their buying habits as a means to generate more revenue.  Since these customers have supported your company in the past, it is likely that they will do so again, especially if the incentive is there.  More consumers are going online to shop for the holidays than ever before.  The simplicity of point and click is something that most people are taking advantage of when buying gifts.

For your holiday email strategy, send emails out to your established client base on a timed basis leading up to the final day that you can ship your products and still have it arrive at he client’s doorstep.  Secondly, you must send emails out on a shrinking time basis.  Meaning, you should send emails more frequently leading up to the holiday you’re marketing towards.

When you begin your email campaign, include minor incentives.  As you get closer to the final email offer, the incentives should gradually improve.  The more compelling the incentives are towards the end of the campaign, the more likely the customer will act on the deal.

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Posted by MindComet on Sep. 25, 2006

Time for Plan B

You missed your mark. Fell flat. Sometimes what an email marketer thinks will be a resounding success isn’t perceived that way by their audience. By learning how to recover quickly can help minimize that damage. Consider building a contingency plan for the following situations:

1. Weak List Targeting

2. Bad Offer

3. Deliverability Problems

Weak List Targeting

At one point, you may be required to reach a specific volume of people instead of an uber targeted or segmented list. But when your open rates are below 20% and your conversions are under 1% how can you recover?

Resend the message with a different subject line to two smaller segments of your original list. The two segments should be a group of people who failed to open the original message and a group who either opened the message and did not click through or a group who opened the message and did click through.

Bad Offer

When you send an offer that no one seems interested in, what can you do?

Consider repackaging your offer as an “exclusive offer” or as a preview. If there is little hope for your offer on its own, look for a value-add partner offering.

Deliverability Problems

Your campaigns have been running smoothly and then things come to a screeching halt. Your undeliverable rate sky-rockets. How can you fix it?

Deliverability testing should be a part of any email marketers production process. Testing will help identify issues before they become problems. By having a reputable delivery vendor can help discover the root of the problem and can assist in a resolution to get your messages in the inbox.

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Posted by MindComet on Sep. 11, 2006

Seven Days - Seven Rooms

When I am not wearing my Email Marketer Hat, I sometimes put my home improvement hat on. So, as you can imagine, I opted-in to receive email messages from Home Depot. Not only am I interested in their email campaigns, I’m also interested in what’s on sale. In their August newsletter there was an invitation to “Fall into Décor” Seven Days Seven Rooms.

“Sign up to receive an email every day for one week, each focused on a different room. It’s easy!” the copy read. “Starts August 24th”, “SIGN UP NOW”.

Because frequency is a concern of email marketers, I was impressed with Home Depot’s plan of setting a subscriber’s expectations of how many email messages would be received and how often, before ever signing up. I also liked that subscribers were told when the first message would be received.

Once I clicked the link, the well-designed opt-in page showed a timeline with the room that would be discussed on a particular day. Day One = Family / Living Room – Day Five = Home Office. The only information required to opt-in was an email address, proving that it really was easy to sign up.

How The Home Depot plans to leverage these email address for future communications will be interesting to see. As a current subscriber, I may continue to receive the same weekly and monthly messages, but what about subscribers that found the opt-in from The Home Depot website? I hope that The Home Depot remembers to ask for further permission before continuing to message to these names, yet it would be a shame to not have a plan in place to reach out to this group of people again – with proper permission.

The messages started on August 24th and came everyday like clockwork. The messages were full of interesting décor tips and links to purchase suggested merchandise from http://www.homedepot.com. Who knew The Home Depot sold a wide array of electronics and bedding online?

A disappointing aspect of this campaign was the inability to jump on board mid-campaign. As a test, I tried to sign up with an alternate email address. I never received any messages. As late as today the sign up page was still active with a message saying the messages would begin on August 24th. It was a missed opportunity for viral messaging and possible additional subscribers who were a day late to register for a compelling email marketing campaign.

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Posted by MindComet on Sep. 05, 2006