A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Your Holiday Emails [Free Guide]
Building a marketing plan and strategy is critical for your business to stay on track and for your team to maintain sanity. Holiday sales have always been strong, as most consumers are spending lots of time shopping!
According to the National Retail Foundation, holiday sales are set to increase again for 2022. In order to prepare your business for this year’s holiday season, go through our step-by-step guide and get ready to have some shoppers!
Step 1: Start with last year if you can.
A good place to start your holiday planning is to take a closer look at what performed (and didn’t perform) last year. What campaigns did you run last year? How did they perform?
Take a moment to look through your data and make some notes. Find metrics to quantify performance: sales, coupon code redemption, open rates, click rates, etc.
Step 2: Pick 3 holidays to start.
Which holidays are important for your business? Start by picking three.
These are dates that are either important to your customers, or during which you have something to say (Ex: Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Christmas). These dates will be individual to each business, but for some ideas, here’s some important dates for Q4:
2022 Q4 Important Dates
October 24 – Diwali
October 31 – Halloween
November 24 – Thanksgiving
November 25 – Black Friday
November 25 – Small Business Saturday
November 28 – Cyber Monday
November 29 – Giving Tuesday
November 28 – December 6 Hanukkah
December 25 – Christmas
December 26 – Boxing Day
December 26 to Jan 1 – Kwanzaa
December 31 – New Year’s Eve
Step 3: Get Inspired & Do Your Research
Nothing gets the wheels spinning like checking out what other similar businesses have done to improve their holiday marketing tactics! Take a look at some of these high-performing campaigns here for your inspiration and to get those wheels spinning.
HubSpot 20 Holiday Marketing Campaign Examples
Leadpages 15 Holiday Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses
Pagefly Holiday Marketing 101: Ideas for Small Business
Another way to get those wheels spinning is to learn about what your competitors are doing in this space. Take the time to research a few of your competitors – understanding how you can stand out from the competition and position your offers so they resonate is important.
Pro Tip: Look at milled.com for past email campaigns from your competitors.
Step 4: Outline Your 2022 Offers
What is your primary, main message for each of the holidays? Design an offer or a message that will entice your consumers to spend their holiday money on your products.
Examples of some enticing offers: 20% Off Gifts, Free Gift with Purchase, Free Shipping, Free Consultation, Discounted Price On A Service.
Pro Tip: Make sure these offers are not competing with each other, but are instead “stackable”. For example, you might offer a gift with purchase from October to December, and also free shipping in December.
Once you’ve got an offer, take some time to iron out the operational details:
Start Date / End Date (When will this be redeemable?)
Terms (Are there any exclusions to the offer?)
Segment (Is this offer for everyone or particular segments?)
Details (What product or service is included in the offer? How do you redeem? Where do you send customers to redeem the offer?)
Step 5: Create a Launch Plan
Once you’ve confirmed your holiday offers, start putting together a launch plan. Here’s a guideline:
- Map out any website updates needed: including adding a ladning page, navigation, offer messaging, and more.
- Map out email campaigns: plan to send at least two email campaigns per offer. One to announce the offer, and then another as a last call. You should also incorporate these offers into any regular email newsletters or campaigns that you’re currently running. For the duration of the offers, consider updating your flows or automated emails, or if the offer is big, give a sneak peek to your audience.
- Map out social media campaigns: Announce your offer on social media, and be sure to announce a last call for the offer as well. On top of this, consider updating social media cover images and pinned posts for the duration of the offers. Also, don’t forget the power of stories and reels for conveying messages to your audience!
Pro Tip: Consider “early access” to exclusive offers for your VIP segments if applicable.
Step 6: Turn That Plan into Actionable Tasks
- Once you’ve hashed out the launch plan, you’ll be able to turn that into actionable tasks, where individual components have set deadlines. This can include creative, copywriting, development, website UI/UX, email updates, social media posts, etc.
- Use this Holiday Planning Guide to prepare holiday offers early. Aim to have each offer developed and ready to go one month before their launch date.
- Schedule campaigns where possible – for example, we use Klaviyo for email and Sked Social for social media.
- Monitor and evaluate campaigns when they’ve run their course for next year’s learnings.
Pro Tip: Don’t try to develop things before the offer details are firm. This rarely leads to good results, and is a surefire way to burn out your marketing team.
Step 7: Ask for help!
If you need additional support for holiday preparations, reach out and ask for help.
Our team is ready to support you to make this your most successful holiday season yet. Book a complimentary consultation to learn more.