Experts Share Their Top 8 Holiday Email Marketing Tips for 2020

By imkevingeorge@gmail.com (Kevin George)

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Ready or not, the holidays are right around the corner. And that means it’s time for email marketers to start planning one of their biggest email campaigns of the year.

To help you prep for all the holiday madness to come, the team at Uplers asked a group of seasoned email experts and industry insiders to share their insights on Holiday Email Marketing Tips and Trends for 2020.

Check out their advice for holiday email trends below, and get inspired to tackle your company’s holiday campaign with style.

The Top 8 Holiday Email Marketing Tips of 2020

1. Start planning way before you think you should.

Planning well in advance goes a long way, giving you enough time to ensure your email really stands out.

“Do get started on your holiday email marketing strategy and planning early,” advises Christopher Donald, the President of Operations & Managing Partner at InboxArmy. “Create planning, creative, production, and deployment calendars to better execute your campaigns. Don’t wait until the last minute to decide what to do.”

2. Focus on the customer, not an aggressive sales agenda.

Marketers send more emails than usual during the holiday season, but it’s important to remember that there’s a real person at the other end of your email communication. The holidays are a busy, hectic time for everyone (not just marketers!) and they probably won’t appreciate having their inbox flooded with hard-sell emails. Respect their time, and adopt a helpful, customer-centric approach.

Kara Trivunovic, VP/GM Client Services, Global Industry Evangelist at Epsilon, believes you need to find out what the subscriber expects from you during the holidays rather than driving your agenda of selling.

It’s the holiday season, after all, so you can’t just pen down some sales-oriented copy and call it a day. Tap into your subscribers’ emotions, and focus the copy on how you can help them spread joy through the gifts they can buy from you. Even a simple holiday greeting can go a long way in building trust with your customers.

For instance, take a look at this email from Kennebunk-based yoga and barre studio The Daily Sweat, which expresses gratitude towards consumers and wishes recipients’ a happy and safe holiday season:

3. Interactivity and fallback go hand in hand.

Visual, interactive elements like GIFs, cinemagraphs, and gamification will add interest and flair to your holiday messages this year.

Interactivity in emails is an engagement tactic that will help to drive attention and generate excitement during this holiday season, according to Uplers Director Jaymin Bhuptani.

Innovate content with the help of a drop-down Menu, Accordion, Slider, Flip Effect or maybe gamification in your email. However, with limited email client compatibility, it is essential that you provide fallback support, says Lauren Gentile, VP Creative, Digital solutions at Epsilon. And yes, test, test, and test some more before you send out the emails.