Zoom Email Marketing Blog

Posted by Chris Richardson

The holiday season is fast approaching, and seeing how it’s a time where Internet store owners make a great deal of the revenue, now is the time to start preparing for your holiday newsletter campaign. There are a number of resources you can use to help make the preparation an easier task, because engaging potential consumers correctly will only help your marketing efforts.

Over at the Email Marketing Reports site, they have compiled a list of resources any good email marketer can use. It should be noted that, even though there is two months until Christmas, if you wait until the last minute to roll out a new holiday season marketing campaign, you stand a good chance of missing out on a great deal of the holiday spending.

Keep in mind that directly after the brick-and-mortar stores enjoy their Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving, of course — the Internet enjoys what is now referred to as Cyber Monday. For those who may not know, Cyber Monday is the first Monday following Thanksgiving, and it’s quickly been acknowledged as the biggest online shopping day of the year.

This means any effective email campaign targeting Cyber Monday needs to be active before Thanksgiving, which brings us back to EMR’s list of resources that was made to assist you with an effective holiday season marketing effort. The list is as follows:

• Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season 2011: the big 51 page report from Chad White…full of information on what top retailers did last year, plus advice on how to approach timing, frequency and an array of seasonal email tactics.
• Planning for the holidays: a long list of questions to ask when reviewing what you did last time…thus laying the foundation for this season’s campaigns.
• Holidays ahead of time: advice for (small) business on what might go into holiday emails, with an emphasis on standing out from the typical “X%-off” promotions.
• Holiday retail email ideas: tips, suggestions and warnings on how to ramp up your email marketing in time for Q4 and then make more use of the seasonal opportunity.
• Top 10 steps: ideas for planning and preparing campaigns in advance of the holiday season.
• Top 12 dates: list of key dates and events around which to plan appropriate holiday messaging.
• A holiday marketing story: access a 10-page download outlining specific tactics and approaches to follow to get the most out of seasonal email campaigns.
• Here come the holidays: suggests you get optimization and testing done before the holiday rush.
• Holiday preparedness: 4 tips to help ensure seasonal success isn’t hampered by delivery issues.
• Holiday season will be bigger: brief tips on the overall approach to take to Q4.
• Retail email campaign planner: access a free and cute .pdf holiday campaign calendar off this (sales) page.
• Holiday email trends: offers predictions on the tactics retailers will favor and/or should take a closer look at.

As the publication points out, this list is by no means comprehensive, but it is a great starting point. EMR also indicates they will be adding more resources to the list, so keep it bookmarked if you need further direction. Now get to work on that killer holiday season marketing campaign because time’s running out and Christmas will be here before you know it.

About the Author: Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

Starting from Square One

If you just started your business, or if you just launched your website, you probably don’t have an email list to send to. So what do you do?

Ways To Grow Your Opt-In List:

• Place your email newsletter signup form on your home page .
• Link to your signup form from every page of your website (you might add a link to your footer, or side navigation).
• Place a link to your email signup form in your email signature (ask everyone in your company to do it too)
• Add the link to your signup form in all the invoices your company sends
• Offer free giveaways to one lucky subscriber (it can be a company t-shirt, or something kooky, like a 20 pound box of banana candy).
• Post free whitepapers or helpful articles on your site. They’ll get downloaded like crazy, if you just offer them for free, and with no registration. Inside your whitepaper, place your own “full page ad” to your newsletter.
• Send out personal, one-to-one emails to all your clients, and ask them to please signup to your newsletter.
• In your “Contact Us” form on your website, add a checkbox to “signup for our newsletter”
• Add an “opt-in for our newsletter” checkbox in your e-commerce checkout page.

Already Have a List of Customers?

What if you already have an email list of customers that you’ve been doing business with for years? Well, just because they’re your customers, it doesn’t mean they want to start receiving your email newsletters.

Let’s say you run a small consultancy with a couple dozen clients who are very close to you. If you just assume they’d want your newsletter, and you subscribe them to your list without their permission, you’re just going to irritate a lot of them (or worse, get yourself reported as a spammer). I’ve had colleagues start their own companies, and then add me to their lists. It’s kind of awkward clicking the opt-out link in those emails, know what I mean?

If you’ve got an e-commerce store, you’re probably sitting on a huge email list of customers who have purchased something from you in the past. But if they didn’t check a box for email marketing, or if you haven’t emailed them anything in years, you shouldn’t start sending them emails out of the blue. If only 0.1% of your customers forgot who you are, and report your campaign as spam, you could get blacklisted.

So what the heck can you do? It’s simple, but surprisingly few email marketers bother. They’re so excited about sending their first campaign, they throw politeness out the door.

If you have a list of customer email addresses, and you want to start sending them email marketing, but you don’t have their permission yet, ask them for permission.

Send a “Re-Introduction Email.” It’s extremely effective, and best of all, it’s polite. You just put together a personal note. Write it like you’d write to a friend. Here are some examples for different scenarios:

Examples:

“Hi Jane, we’d like to stay in touch with our customers and let them know about new developments in our industry. We’re starting up a company newsletter, and I’d love to include you on our list of subscribers. If you’re up for it, just click the link below to opt-in. As our way of thanking you, the Welcome Confirmation Email that you receive will include a link to a free whitepaper on…”

“Some time ago, you purchased something from our online store (SKU# 98765), and you indicated that you’d like to receive future email promotions from us. Well, we’ve finally gotten around to starting up a newsletter, and we just want to make sure you still want to hear from us. If you do, please click the link below to subscribe…”

“Some time ago, you purchased something from our online store (SKU# 98765), and you indicated that you’d like to receive future email promotions from us. Well, we’ve finally gotten around to starting up a newsletter (below is our first issue). If you don’t want to hear from us anymore, we totally understand. Just click here to unsubscribe from the list.”

“3 years ago, you came to our booth at the ACME Trade Show in Chicago. You signed up for more information about when we’d launch our XYZ Widget…”