Preparing For The Holiday Season

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.