Dynamic Content Automation: The Key to Your Holiday Email Strategy

Do you hear what I hear? That’s the whooshing sound of a whole lot of 1000’s of vacation emails dashing by way of the snow on the way in which to subscribers’ inboxes. (Or if you happen to’re dreading the season, you might catch the ominous clinking chains of the Ghost of Vacation Emails Previous.)

November and December are two of the busiest months of the 12 months for electronic mail entrepreneurs. You’re working by way of a packed schedule of holidays, together with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Enterprise Saturday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, and Kwanzaa. However it’s additionally the season with the very best electronic mail engagement (and that’s saying one thing!)

Vacation consumers are busy too—and so are your opponents. With so many emails hitting inboxes this season, you’ll want to face out. Email personalization and dynamic content material are a good way to do this.

However once we polled electronic mail geeks for our State of Email Innovations Report, we discovered that almost all electronic mail entrepreneurs follow the fundamentals. Though 95% did some type of personalization, solely 3% stated they do dwell or real-time content material of their emails.

You don’t must run electronic mail campaigns for each single occasion, however you do want a robust vacation electronic mail technique that permits you to hit your objectives with out being a Grinch. On this submit, we’ll speak by way of some electronic mail personalization greatest practices, find out how to add dynamic content material to your emails with a festive aptitude, and the way totally different industries can experiment with dynamic content material in your holiday email marketing efforts this season.

Electronic mail personalization greatest practices for vacation electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns

80% of customers usually tend to buy from a model that gives personalised experiences. However what makes this time of 12 months additional difficult for electronic mail personalization is that it’s usually when your subscribers purchase for others, not simply themselves. Right here’s what to bear in mind as you experiment with dynamic content material this season:

Get your knowledge organized and prepared

Step one to making a strong vacation electronic mail personalization technique is discovering the fitting knowledge. Nonetheless, once we requested electronic mail entrepreneurs what their largest personalization challenges had been, 24% stated they didn’t have satisfactory knowledge. That’s a prerequisite for dynamic content material.

We’ll must muddle by way of by some means. To energy your personalization campaigns, you could have entry to 4 totally different varieties of knowledge:

1. Zero-party knowledge is explicitly given to you by your viewers, both by way of primary demographic info from checkout flows, solutions to model quizzes, or surveys.
2. First-party knowledge is the individual-level knowledge collected out of your viewers, like searching knowledge out of your web site, procuring historical past, or social media engagement.
3. Second-party knowledge is bought from one other firm, like shopper tendencies, evaluations, or aggressive analysis.
4. Third-party knowledge comes from monitoring Web exercise outdoors of your owned channels, like purchases, searching historical past, or media mentions. As privateness legal guidelines crack down on third-party cookies, it can change into harder for entrepreneurs to ship on their objectives.

Do an evaluation now of the information factors you do have and brainstorm campaigns that make use of them. For instance, in case you have geolocation knowledge, you possibly can run a marketing campaign with details about the closest retail store to your subscriber.

Create a segmentation technique

Step one towards dynamic content material is understanding who in your viewers will get what based mostly on the place they’re of their personalized customer journey.

A robust segmentation technique will information your vacation advertising and marketing efforts. Even if you happen to preserve a lot of the electronic mail content material the identical, you should use it to alter out the cta button or electronic mail topic line.

You’ll be able to separate your subscribers into a number of goal audiences by:

• Electronic mail Engagement: Going into the vacation season, you’ll wish to separate out anybody out of your electronic mail checklist who hasn’t engaged together with your emails lately. In the event that they don’t wish to hear from you, get them off your checklist earlier than the vacation hullabaloo in order to not danger your deliverability.
• Buy Habits: What merchandise have they bought previously? Pair these with related merchandise this 12 months, whether or not that’s a brand new colorway, particular vacation version, or the subsequent era of your merchandise or options.
• Searching Habits: The place do your subscribers go in your web site? In the event that they solely learn a sure weblog class, for instance, they’re most likely extra focused on that part than the remainder of your web site. Equally, in the event that they by no means browse your males’s division, they’re most likely not in search of males’s objects.
• Choose-In Info: When unsure, ask! Your subscribers know who they should make purchases for this season, so if you happen to’re unsure, ship out an electronic mail marketing campaign asking them which classes or merchandise they’re focused on and kind them for the vacation season accordingly as you ship out reward information campaigns.

This may increasingly not appear to be your segmentation technique at different occasions of 12 months, and that’s okay. (Present-giving throws every little thing just a little bit off.)

Harness the ability of electronic mail personalization

Uncover find out how to higher join together with your viewers, ship tailor-made content material, and drive engagement with electronic mail personalization.

Personalize better

Return to final 12 months’s vacation electronic mail marketing campaign wins and fails

What labored final 12 months? What may have been higher? Evaluating the metrics out of your earlier black friday email campaigns, like open charges, click-through charges, and conversion charges will show you how to decide which components of your emails are price experimenting with, out of your topic traces to calls-to-action.

Now is a good time to replicate in your wins and what you would enhance as you construct your new vacation campaigns. Bear in mind, your data changes dramatically through the vacation season, so it’s higher to check dreidels to dreidels right here.

You don’t must re-invent your vacation campaigns, however you possibly can refresh them with some dynamic content material. Determine which of them you wish to experiment with and that are greatest left alone first.

Then, set clear, measurable objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) that align together with your total enterprise aims.

This offers you a base in your experimentation. Whereas the vacation rush isn’t a good time to conduct massive A/B testing initiatives, it might be price working a number of exams on topic traces, touchdown pages, and electronic mail design as you construct out your vacation provides earlier than it will get too busy.

Embrace a fallback choice it doesn’t matter what

Any time you employ personalization, you should include a fallback for once you don’t have the fitting piece of knowledge (or when electronic mail shoppers don’t assist a particular sort of dynamic content material). That’s much more true through the vacation season, when the stakes are greater.

The most important solution to flip off a possible buyer is by saying, “Nice vacation offers for FIRSTNAME!” within the topic line as an alternative of, y’know, their precise identify.

5 forms of dynamic content material in your vacation electronic mail campaigns

When you’re in search of just a little festive sparkle, dynamic content material could make your vacation electronic mail campaigns shine. Listed here are a number of dynamic content material concepts to do this vacation season:

1. Create pleasure with Countdown Timers

Nothing says “purchase now!” like a ticking clock in your limited-time provides.

A way of urgency is what separates maybe-shoppers from paying clients. Countdown Timers are additionally a good way to construct belief together with your electronic mail subscribers—nobody desires to purchase an merchandise solely to have it get discounted in a number of days. Giving them a heads-up builds pleasure and will get extra clients by way of your (digital or IRL) doorways. You’ll be able to even change your CTA to replicate the period of time left, too.

Simply be certain that you’re not misleading your customers together with your countdown timer—if the supply ends at midnight, it ought to truly finish (and never get replaced by a comparable supply inside 24 hours, both.)

2. Promote a neighborhood occasion or dwell drop with Add-to-Calendar

Vacation procuring is just one a part of this very busy season in your subscribers. Each group appears to have an occasion this month, whether or not it’s the varsity live performance or the workplace’s end-of-year social gathering. Whereas your product launch could really feel like massive information to you, your subscribers could overlook with all of the noise. Make it straightforward for them to attend an occasion, product drop, or sale by providing a calendar hyperlink utilizing Add-to-Calendar proper in your Black Friday or Cyber Monday electronic mail.

3. Enhance engagement with an irresistible Scratch-Off reveal

Subscribers watch for Black Friday offers all 12 months lengthy. However you could be coy about it to construct pleasure through the use of a Scratch-Off reveal for his or her low cost code or coupon.

Scratch-Off enables you to run personalised offers in your subscribers and provides them just a little little bit of thriller, so they only must click on. Whether or not you range what’s beneath the scratch-off or just wish to create just a little bit extra engagement, this tactic is all the time a winner.

4. Content material Automation showcases beneficial or fashionable reward concepts

Probably the greatest methods to incorporate dynamic content material is to advocate merchandise you already know are fashionable—or are normally bought collectively.

For the vacation procuring season, which means curating vacation reward guides so your subscribers can discover the right reward for his or her family members based mostly in your viewers segmentation. Litmus’ Content material Automation enables you to use product feeds to showcase your bestsellers or your guides to make it straightforward in your subscribers to click on “purchase.”

5. Get extra clicks with Curiosity Alerts

All of us want just a little validation, and interest signals permit you to convey the identical type of “all people who’s anyone” vibes that social media excels at to your emails.

(Sure, we created customized emojis with Litmoose. Isn’t he the cutest?)

Curiosity Alerts let your subscribers know who else is listening to a sure product or occasion. Create pleasure (and perhaps just a little FOMO) by exhibiting your subscribers they’re not alone. Social proof like this may help create a way of urgency and validate your reward guides.

Try these dynamic email content examples to get a really feel for the way this seems to be within the wild.

Craft successful vacation emails and enhance engagement

Uncover methods for creating efficient vacation electronic mail campaigns that may make you stand out through the busiest time of 12 months.

Plan holiday emails

How totally different industries use dynamic content material through the vacation dash

You don’t want to incorporate each single whiz-bang aspect in each marketing campaign. As a substitute, take into consideration mixing quite a lot of components, reminiscent of GIFs, particular provides or vacation offers, and visuals to drive gross sales.

Right here’s what that appears like in motion throughout totally different industries with a number of electronic mail examples:

Retail and eCommerce

Retailers can use email personalization for eCommerce in nearly each sort of marketing campaign this vacation season, whether or not providing secret reductions through scratch-offs or triggered abandon cart emails. However the place retailers can actually take advantage of dynamic content material is with personalised product suggestions, like this electronic mail:

Supply: Really Good Emails

On the backside of this electronic mail is a picture of a sequence of Danner’s largest merchandise, which may simply be modified out based mostly on searching conduct, previous purchases, or beneficial presents by viewers section.

Healthcare

This time of the 12 months is commonly a lead-up to a giant wellness push within the new 12 months. Plant the seeds for well being campaigns like Dry January or New Yr’s Resolutions usually with holiday-themed affected person engagement messages and reminders about their annual check-up, in the event that they haven’t scheduled it for the next 12 months.

Finance

“Festive” and “finance” don’t normally go collectively, however you possibly can nonetheless run holiday-specific campaigns, whether or not that’s a basic thanks for your corporation on the finish of the 12 months or providing vacation budgeting instruments and monetary suggestions based mostly on demographics or present monetary merchandise, like this electronic mail:

Supply: Really Good Emails

Take this electronic mail up a notch with a dynamic content material block exhibiting earlier Amazon searching knowledge or related merchandise based mostly on what’s at the moment within the subscriber’s Amazon cart.

Advertising and marketing and media companies

Entrepreneurs are additional busy this time of 12 months, so take advantage of their time by personalizing your newsletters and content material based mostly on their pursuits. That is additionally a good time to ballot your viewers to see what matters they wish to hear extra about within the new 12 months.

Or you possibly can lean into the vacation season, like electronic mail advertising and marketing company Jarrang did with their interactive introduction calendar exhibiting the staff as a thank-you for an amazing 12 months:

Supply: Really Good Emails

Journey and hospitality

Motels, eating places, airways, and tour operators have an opportunity to get in on the vacation enjoyable as extra consumers search for experiences as an alternative of issues. This can be a nice time to achieve out to earlier vacationers or diners and supply them particular charges on vacation packages and invite them to return.

This electronic mail highlights low fares from the subscriber’s closest vacation spot airport:

When you’re uncertain find out how to get began, we now have an entire gallery of superior holiday email templates prepared for you (and so they’re optimized for cellular gadgets, natch). Whether or not you want a lift in your vacation gross sales, a last-minute transport electronic mail marketing campaign, or a present card marketing campaign, we now have you lined.

Ship personalised vacation emails with Litmus Personalize

Interact your viewers with personalised messages, tailor-made provides, and festive cheer that drives outcomes. Begin utilizing dynamic content material to make your emails sparkle this season without having advanced code.