As we get closer to Christmas, for most of you the busiest time of the year, each communication piece has a crucial weight towards your sales and has to be impactful enough to capture your audience’s attention (as you’re not the only who had the same idea!).
Despite increase in social media activities, email communication is still preferred and proven to lift sales (they still work - on average, email marketing bring 4,300 ROI - 40% more effective than social media). Research shows that in 2016, an estimated 215 billion emails are sent daily (5% increase from 2015) - and we receive, on average, 123 emails a day. These figures increase by almost 40% during the holiday season… You get the jist now.
So what to do to make sure your holiday newsletter gets seen and acted upon?
Watch out for days of the week - Mondays, Tuesdays & Thursdays are proven to be the best, but also the busiest days of the week to send emails. You might find that your business exists in a niche that actually makes customers look for you at the weekend, at their spare time at home etc.
Time of the day matters - most popular time is 11a.m. - 3p.m., with 7 a.m.-11a.m. being the second, and 1p.m. to 5 p.m. third most popular time slot. Evenings are usually quieter and provide lower CTR.
Attention-grabbing subject line is crucial - being overflown with emails and lacking time to read them all, this is going to be the key influencer that will make it or break it. Most email providers allow you to test 20% of your audience with two subjects and sends the rest the more impactful one (with higher CTR)
Keep it snappy - you’ll loose their attention if you don’t! If you need to provide more content, link the newsletter articles back to your website/blog and provide full copy there
Include links and call to actions - make sure all images and buttons link to your website and relevant products. You don’t want to make it difficult to buy a product or visit your website
Don’t land in spam - easier said than done, but there are a couple of things to watch out for. Subject lines including words like *free* *buy* *now* etc. tend to be seen as more ‘spammy’ than others; making sure your database contacts gave given permission for contact and you’re not sending unsolicited emails (recipients will mark you as spam and you might face being blacklisted); and finally making sure you’re images not only are hyperlinked, but also alt+text’ed (most newsletter providers provide a very easy text option for input - include name of the image or product, as a lot of email providers might block or not display images - it will then display text) as that increases your credibility.
Written by: Natalie Potter (brand strategist / director)
Email Natalie at