Every year eCommerce businesses continue to spike in sales during the holiday season. In 2015 alone, retail eCommerce holiday sales in the US grew by 13.4%. That’s $9.33 Billion worth of sales.
As a business, this is a great time for you to make the shopping experience easier for your customers and boost your sales. Your email list is the best place to start that process.
Here are a few ways you can use your email list to skyrocket your sales this holiday season.
#1 Include Add-To-Cart Buttons
Adding interactive elements to your emails is a great way to make your emails more entertaining. It’s also an effective way to boost conversions. According to reports, adding interactive content boosts email open rate by 73%.
While there are many ways you can make emails interactive, like embedding videos, quizzes, slideshows, adding an Add-To-Cart button is certainly the best interactive element that will help boost your sales.
In your holiday product promotions, try adding a button to let your customers easily jump to the checkout process to make their shopping experience much easier.
#2 Retarget Abandoned Carts
Shopping cart abandonment is a common issue for all eCommerce businesses, especially for online retail businesses. Thanks to your email list, you can retarget those shoppers with an email to encourage them to continue their shopping. Studies show that retargeting abandoned carts with emails have a success rate of 29%.
The holiday season may be the best time for you to get in touch with those shoppers with a follow-up email. And maybe suggest them a few new holiday-themed items to add to their shopping cart.
#3 Follow Up With A Coupon
Expensive shipping costs is one of the main reasons why 28% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts. Why not reach out to those customers this holiday season with a special free shipping offer?
Who would say no to saving save money. Even on holidays, people are always looking for ways to save a few bucks off their shopping list. Sending an exclusive coupon, a discount sale offer, or even a cool gift card to your email list definitely show your customers how much you value them and you’ll also get extra sales in exchange as well.
#4 Use Segments To Target The Right Audience
Not everyone in your email list will be celebrating Christmas. Sending a holiday-themed email to the wrong audience may make you come across as unprofessional and it might even increase your unsubscribe rates, especially if you have an email list of an international audience.
This is why it’s best for you to use list segments to deliver your email promotions based on recipient location during the holiday season. You can also use your list segments to identify your subscriber’s interests and create email campaigns with curated products for specific audiences.
#5 Create Gift Guides And Seasonal Sales
Gift guides are useful for not just special celebrations like Mother’s day and Valentine’s Day, it’s also a great way to promote some of your products for holidays like Christmas. You will be helping parents save a lot of time and frustrations by providing them with a list of the hottest gadgets and toys in the market today.
You can also target the grownups with a seasonal sale. Like the showing your new clothing line for the winter or spring. Or offering a discount on the latest Kindle so they can spend more time reading this holiday season.
#6 Add A Countdown Timer
Building a sense of urgency in your emails is a great psychology hack you can use to grab the attention of your customers. Showing a countdown timer in your emails showing the remaining days for Christmas or even adding a limited-time special offer to buy your products at a discounted rate can both help generate more sales.
Reports show that email marketing campaigns with a sense of urgency see twice as many transaction rates than ordinary email campaigns and they see 14% higher click-to-open rates as well.
#7 Donate To Charity
Christmas is widely known as the season of giving. It’s a time where people act more generously to support each other. You can add that same sense of generosity to your promotions.
For example, you can create a promotional campaign to help support a charity. Whenever a customer buys a product, you can donate a percentage of the money to a charity. This helps your customers feel good and generate more sales at the same time. And it’s all for a good cause.
#8 Ask For A Referral
According to a Nielsen report, people are 4 times more likely to buy a product when it’s referred from a friend. You can take advantage of this as well.
For example, you can create a referral code and encourage subscribers to send it to their friends. Every time they refer a friend they can receive a certain amount of money.
Wrapping Up
Christmas is a great time for a holiday promotion. But, remember that there will be a lot of competition around that time as well. So, take advantage of other holidays around this time as well.
Also, get creative with your holiday-themed promotions. Change your email template designs to fit the theme and come up with unique ways to grab your customer’s attention.
Liked this article? Check out my other article on 6 Ways to Automatically Grow Your Email List Overnight, 5 Optin Bribe Examples to Grow Your Email List, and 3 Things to Know Before Creating Your First ECommerce Site