Email Automation Ideas for Holiday Campaigns This Season

Automation is taking the world by storm and helping businesses reinvent their marketing strategies. It is not just implementing innovation in the practices of doing business, but also making them more and more efficient with each passing day.
 

Bill Gates illustrates his rule for automation:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

So, with a perfect plan and well designed strategy, automation can magnify the growth intensity of a business.

Email, on the other hand still remains as businesses’ popular choice for marketing and reaching out to a number of customers. Commend its credible cost efficiency or reliable reputation, email can never become outdated from the lives of both marketers and customers.
 

When we combine the two life changing elements of business, email and automation there is nothing that could beat it currently in the market.
 

The era of email automation is taking over a lot of unnecessary operational tasks that businesses eventually went through. And it has never been easy to develop an email campaign just by relaxing at home.
 

Email automation is catering to the needs of people and businesses equally. From the perspective of the customers, it is providing highly professional and relevant campaigns and superior customer service.
 

While on the end of business, it is cutting down both the critical costs of time and money.  So, when the holiday season gropes in, why give your business a holiday?
 

Holiday is a time when everybody wants to be at their homes, whether they are customers or marketers. And email automation is making this possible with full efficiency so that marketers can relax while customers still get their updates from their favourite brands in the holiday season.
 

Going by the statistics of last year, holiday retail sales climbed 4%, which led to $658.3 billion in sales, according to the National Retail Federation, USA.
 

Tom Preston-Werner has correctly said that “You’re either the one that creates the automation or you’re getting automated.”
 

So, in order to adopt automation and take advantage of the holiday season, here are a few Email Automation ideas for creating memorable Holiday Campaigns:
 

Welcoming has never been so important than the holiday season! These emails are the most common to be automated. Because holiday is also a suitable time when people shop till they drop, a small welcoming message can have a great impact on your brand’s image.
 

So, whenever a new contact signs up to your list, an automated welcome message is triggered to be sent to their inboxes.
 

A welcome email must have the warmth of a gentle greeting along with a brief description of the benefits of subscribing, and perhaps a coupon to encourage the subscriber to take action and drive sales for your business.
 

If you focus on eye catching points such as free shipping, chances are that your sales during the holiday season will go up significantly.
 

According to a recent market survey, the days of the holiday season generate 50–100% more revenue than other shopping days throughout the rest of the year and 92% of shoppers will look for discounts online to find the best bargains around it.
 

Once you are aware of these statistics, you can deploy automation to some of your best holiday campaigns. Since automation facilitates pre-scheduling emails you can design campaigns regarding it and schedule it a week before the holiday. This will create anticipation among your audience as well as an urge to shop.
 

A report by Glenster writes that

“Marketers know their ultimate job is to increase revenue. Email Marketing automation can help by generating more and higher quality leads, which will eventually turn into new customers.”
 

Holiday is a time when people not only shop for themselves, but also for their relatives and close ones. You can take this opportune moment into consideration and create an automated email campaign around it.
 

As fascinating as it sounds to gift someone something, it is equally difficult to decide what. Sometimes people have no idea what to get for their friends or relatives. You can give them a few suggestions that will not only ease out their task, but also help you maintain a lasting relationship with your customer.
 

Help them find the right piece of gift by simplifying their search process. You can add a special gifting guide such as “Great Gifts for Men” or “Soft Toys Under $5” in your campaign. This kind of campaign can be sent to specific groups based on their information in your lists and delivered with the help of automated emails.
 

Here’s an email from Tiffany:

Kristen Hambelton, VP of Marketing Neolane Inc illustrates about this fact further,

“By increasing efficiencies through better qualifying leads and increasing effectiveness by ensuring sales efforts are more personalised and relevant, marketing automation enables sales teams to do what they do best – SELL.”

Holiday can be a great time to sell. It can also be a great time to be of service to your customers. Instead of just focussing on hardcore sales, you can put email automation to another creative use.
 

Because sometimes customers aren’t looking for coupons or gifts, you can create small holiday tutorials or videos around it and send it to your customer through a blog post etc.
 

Here’s an email from Animoto:

 

Consider, for example, you can write a DIY home decor blog post for Christmas or make a video that shows how to decorate a Christmas tree with lights. The theme must be related to holiday and the rest is up to you to explore as many options to automate it through emails in order to be of help to your customers.
 

So, automate emails for your holiday season and do not miss out on a single opportunity to establish a great relationship with your customer.
 

Since automation fixes many of your tasks as a business, make sure that you plan your strategies well and schedule them just at the right moment.