27% of U.S. consumers have already started their 2024 holiday shopping! Have you already put your client’s email marketing ideas for this season into action? Here’s how to make a holiday email game plan you can put into action immediately.

Holiday Email Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales

Activity-​Driven Product Recommendations

Consumers enjoy getting email ads because email’s ads are more likely to be personalized and/​or relevant than other media types. Make sure your client’s emails always meet that criteria with action-​driven product recommendations.

A report from Optimove recommends embedding “dynamic content highlighting the products of greatest likely interest to each customer based on each customer’s latest browsing/​purchase activity.” That way, the email will be more likely to result in click-​throughs and sales.

Plus, you’ll establish a reputation for your client of sending email ads with relevant recommendations for recipients. Building that level of trust with recipients will guarantee email ad success far beyond the holiday shopping season.

Real-​Time Pricing and Inventory

Imagine creating the perfect email highlighting the perfect product for the recipient. They’re so excited to make a purchase, they click on the link, and… it’s out of stock. Imagine the disappointment or, worse, rage they’d feel at being lead on by the email ad.

You can avoid that by pitching real-​time pricing and inventory as one of your email marketing ideas for the holidays. Optimove says, “Realtime pricing/​inventory components enable emails to promote the products and offers most relevant at the exact time that each recipient opens the email. Instead of including hard-​coded products (which may be out of stock by the time a customer opens an email) or out-​of-​date prices, marketers can now send emails that contain only in-​stock products with up-​to-​date pricing.”

Plus, real-​time pricing and inventory makes email ads relevant no matter when the recipient opens them. If they can’t get to it for weeks or even a month, that’s okay. The content will still be up to date.

Include Videos

Did you know that embedding videos in email ads:

• Gives them five times higher open rates
• Generates eight times higher open-​to-​reply rates
• Reduces email list unsubscribes by 26%

Plus, videos are fun to watch, highly engaging and can give emails an extra boost of holiday color and cheer. Just make sure the video is muted until recipients turn the sound on themselves. You don’t want to scare the crap out of people who have their sound all the way up.

Check out your client’s target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel to see how engaging they view video ads.

Countdown Timers

While brands focus on email marketing ideas that make consumers feel good, don’t forget fear is also a good motivator. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a very real and driving emotion, especially around holiday gifts and other purchases.

So, don’t forget to add a sense of urgency to at least one of your client’s holiday email ads. Add “last chance” or “time is running out” to subject lines and/​or add a countdown timer to the email.

“Research shows that emails with countdown timers generate almost double the revenue of emails without them,” says Optimove. “Adding a dynamic countdown timer creates that sense of real time urgency on special offers, limited quantities and other time-​sensitive promos… The sense that time is running short entices shoppers to act now…before missing out on a great deal or product.”

Pop-​Up Promos

Sure, consumers don’t like random pop-​ups online and have them blocked on most sites. In emails, however, pop-​ups can be a fun way to bring attention to a specific message.

Optimove points out that not only do email pop-​ups bring attention to messages, they give the email a layered look. That stands out from stagnant, non-​layered emails the competition is sending.

What are you waiting for? Holiday shoppers are already shopping! Pitch these email marketing ideas to your client ASAP!

Photo by: Nana Fuzimi