5 Tips for a Successful Holiday Email Marketing Campaign

With the holiday season right around the corner, it’s a great time to take advantage of some targeting with your email marketing campaigns. Even if you’re so lazy that you simply write “Happy Holidays!” in the signature, it would behoove you to make some effort to bring your customers into the “spending” mind frame that the holiday season always denotes.

 

Five Ho-Ho-Holiday Email Tips that Will Sleigh Them!

With that said, here are some simple and not-so simple adjustments, additions and marketing strategies you can add to your email marketing campaigns this holiday season to capture a little bit of that holiday magic…right in your wallet.

1. Use Holiday Language. Did you see how clever our h2 subtitle was? Okay, maybe it is too cutesy for what you are doing, but don’t be afraid to throw in some “tasty savings” or “stuffed with deals” type language for Thanksgiving sales. Go as far or as subtle as you want, but remember: most people enjoy the holidays and are put in a better mood by people who are enjoying them too!

2. Offer Big Discounts. You already know how much people love to spend during the holidays, but they love to save even more. Use a big deal to get them onto the site and then offer package deals or side items to even out your profits. Remember, the point here is to get the emails open, the click-thrus up and not only give them a deal, but raise your brand or website’s awareness. Even if you break even on a deal, the fact that the customer will remember you in the future and possibly open more emails or buy more products makes the initial investment worth it. Chalk it up to cost of acquisition.

3. Early Bird Specials. Every year we see Target, Walmart and Toys R Us competing with each other on opening hours. Now, we’re to the point where Black Friday sales start on Thanksgiving or even before. The bottom line is that there are no more limitations. Your “Pre-Pre Black Friday Blowout” could be a great way to get traffic to your site. Having an opt-in will allow only those who want to received early bird specials, to receive them, leaving the core of your list unbothered and thus, unsubscribes down.

4. Get Creative. Holidays are all about reindeer games and having fun, so play along with your list. Have a holiday trivia contest where the first ten people to answer correctly on your site get 10% off or a free gift. Keep the games light, airy, holiday-themed and reward incentive. You want people to play along and have fun, but you also don’t want to pester them and have them hit the unsubscribe.

5. Real Time Emails. A great email marketing campaign that is underused is the hourly deals. While this won’t really work year-round, it’s perfect for Black Friday and Cyber Monday because people are constantly checking in for updates on emails. You can either have an opt-in (which would compartmentalize and further qualify your list) or have real-time content that you can update in the body of the email as soon as the customer opens it.

As you can see, holiday email marketing is a fine line to walk between taking advantage of the willingness of your list to get more emails and not bombarding them with so many that you tick them off.

Google’s Latest War on Guest Blogging

 

Are you guest blogging? If so, stop! Despite what everyone has told you, it’s horrible!

Well, okay, now it’s horrible. In Google’s never-ending quest to drive internet marketers crazy, as it turns out the once widely touted practice of guest blogging for link building purposes is now considered taboo. In Google’s own words, guest blogging now falls under the “little or no original content” section.

 

What Caused this Change?

Exactly what brought this change about is still officially a mystery, but most signs point to the fact that Google has been going after webscrapers and other duplicate copy for quite some time now. Guest blogging should have seen this coming, but then again, who knows what evil lurks in the heart of Google!

 

The bottom line is that Google is on a quest for completely original content, even if the links are canonical. Just try to stay away from anything that can be considered “little or no original content.” Article spinners, beware! Your days are numbered as well!

 

 

What Does this Mean for Guest Blogging?

As of right now, Google is penalizing guest blogging networks pretty heavily. This seems to be where the brunt of Google’s ire is falling right now, but the “weak guest blogs” by lone guest bloggers are also feeling the heat. Just like a fire starts at the bottom and burns upwards, you can expect this heat to rise closer and closer to the top, soif you are in any way, shape or form guilty of weak guest blogs, we suggest cutting some ties pretty quickly if Google’s penalization worries you.

 

Of course, some people will still guest blog and some might get away with it, but risking a Google manual penalty isn’t worth it in our opinion. That’s up to you but let us just remind you what happens when Google gets you in its sights: you show up on page four of the search engine result pages even if someone types in your exact website. So, what can you do instead of guest blogging?

 

 

What Can I Do Instead of Guest Blog?

Instead of guest blogging, fall back on the timeless classics of internet marketing. Content marketing is still the big dog, just think of guest blogging as a flea on that dog that’s been removed.

There are still plenty of hairs for you to scratch off including:

– Creating extra-awesome content for your own blogs. Why do you need to be on other people’s blogs in the first place (yes, we know, for traffic). But still, the point remains: if your content is that good and interesting, people will come to your blog. Focus on making your blog the best it can be and make your site a place where people say, “Man, if only we could still guest blog, I’d want to guest blog there!”

– Community and niche participation. If you still feel that the best way for you to move forward with your marketing efforts is to branch out laterally into the bigger communities and sites in your niche, instead of guest blogging, start becoming active in the forums and on the posting boards. You can always leave links to your own blog on a topic in the commentary section. Just because guest blogging is gone doesn’t mean your presence outside of your website has to disappear.

 

The bottom line here is that if you have been guest blogging, sorry. You’re going to need to find some more creative ways to market yourself into an existing audience. If you haven’t been guest blogging, great, don’t start.