eCommerce Christmas Campaign: Newsletter Marketing Guide

It's that time of year again, Christmas is a mere few weeks away. Christmas is one of the busiest times of year for any marketing team, with so many key milestones to plan for.

Getting organised is key. So, to help we have put together a guide about how to plan and execute your Christmas newsletter campaign.

Planning, Planning & Planning

Like Father Christmas who has been making his list all year, Christmas newsletter planning shouldn't be left to the last minute. You should start planning as early as possible.

A strong Christmas newsletter plan will help your campaign have a higher chance of success. 

Before you begin planning your newsletter campaign there are a few questions you need to ask:

• Who is it that subscribes to your emails and newsletters?
  
• What is their location? (You want to make sure you send your comms out at the right time, not when they're asleep!)
  
• Have you set objectives and goals for your Christmas newsletter campaign?
  
• Do you know their purchasing history?
  
• What offers worked last year?
  
• Do you know what interests your audience or what content has previously resonated with them?
  
• Which products or services were your best sellers?
  
• Did performance or behaviour change the closer you got to Christmas?
  

After going through these questions it should help you to be able to segment your audience. By Segmenting your subscribers you can target them with tailored offers and content. This will give your christmas newsletters a higher chance of engagement.

Key to your planning success is to review the previous Christmas performance. Below are some areas of performance you can look into:

• Did you gain insights into what time of day/day your email marketing was better received?
  
• Did you use any a/b testing and if so which performed better?
  
• Were open rates different depending on device?
  
• Did certain offers perform better?
  

With all our talk of performance, engagement and analysis we have compiled a few metrics which you can use to not only review last years campaign but also this years:

• Newsletter Open Rates
  
• Click through rates
  
• Traffic to linked landing pages from within the newsletter
  
• Bounce rate on those pages, was it lower than average compared to other traffic sources?
  
• Time spent on those landing pages
  
• Sales or bookings from that traffic source
  
• If using social share buttons - what was the impact?
  

• Which offer or content drove the most shares?
  
• Was there a particular share that was more influential?
  

• How many unsubscribes were there?
  

Christmas is a four week period so we recommend creating a campaign calendar. Like an editorial calendar it will need to highlight the following:

• Are you considering a different offer each week?
  
• Will you be price dropping a few days before?
  
• Will shipping times be tighter nearer Christmas?
  
• Weight of different types of Christmas newsletters are you sending?
  

• Number of Sales newsletters
  
• How many Christmas newsletters by segment and when?
  
• Number of Event/reminders
  
• Are you doing flash sales?
  

Bare in mind this calendar should also align with all activities taking place across the business. 

Christmas Newsletters Should Delight & Reward Customer Loyalty

More often than not most brands marketing campaigns focus on attracting new customers. Brands forget they have an existing pool of customers who have brought into their brand. 

What a "loyal" customer looks like will depend on your business. We have some questions you can ask to determine what a loyal customer is:

• How many purchases have they made?
  
• Have they subscribed to a mid-top tier service?
  
• How long have they been a customer?
  
• How long have they subscribed to your newsletters?
  
• Do they open your emails & newsletters
  

This is a great way to segment your customers so your Christmas newsletter campaign has tailored content & offers for them.

By segmenting your subscribers into a loyal customer group you can create a Christmas newsletter stream which delivers tailored content and offers for them only.

Deck the Halls...Well your Christmas newsletters at least!

For most of us getting in the festive mood, means one thing - decorating! 

But before you get the tinsel, snow gifs and elfs out, there are a few considerations you need to take into account.

• What are your brand guidelines?
  
• What is the brand messaging over Christmas?
  
• Are your assets created by external agencies?
  
• Do you need to request your assets?
  
• Have you got a design resource for the Christmas newsletter builds?
  
• What are the do's & don'ts for Christmas?
  
• Do you know what fonts you can use?