The holiday season is here!  For many digital marketers this is the busiest time of the year and email marketers are definitely in that group.  Just taking a look at your own inbox should convince you that email marketing is already ramping up for the season.  But, as you put together your marketing strategies and campaigns, what can you do to hep get drive the best results from your email marketing program?  Check out these 4 quick tips to maximize performance in your holiday email campaigns.

1 – Target, Target, and Target your Audience to Improve Engagement

This isn’t a new concept for email marketers, but it’s a great time to really dial in your audience segmentation and targeting. Remember, consumers are watching their inboxes fill up faster and faster the closer we get to the holidays. One of the best ways to drive response is to make sure your messaging is relevant to your audience. So, use every bit of info you have on your audience to help ensure your offers and holiday email content are relevant and engaging to them.

2 – Use your Subject Line to Grab Attention

Even before your audience targeting can be really effective, you need to get recipients to open your email. One of the best ways to do that is to grab their attention in the inbox with an effective subject line. Remember, your subject line is competing with every other subject line they see in their inbox. How can yours stand out? Be creative and clever, but be sure it is still relevant to the contents of the email itself. Have a little fun with the the holidays or your brand. This is really an opportunity to be creative.  

3 – Cleanse your List to Optimize Deliverability

It is always important to ensure your list is up to date and cleansed of invalid email addresses, but it takes on even more importance during this busy time of year. You can’t compete for attention in the inbox if your email gets thrown in the spam folder or isn’t delivered at all. So, take all the steps you can to ensure your sender scores are high and you have the best chance to reach the inbox. Go through updated list validation and verification processes and consider removing high-frequency non-responders from your main campaigns. You can always look at creating a special campaign to try to get those totaly non-responsive recipients back up and running again, but consider keeping them out of the main campaigns. 

4 – Test… and Test again, to Focus on Optimization

As always, apply those old shampoo directions (Wash, Rinse, Repeat) to heart and Test, Optimize, Repeat in every campaign. Email marketers are pros at effective testing strategies, but it’s always good to take a step back and look at your testing process to ensure you really have it dialed in.

4 – Keep it Compliant!

Last and absolutely not least, make sure you are following all the rules (CAN-SPAM, etc.) when developing your email creative, setting up your email lists, and hitting send on those campaigns. You should already be running a highly compliant email program, but it’s always a good idea to ensure that stays on track when things get busy. 

Hopefully these tips will help make your holiday email campaigns even more successful this year!