Any tips for last minute holiday season prep?

MaggieBrennan

If you haven’t prepped holiday campaigns yet, what are top three tips for getting something together now?

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Sleighing deliverability: An AMA on holiday email deliverability

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LindseySilver

If you’ve procrastinated on holiday planning, you are not alone. And you are definitely not doomed.

Take the time to define your key goals and objectives for this year's holiday marketing. What does success look like for your campaigns? What are your most important KPIs? Are you looking to drive awareness-related metrics or sales-related metrics, such as conversions?
Keep in mind the types of holiday customers! How can you personalize your experience for Window Shoppers, Gift Givers, VIP Spenders, Deal Hunters, Cart Abandoners and more? One way to do this is through personalization tools like segmentation, triggered campaigns, Liquid personalization, and dynamic content personalization (i.e. Connected Content).
During the height of the shopping holiday, customers are abandoning the checkout flow and failing to complete transactions before they depart. Don't forget to send automated reminders to users who have not finished their transactions (and are opted-in to each channel) to bring them back into the checkout flow. Leverage A/B testing to determine the ideal timing windows for these messages and use personalized messages and special offers to nudge recipients to return and complete their purchases.

Goot

Make sure your data is in tip-top shape! I don’t typically recommend list cleaning services because your list is already “clean” as long as you regularly send to it, but if you have questions about any of your data, you can leverage a service like Kickbox to help you identify potentially problematic addresses. Be aware that a validation service cannot locate all spam traps and does not verify consent, so this isn’t a panacea. But when used as part of a root cause analysis, you can better determine which segments of your list are no longer viable, and shore up any gaps in your current address acquisition/management processes.
Put your subscriber at the center of your plans. Who are you sending to? How can you help them? Are you sending to meet one of your own goals, or to help your customers reach theirs? While the holiday season can be full of positivity and warmth, it can also be stressful–consider what your products mean in the wider context of peoples’ lives before finalizing your plans. Some brands may benefit from sending twice daily emails, and some may see more lift from simply being quiet. If you don’t know what subscribers want, ask them! Not only will this allow you to better serve your audience, but encouraging feedback like clicks and replies can help ensure continued inbox placement, providing a much-needed boost when sending to less-engaged addresses.
Replicate prior success. Recipients and mailbox providers both reward predictability, so what has worked well for you recently? What about last holiday season? If you can reuse content or copy previous plans, do that! This time of year is all about tradition and repetition; there’s nothing wrong with sending in ways that will be familiar to your