The holiday season seems to creep up faster and faster as each year passes. And because of this, it’s never too soon to get a jump-start on planning, content creation, and revenue strategizing. This guide covers multiple topics related to all things holiday email campaigns to help make this season your best yet.

This guide is divided into four sections:

1. Planning and prepping your holiday campaigns.
2. Creative campaign ideas for the holiday season.
3. Design shortcuts for your holiday emails.
4. Incorporating email ads for the holidays.

Let’s dive right in!

1. Planning and prepping your holiday campaigns.

When thinking about the holiday season, it’s extremely easy for a sense of overwhelm to creep in. All the emails. All the promotions. All the things! And that’s on top of all the activities outside your email marketing.

But have no fear — your planning guide is here! We break holiday campaign prep into four steps:

• Strategize – Take note of everything you did last year, the big wins, and everything that missed the mark. Then on a separate sheet of paper, brainstorm all the things you’d like to create this year.
  
• Map – Gather all your strategizing notes and consider your available time and resources. This is where you will map out how many campaigns, their timing, and their content. This ensures you’ll have time to create, send, and manage everything over the coming months.
  
• Create – Now it’s time to sit down and hammer out the content. Create the funnels and the forms, add the tags, and do as much prep work as possible now, so you’re not left typing out emails at midnight thirty on a winter’s night.
  
• Test – Test, test, and test again! The more you can test your content before sending it, the better you can address any unexpected formatting or timing issues.

With FeedBlitz, you can send test emails straight from the editor or the campaign summary page or clone your mailing list (because you’ll have unlimited mailing lists!) to create a test list and have only yourself as a subscriber.

Dive into even more detail on the above steps here: Holiday Email Campaigns Made Easy, and be sure to download the holiday campaign planner to help with the mapping stage.

2. Creative campaign ideas for the holiday season.

Whether you’re an email veteran or this is your first time sending holiday campaigns, figuring out what to send can be the most difficult part. Below you’ll find four ideas to help jump-start your planning and strategizing efforts.

1. Offer exclusivity. Your email list is a cherished file of readers, customers, and clients who’ve agreed to receive content from you, and the holiday season is an excellent time to remind them of this. Offer exclusivity to your list by sending a holiday gift such as content designated only for your subscribers. This can look like:

   – Something created just for them, which won’t be posted to your site or social and only be offered free in your email.
   – Early access to a brand new PDF or email course.
   – A piece of retired content from your vault.
   

2. Embrace the art of the countdown. You’re already working on a countdown to the holidays, so why not send a countdown series of emails? Think of shorter content snippets such as small surprises or treats, daily quotes/prompts/questions, your favorite recipes or moves, and so on to send in these countdowns.

   Essentially, you’re breaking up larger, longer emails into smaller, bite-sized pieces of content. This is excellent for recipes, hobbies, events, and coupon bloggers. Some countdowns to consider:

   – 10 days of Fright Nights
   – 5 days of Thanksgiving prep
   – 8 days of Hanukkah
   – 12 days of Christmas
   

3. Give a contest or a collaboration a try. This is a space where your creativity can really soar, and not just in the contests you run but in the collaborations you work with. Think about a contest for the best pet costume in your audience. At a minimum, that could be one email calling for entries, one to call for votes on the top three to five submitted, and one to announce the winner. One idea = three different emails!

   The holiday season paves the way for more creative endeavors, so if you’ve been itching to branch out a little with your emails, this could be your opportunity to do so. Some ideas for contests and collaborations can include:

   – Costume contests
   – Crafting fails
   – Festive recipes
   – Decoration showdowns
   

4. Don’t discount the discounts and promos. Sales are abundant during the holiday season, and you can easily work this into your holiday email strategy. Other than offering standard discounts and special days on your site, think in terms of what you can also offer through your email lists, as well:

   – Holiday presale offers
   – Reminders of your affiliate promotions and codes
   – Subscribers-only discount(s) on special days (This ties back to offering exclusivity, too!)
   – Drawings for a gift card

These are just a few ideas to help with your holiday email marketing strategy. While you can send any one of these types of campaigns throughout the year, they’re excellent to have in the back of your mind when working specifically on your holiday campaigns.

And if you’re concerned about inboxes being crowded and your emails getting lost in the shuffle, check out Inbox Activity Detection — a FeedBlitz Accel feature that lets you jump to the top of the inbox queue while your subscribers are checking their emails. Learn more about Inbox Activity Detection.

3. Design shortcuts for your holiday emails.

FeedBlitz offers many design shortcuts you can take when it comes to creating your holiday email campaigns — and they’re all in the Visual Mailing Editor (VME) right now, waiting for you to take advantage of them.

Every FeedBlitz client has a template library packed with pre-made email templates for most of the upcoming holidays. Simply scroll through your template library to the Holiday and Seasonal sections, choose a template to work with, add your logo or images, update the content, and you’re well on your way.

You can also search for keywords to see which templates populate for holidays, seasonal, sales, and promotions.

There are a variety of content layouts with the flexibility of adding/removing content blocks as needed. And if you’re ready to boost your holiday revenue with ads this season, drag and drop advertising blocks — after turning ads on in your account settings — and let the system take care of things from there. (We’ll be talking more about ads in tomorrow’s email.)

And the design help doesn’t stop there. If you’re interested in spicing things up with your images, remember your image library in the VME has direct integrations with Unsplash, Pixabay, and Tenor, giving you access to millions of royalty-free commercial use images!

Ready to take your holiday emails up a notch with free templates and images?
Start your free 30-day FeedBlitz trial.

4. Incorporating email ads for the holidays.

Fourth-quarter advertising revenues are often some of the highest of the year.

Not only are many people in their inboxes checking emails, but the ad inventory is well-stocked as well. Both of these factors lead to prime revenue-generating opportunities from the emails you’re already sending.

Take a deep dive into all things ad program-related in this blog post: Your Guide to the FeedBlitz Ad Program. In it, you’ll find example ads from client emails, earnings from three clients in three different genres for 2021 and 2022, and some ways to refine your ad practices to maximize revenues.

In the post, pay special attention to the fourth quarter earnings of all three clients shown. Even if you’re feeling things out, the holiday season is a great time to test the waters, especially if you’re already hosting ads on your site!

The ad program is available to all FeedBlitz clients, and you can sign up in a matter of minutes. This also won’t impact or compromise any of your current web-based advertising efforts.

Plan and prep now to avoid the extra stress, confusion, and last-minute pitches.

It’s common to feel dread or overwhelmed when thinking about end-of-the-year email campaigns, but it doesn’t have to be that way! As you can see, we’re big fans of planning for future success and are happy to help provide the resources and tools to enable yours. Early steps taken now set the pace for you to Win the Inbox this holiday season.

Send your holiday campaigns with FeedBlitz: Head to this page to start your free trial. Questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, and you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.