As you start making your holiday wish list and picking the perfect gifts for your loved ones, don’t forget to add one more item to your to-do: preparing your email program for the holiday rush.
In August? Yep. Just like Santa’s elves working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure everything is ready for the big day, you need to start early to make the most of your holiday email marketing strategy.
The Challenge of the Extended Holiday Shopping Season
The holiday season is a prime time for businesses to engage with their audiences through email marketing. In recent years, this period has extended beyond just Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), with significant email volumes starting to increase months in advance. In 2023 Iterable saw volumes increase by nearly 7 billion messages from July to November.
In fact, the holiday shopping season now often begins as early as October and can stretch into January, and includes various sales events and holiday promotions. This extended timeline means that businesses need to be prepared for sustained high volumes of email traffic over a longer period.
Customer Attention Span is Short
As the volume of emails sent during the holiday season continues to rise, it becomes increasingly challenging to capture and maintain the attention of your recipients. . To maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and ensure high performance, it is crucial to have a robust email infrastructure and properly configured systems in place.
IP Warm-Up Strategy
Just like roasting chestnuts on an open fire, a gradual IP warm-up ensures your emails are toasted to perfection and ready to deliver cheer to your recipients. This gradual process also helps build a solid sender reputation and reduces the risk of emails being flagged as spam. Here is how to make sure you warm up your IP effectively as part of your holiday email marketing strategy.
Evaluating IP Needs
Before starting your warm-up, assess your IP requirements. First, determine how many IPs you need based on your planned email volume. If you are planning on significantly increasing your volume over the holiday season then you may need to consider adding additional IPs. . Generally, these are the ranges we recommend for daily volumes:
- 1-2 IPs: Suitable for sending up to 650,000 emails
- 2-4 IPs: Recommended for sending between 650,000 and 1,300,000 emails
- 4-5 IPs: Advisable for sending between 1,300,000 and 1,950,000 emails
- 6-7 IPs: For sending between 1,950,000 and 2,600,000 emails
The amount of required IPs can vary from sender to sender and brand to brand depending on performance and prior reputation.
For more assistance with evaluating your IP needs contact your Iterable customer success manager to learn more.
Gradual Increase and IP Management
Once you’ve determined your IP requirements, begin to gradually increase volumes. Ramping up to planned volumes gradually is crucial to maintain sender reputation and inbox placement rates, especially during peak periods like the holidays.
Begin by sending a small percentage of your planned volume. This cautious approach allows Inbox Service Providers (ISPs) to acclimate to your increased sending activity without triggering spam filters.
Aim to raise your volume by 10-20% each week, depending on how ISPs and recipients respond. This gradual ramp-up helps solidify your sender reputation by demonstrating consistent, responsible sending behavior. It reinforces you are a legitimate high-volume sender by allowing ISPs to recognize and trust your sending patterns over time, which will help to reduce the chances of your emails being flagged as spam and increases your chances of reaching your recipients’ inboxes.
Monitoring and Adjustments
Monitor key metrics such as delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates closely during the ramp-up period. Adjust your sending strategy based on these metrics to maintain optimal performance and ensure your emails continue to reach recipients’ inboxes.
Regularly check your IP reputation using tools and services like Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS (maybe use this link instead). Watch for signs of rate limiting or deferrals, which may indicate a poor reputation that needs improvement before scaling up email volume.
List Segmentation and Targeting
Stoking the IP fire isn’t the only item your team should be focusing on during holiday email marketing prep. Making sure your lists are segmented and you’re reaching the right people is critical. Segmentation ensures that your emails are relevant to the recipients, which increases engagement rates and helps maintain a positive sender reputation. By targeting the right audience, you reduce the likelihood of spam complaints and bounces, further enhancing your deliverability.
Focus on sending emails to recently engaged users and establish a cutoff date for engagement, typically around 12 months after a user has stopped engaging. This ensures that your efforts are directed toward subscribers who are more likely to interact with your content, improving overall email deliverability and campaign effectiveness.
Behavioral Segmentation
You could also try grouping recipients based on their past interactions with your brand. This can include purchase history, browsing behavior, email opens, and clicks. By analyzing these behaviors, you can create more personalized and timely campaigns.
Here are some examples of how behavioral segmentation can be used:
- Purchase History: Send recommendations or sale notifications based on previous purchases
- Browsing Behavior: Offer targeted deals or content based on viewed products or pages.
- Email Engagement: Reward frequent openers and clickers with exclusive offers, and create re-engagement campaigns for inactive users
- Cart Abandonment: Follow up with reminders or incentives for users who left items in their cart
- Event Participation: Send relevant follow-ups and resources to event attendees
Demographic Segmentation
Use demographic data like age, gender, and location to tailor your messages. For example, promotions or products can be customized to suit the preferences and needs of different age groups or regions.
Here’s a few more ways that data can be used:
- Age: Customize content to suit different age groups, such as trendy products for younger audiences or practical items for older recipients
- Gender: Tailor promotions or recommendations based on gender-specific preferences and interests
- Location: Send region-specific offers, updates, or event invitations relevant to the recipient’s geographical area
If you lack historic data on recipients or are using a new list, validate your email addresses to remove invalid entries. This helps maintain a healthy sender reputation and improves deliverability. Validating your list ensures you start with a clean, high-quality list, maximizing the chances of reaching real, active recipients.
Learn more on how to validate emails with the BriteVerify + Iterable integration.
Content Strategy and A/B Testing for Holiday Email Marketing
Once you’ve warmed your IP and segmented your lists, it all comes down to sending the right content—which is especially important during the holiday season when competition for attention is fierce.
Sending Relevant and Useful Content
Here’s how you can ensure your emails resonate with your audience and stand out in a crowded inbox.
- Understand Your Audience: Utilize segmentation strategies to tailor your messages to specific groups. Knowing their preferences, interests, and needs allows you to create content that resonates and is highly engaging.
- Provide Value: Ensure your emails offer something valuable, such as exclusive holiday offers, gift guides, or helpful tips. Content that addresses your recipients’ holiday needs can drive higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Engage with Stories: Share compelling stories or customer testimonials that capture the holiday spirit and showcase how your products or services can enhance the season.
A/B Experimenting Throughout the Holiday Season
Experimentation is all about finding the highest performing messaging or content. When it comes to A/B testing, however, there are some critical steps your team should take.
- Test Different Elements: Experiment with various aspects of your emails such as subject lines, images, call-to-action buttons, and content layout to see what resonates best with your audience.
- Monitor Performance: Track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to identify the most effective elements of your campaigns.
- Adjust Based on Results: Use insights gained from A/B testing to refine your content strategy throughout the holiday season. Continuously improving your approach ensures that you are sending the most effective and engaging emails possible.
Steps for Effective A/B Testing:
- Create Variations: Develop two or more versions of an email with different elements to test
- Define Your Goals: Decide what you want to learn from the test, such as which subject line drives higher open rates or which call-to-action leads to more conversions
- Segment Your Audience: Split your email list into segments to evenly distribute the test variations
- Analyze Results: Compare the performance of each variation to determine which one is more effective
- Implement Findings: Use the winning elements in your future emails to enhance engagement and conversion rates
The Holidays are Closer Than You Think
As you prepare for the festive season ahead, remember to implement the essential strategies outlined in this guide: warm up your IPs, segment your lists, validate your emails, and consistently test your content.
By following these recommendations with a dash of holiday magic and strategic planning, your email campaigns are set to deliver joy, drive engagement, and achieve record-breaking conversions this holiday season. Happy emailing and happy (early) holidays!
To learn more about how Iterable can help your team accomplish your holiday email marketing goals, chat with your CSM about Iterable’s Professional Services offerings. And, if you’re not an Iterable customer but want to learn more, schedule a demo today.
