The holidays aren’t even over yet, but if you haven’t already, it’s time to start planning for 2016. Besides your normal promotional campaigns, what should you be running early in the new year? We’re glad you asked! That’s exactly what one of our expert strategists, Fawn Young, is answering in today’s blog post.
4. Test, Test, Test
I’m a big advocate of testing and letting the data tell you what works. It’s a great idea to always be testing, but for some companies with time and resource constraints this just isn’t possible, especially during the busy holiday season. Take advantage of the (hopefully) slower time after the holidays to work out a testing schedule and begin testing. Run tests on subject lines, message content, offers, send times, etc. Just be sure to only test one element at a time so you know you have a clean test.
By running split tests throughout the year, you’ll know what your subscribers respond to best when the 2016 holiday time-frame rolls around and you’ll be ready to go with your winners.
3. Roll Out A Re-engagement Campaign
After the holidays is the perfect time to run a re-engagement campaign. Many people may only purchase from you once a year during the holidays when they are buying gifts for loved ones. Once the holiday season has passed, run a re-engagement campaign geared toward winning the contacts back that have been completely ignoring your emails for a lengthy amount of time. If they don’t re-engage, it may be time to let them go, or at least place them onto a separate list that you will begin to mail less frequently. Perhaps you just start sending them your most hard hitting deals going forward to try to win them back.
A re-engagement campaign should be a series of messages and would be a great place to repurpose your manage preferences email to give it more traction. Other ideas for re-engagement campaign messages include surveys, deep offers, and last chance/make up or break up campaigns.
Here’s an example from JC Penney:
2. Run A Manage Preferences Campaign
A manage preferences campaign is geared toward gathering additional information on your subscribers so that you can use that information to send them marketing messages that will be more relevant to their needs, wants, interests, etc. January is a great time to send a manage preferences campaign. Your contacts may be getting tired of all the “buy, buy, buy,” and “spend, spend, spend “emails and a chance to take a break from that for a minute may be just what they need.
The main focus of the preferences email should be to update or manage preferences. Anything else in the message should be secondary. Here’s a preferences example from Saks Fifth Avenue:
1. Audit Your Automated Messages
Whether you have just one automated welcome message running or a slew of welcome and post purchase campaigns, it’s important to check in on them from time to time. Ensure that the images are still rendering and that coupon codes are still valid. If it makes sense to change out the imagery with the seasonality, be sure to do so.
Transactional messages fall into this bucket too. Make sure you check all your order confirmation, shipping confirmation, account update emails, etc. If there is a problem with the way your emails look or function, you can guarantee it’s causing your customers to doubt the security of their purchase with your brand. Keep things on the up and up by monitoring these campaigns throughout the year, and definitely at the beginning of a new year.
Have you started planning for 2016? What campaigns are MUST DO’s on your calendar? Comment below and let us know!