Did you know after the winter holidays, back-to-school season is the largest revenue-driver of the year for email marketing?
Calling all online retailers: This is your wake-up call.
Prepare for back-to-school season now – it will be here sooner than you think – so you can drive the most revenue from your emails.
Back-to-school email marketing strategy
You can’t go anywhere without the right strategy. Here are a few tips from the pros.
#1 Prep now: Back-to-school emails should start going out in July. Kids go back to school as early as the first week of August, so hustle now to get your content and creative in place by July.
#2 Mobile amazing: Mobile-friendly emails aren’t going to cut it. You need to make your back-to-school products and offers shine. Experiment with layout, colors and amounts of text to find what will wow your subscribers. Consider this a practice run for your 2015 winter holiday campaigns.
#3 Test: You can’t experiment without A/B testing. Get your hands dirty testing different elements of your design and content, as well as subject lines. Test one variable at a time so you know what the catalyst is when an email wins big time. You can also check out this webinar for more testing tips.
Back-to-school email marketing subject lines
First things first – 33 percent of email recipients open email based on subject line alone (Convinceandconvert.com). You have to get subscribers to open your email before you can dazzle them with your content. Here’s what works.
#1 Mention back-to-school: People are shopping for those items. Let them know up front that’s what you have.
#2 Tease what’s inside: For example, “Top 3 Back-to-School Items” in the subject line will tempt subscribers to open. Your headline inside should repeat the subject line, but after that, tell them the three items right away.
#3 Offer savings: Tell subscribers right away what the deal is you’re giving them. When inboxes are full of competitors’ voices, you need to stand out right away.
#4 Keep it short: As always, keeping it shorter and simpler works best for the person who’s an inbox scanner. And let’s face it, that’s most of us these days.
Back-to-school email marketing content
What’s going to make the content in your emails stand out from your competitors’ this year? I have a few thoughts.
#1 Meet a need: What do moms and kids (your subscribers) want from back-to-school offers? They want to be comfortable, they want to be stylish, and they want to save money. Make sure to show how your products meet those needs, like Gymboree does in this back-to-school email.
#2 Search terms: Do your research on back-to-school search terms. According to several resources, 2014 search terms show “DIY” gaining popularity when paired with “back-to-school.” People are getting crafty, so show off the products that let them do something themselves.
#3 Personalization upon open: If you’ve never heard of MovableInk or Liveclicker before, go now. They do amazing things with email, and can bedazzle your back-to-school emails with personalized content upon open.
Are you excited to get back to school?
With these email marketing tools at your fingertips, you can look forward to back-to-school season. Of course, if you need a little more strategy help, or someone to create a striking back-to-school email for you, we’re always here to help.