For every retailer, every holiday season is the most hectic time of year. As the Christmas season is fast-approaching again – it is a perfect time to grab this opportunity to increase sales and market reach by rethinking your email marketing programs.

Last year, email marketing was the biggest marketing channel on Black Friday, driving 25,1% of all the transactions. Preparing timely emails ahead of the major shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a great way to get ready for the holidays and avoid costly mistakes.
When it comes to your holiday email marketing, use these 3 ideas to deliver effective messages to your e-commerce customer inboxes!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals

Are you ready for Black Friday? What about Cyber Monday? These two important shopping days are when online buyers are expecting huge deals and discounts. Last year has proven that email is the biggest revenue stream for marketers on Cyber Monday and Black Friday – it drove a quarter of sales traffic, beating organic search (21%), paid search (16%) and direct traffic (17%).

However, according to the changing behavior of shoppers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have evolved into more than a “week of shopping”. That gives retailers more opportunities to lure shoppers earlier this year. Make no mistake, send a reminder to your customers early this year to keep your products in their mind. There are three main things to consider when sending promotional emails:

1. Personalize it based on on-site data:use the insights about your user’s browsing behavior to promote the products that will be most interesting to them
2. Fix your cart recovery: optimized and personalized cart recovery emails will help recover customers that didn´t buy, abandon the site or couldn’t complete the purchase due to site issues
3. Prioritize segmentation: make sure to analyze the different types of shoppers and pinpoint the perfect messaging for them!

Get Mobile Ready

Mobile traffic cannot be ignored by retailers anymore. How important is mobile? According to Movable Ink, 51% of Cyber Monday email conversions happened on desktop and 49% on mobile. The numbers are skewing more and more, year-over-year, and optimizing your email for mobile is no longer an option, it´s a must if you want to compete. From buy buttons to mobile-responsive design – make sure your email communication follows this trend with an optimal mobile experience!

To have your emails are ready for the mobile traffic, make sure to check that:

1. Your text and images adjust accordingly for the use on smaller screens
2. Social and mobile campaigns – this year is a great time to start integrating push messaging – if you online shoppers are checking your emails on mobile, but not converting, you can try testing mobile retargeting to another channels and sending push messages

Optimize your Checkout Process

A well-planned checkout experience can be a great asset this holiday season. By optimizing it across devices, making checkout adaptive and giving site visitors more opportunities to purchase more. Making it easier for your customers to finish the process faster, consider removing the registration process for a holiday season and making checkout 1-click process. One interesting tactic driving more sales is to give an option to keep shopping from the last page of checkout page or provide more recommendations based on what they have purchased before.