Companies looking to make the busy holiday season successful should remember an essential rule in their race to customers. If you act wrong and intrusive, your marketing campaign will bring you the bitterness of rejection instead of profit and customers’ loyalty.
Such tools as mailing and contacting through social networks can significantly help communicate with the consumers, delivering the right message. Yet, it is worth considering who exactly you are getting, at what time, in what way.
ArtPix 3D, the company that creates custom-made 3D crystals of various types, regularly builds its promotional strategies for the holidays since 3D crystal photos are that type of souvenir that can be adapted for any holiday and occasion. Also, they sell 3D crystals online and ship them across the US, making email marketing one of the most convenient tools to promote this business.
As the holidays are the selling season and a crucial period for increasing the costs of acquiring new customers for all entrepreneurs offering consumer goods, ArtPix 3D shares 12 worst holiday marketing mistakes and tips on how to avoid them:
Sending a million letters
The company emails inundation annoys the audience and forces people to unsubscribe. Businesses that have received “permission” from their client to send the mailing should not destroy the trust they have given, lest they end up in spam, like most intrusive offers.
Attracting attention to ordinary offers
A 10% discount on a couple of items is not a reason to inform everyone and everything. Don’t waste your loyal customers’ time. Companies need to create unique, exciting offers, and if there are none, don’t bother consumers without an important reason.
Repetition of previously used offers and promotions
Sending letters with last-year offers is bad manners. This speaks of your laziness and that the client will be bored with you. If you’ve already started designing a holiday marketing campaign, create something new, more interesting, and trendy this year.
Consider, for example, Halloween. Each year, several brand new trendy Halloween ideas and characters occur, usually based on top-rated movies or shows released during the year, some important events of the year, etc. Even a small hint to this up-to-date spirit of Halloween can make your message more “alive,” witty, and catchy.
Wherein, it does not matter whether you sell Halloween treats and party decorations or something remote from the issue of the holiday, like office supplies.
Writing a “novel”
There is nothing worse than an endless letter, especially when trying to read it using a mobile device. Rather than explaining too much in a single message, write multiple ones. This way, you can focus more on individual products and create customized mailing lists with the right accents.
Lack of systematization and dividing clients into groups
Please don’t treat your customers like they are not personalities and like they have the same needs and interests. If possible, try to at least group customers according to something they have in common, and make offers to them based on this.
The assumption that everyone is celebrating the same holidays
It is essential to be aware of the various holidays and dates that make sense to form a specific proposal (it all depends on religion, mentality, etc.). This rule relates to setting up mailing lists. Also, do not neglect the time between the holidays that can be used to prepare for the next celebration.
Using “over-promises” in the topic
Typically, such an approach is just annoying. For example, in the subject line, you see: “Open this and all your holiday wishes will come true.” Don’t take on so much, or you will disappoint your customers.
Lack of a clear call to action
If the business does not indicate what people should do after reading the letter, they, respectively, will not show any activity. Take care of a specific call to action and demonstrate how the desired result can be achieved.
Sending letters just because that’s what businesses do
Many businesses do email newsletters at this time of year, which has become almost a tradition. Why not join? If your purpose of sending “holiday” messages is to put a check in your marketing campaign to-do list, you should not bother since there will be no result. Such mailing without a real strategy or relevant content will only lead to failure.
Lack of performance measurements
Almost every employee of the company has many things to do during the holidays, but this does not mean that it is worth ignoring analytics regarding the effectiveness of marketing strategy in this hectic time. The findings can usually show businesses how to change or tweak their approach during the holiday season to improve results.
Hiding the sender’s address
People open those emails in which they know the sender. Which letter do you think is more likely to resonate – from an employee of the company or a brand directly?
Inserting useless links
Although some customers are not adherents of transitions from mail to the proposed links, those who still wanted to know the details should not face unnecessary barriers. For example, when talking about a promotion, sale, or a special holiday offer, instead of a direct link to a landing page with the necessary information, companies place links to their main page.
