Maximize Your Impact on New Email Subscribers From Holiday Campaigns

Ah, the holidays. Parties, gifts, family time, indulgent food and a few days off work-just about everyone can find something to love about the holiday season. But even after festivities end, you still have cause to celebrate. After all, your captivating seasonal campaigns are likely earning you tons of new email subscribers who made holiday purchases on your website, through your catalog or in your stores.

Now it’s time to take advantage of the season’s unique ability to bring in customers. Follow these four tips to turn your seasonal customers into loyal brand ambassadors.

1. Clean Up Your List

While it’s always important to validate your email list, this is especially true for addresses collected through the holiday season, when stress, time constraints and multiple distractions can lead to even more spelling and syntax errors. It’s not uncommon for retail cashiers to make mistakes when punching in email addresses or phone numbers during rushed checkout sessions

Validating your list will help resolve these mistakes and ensure addresses actually exists. This saves you time and effort, and markedly increases the value of your database.

2. Go Deep With the Data

Having a group of new subscribers not only gives you additional potential long-term customers, it also offers a wealth of insights into the customers behind the address. But be careful with behavioral data gained during the holiday season. Because many customers are purchasing gifts for friends and family, holiday shoppers often buy items that don’t reflect their normal buying habits the rest of the year. Therefore, it’s important to go much deeper and consider other types of data.

For example, look at demographics such as:

• Age
• Income
• Residence

Also, consider degree of engagement, such as whether a customer made more than one purchase; and purchase preferences, such as whether the customer prefers to buy from you online, through phone-in orders or in your brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, consider the devices a customer uses for purchasing and engaging with your emails.

The more you understand about your new subscribers, the better you can craft targeted messages that garner more opens, clicks and conversions.

3. Engage Early and Often

Cash in on holiday excitement by building the relationship right away. Busy shoppers often have short attention spans, so send a welcome message within a few days of their purchase-but make sure to remind them about their purchase after the holiday hubbub has died down.

Refresh shoppers’ memories about who you are, and let them know what they can expect from the communications you might send them, such as blog posts, discounts or information on new product releases. Provide the opportunity to opt into only the communications they want. Gently drip your post-purchase communications to them throughout and after the holiday season, so that a true relationship can begin to blossom.

4. Survey Says…

Don’t be afraid to send a brief survey to your new subscribers to get more insights into what makes them tick. When combined with a welcome message, this approach can convey to the subscriber how serious you are about understanding their experience and meeting their needs in the future. This can help round out the data you already have on hand.

Of course, timeliness is critical for all of the above. Past Jan. 15 or so, your new holiday friends are likely to have moved on mentally. Get your message out early, and use the information you gain to deepen your new relationship. Remember the best and most important time to interact with your new subscribers is after they’ve interacted with you.