Effective Holiday Email Marketing in 2019: Examples, Tips, and Tools for Successful Campaigns

CyberWeek and the holidays are a great opportunity to increase sales and maximize revenue.

In 2018, Cyber Monday alone drove $7.9 billion dollars in ecommerce sales, and that number grows year by year. It’s never too early or too late to get involved, and the weekend of Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) occurs a little later this year: the perfect excuse to start those deals early.

Holiday email marketing is the perfect way to start gathering interest and to help you capture a percentage of that revenue.

Via email, you are reaching out to your most engaged audience — customers and subscribers you already have — and you can also create campaigns to reach out to leads. Showing any of these audiences the value that your store offers, particularly within the holiday period, is the secret to conversions

Let’s delve deeper and explore several areas of holiday email marketing, including:

• Reviewing some real-world examples.
• Analyzing some possible email optimizations.
• Discussing holiday email marketing campaign tips.
• Reviewing the tools you should be using to optimize your email marketing for the holiday season.

It’s time to drill down on your holiday email marketing strategy and make sure it’s running smoothly for the upcoming holiday season.

Optimizing for Mobile

Email marketing has changed dramatically in the years since smartphones became the norm, and even more so since screen real estate has become a priority (e.g., buttonless smartphones to maximize on readability).

According to ChannelSight, the revenue from smartphone shoppers over BFCM in 2018 alone was a standout $2.1 billion. This equates to 48.1% growth in customers shopping with their smartphones year over year.

If your emails aren’t going to stand up to the smartphone user’s test of high-resolution, concise information and clear benefits, you’re not going to see the revenue from these customers.

Keep these points in mind when creating your holiday marketing email campaigns:

• Visual appeal: use crisp, clean and high-resolution images and logos that are compressed so that they load quickly and use less data.
• Relevance: give customers more than a reason for why you’re contacting them, give them a reason to convert, e.g., a sale or promotion.
• Preempt their questions: give them a bonus, like the opportunity to join your loyalty program or an indication of their tier and the benefits.
• Keep it snappy: nobody wants to scroll endlessly or read paragraphs of text on their mobile device.

Types of Emails to Optimize During the Holidays

Gone are the days of looking at email marketing campaigns with a “set it and forget it” mentality.

To ensure your campaigns are effective, you need to consider your audiences, your goals, and your possible return on investment (ROI) — and you need to track these results to help you improve each and every campaign.

As you prepare for the holiday season, take the time to review and update these three key holiday emails:

1. Welcome emails.
2. Relevant promotional emails.
3. Abandoned cart emails.

Let’s break each of these down.

1. Welcome emails.

Some studies suggest welcome emails have an average open rate of 34% — that’s more than twice as much as all other emails.

According to Experian:

• Welcome email open rates are 4X higher than bulk emails.
• Welcome emails see more than 3X the transactions and revenue per email.

With such high open rates, it’s clear that welcome emails are a vital marketing tool. For starters, they help you to kick-off of the personal connection with your customer, which in turn will have an impact on their customer lifetime value (CLV). They’re also an opportunity for you to coax your customers back to your store through loyalty program reminders, product updates, coupons and recommendations.

And, when your customers’ open your emails, it’s a signal to their email service provider (ESP) that you are a welcomed sender — this way you don’t end up in the spam folder.

How do you craft a successful welcome email?

Here are a few quick tactics you can implement to optimize your welcome emails:

• Send it immediately, usually from the moment they have made their first purchase with you.
• Make sure it’s recognizable — a simple, high-resolution logo placed at the top reminds your customers of exactly who is contacting them.
• Ask your customers to engage. Think small; for example, product recommendations with a ‘continue shopping’ at the bottom prompts them to redirect to your store.
• Give the recipient an incentive to engage with your email. Coupon codes and exclusive offers are a great way to initiate this.
• A bonus during the holiday season is to give estimated shipping times or, better yet, tracked shipping and real-time shipping updates.

Let’s look at how The Mountain crafts a welcome email.

What The Mountain did well:

• The Mountain’s Welcome email is instantly recognizable; the first part of the email that the recipients will notice is The Mountain’s crisp logo, complemented by consistent brand colors throughout the email. Notice how the theme of a deep forest green complimented by orange accents throughout the entire email is reminiscent of The Mountain’s logo.
• The imagery throughout The Mountain’s welcome email is high-quality, clearly displaying their products while also supporting their company ethos of sustainability and green manufacturing.
• Subject lines are important, and The Mountain makes sure they remain recognizable and that their reason for contact is clear: “Welcome to The Mountain – Bold Apparel for Passionate People.” their subject line tells the reader, “Thanks for joining us and here’s who we are/what we do”. Engaging their customers with a reminder that helps to re-engage their customers and convince them to check The Mountain out when they’re shopping for apparel.
• The email goes on to link to sections that give further insight into The Mountain’s brand and ethos, including ‘Green Manufacturing’. With customer segments that will be influenced simply by the sustainable production aspect for The Mountain’s products, adding these details is a clever marketing tool to help engage a variety of their customer groups.
• The bottom of the email features links to The Mountain’s social media channels and to their blog. Customers are far more likely to engage with these content sources if they’re easy to find and easy to navigate; by adding these links, The Mountain ensures this is the case.

One way that The Mountain could use this email to encourage sales and recapture customers who may have signed up but not made a purchase is to include a coupon or deal (such as free shipping on orders over a certain amount). This would give email recipients the incentive to make use of any deals and increase the chances of them completing a purchase.

Here is another example of how Skullcandy effectively uses a welcome email.

What Skullcandy did well:

• Skullcandy’s colloquial street-style vibe is core to their branding – their welcome email subject line perfectly captures their brand: “You’re in! Welcome to the Skullfamily” appears in the inboxes of those who sign up to the Skullcandy newsletter almost immediately.
• With a black background and white typeface, Skullcandy’s email stands out straight away. They’ve also made sure to keep their email concise by not including so much content that readers are inclined to just scroll past it.
• The only image within the email is crisp, eye-catching and clearly shows off one of their top-selling products being used by the model – a pair of their wireless headphones.
• One of the first pieces of content within the email is a small sentence which states that standard shipping is free for orders that amount to more than $100. This will inevitably help convince customers to consider making a purchase, and furthermore, to consider making a purchase over $100.
• By offering a discount code (10%) and following that with a ‘SHOP NOW’ button, Skullcandy have created email content that actively engages their newsletter recipients and encourages them to complete the Call To Action (CTA) and follow the links to complete a purchase.

Remember we explained the importance of mobile compatibility? One thing to note is that this email changes when viewed on a mobile phone.

Notice that in the mobile-version of the same email, the ‘SHOP NOW’ button is no-longer center-aligned. This is obvious to recipients that it’s an error and could deter them from shopping for a number of reasons, one major one being that it could seem to them to be a copy-cat email and therefore possibly nefarious. The repercussions of small mistakes like this could result in the email being marked as spam and effect delivery rates in the future.

2. Relevant promotional emails.

Give your holiday shoppers insights and set expectations on what promotions you are running during the holiday season.

Here are a few things to include in your promotional emails to subscribers:

• Shipping info (including final delivery dates).
• Gift card services.
• Gift wrapping options.
• Customer service contact details.

Let’s take a look at how Jeni’s Ice Creams did this last year.

Let’s break these down (left to right):

• Email 1:
  • Clear campaign launch and CTA to shop a holiday gift guide.
  • Fun graphics appealing to the indulger in us all.
  • Clear CTA at the bottom.
  • Additional CTA for a Thanksgiving delivery.
• Email 2:
  • The Thanksgiving dinner CTA is moved to the top of the email – clear CTA.
  • Holiday-themed graphics and visuals.
  • Gift guide callout at the bottom.
• Email 3:
  • More visible ‘ORDER NOW’ CTA as the deadline to order approaches.
  • The approaching holiday is called out even more visually with graphics.
  • Shipping costs clearly advertised to alleviate any cost concerns.
• Email 4:
  • Post-Thanksgiving emails change to holiday dinner push, with clear CTA at the top of the email.
  • Visuals switch to gift-like themes to match the upcoming holidays.
  • Images show holiday-specific ice cream flavors.
• Email 5:
  • Even larger CTA announcing order date deadline.
  • Personalization options advertised.
  • Last-minute gift guide offered.

While we’re here, let’s look at just one more example to really drive this home with this tip in mind: include a countdown in your emails. Giving your customers a clear purchasing deadline tells them when they need to complete orders to ensure products get where they need to go in time for the holidays.

This applies a little pressure too and, according to Sendlane, has even been attributed to a huge 400% increase in conversions for ecommerce stores during Black Friday.

Here is how Harry’s did this.

What Harry’s did well:

• The first thing readers notice is the countdown timer, and then they feel the pressure to make an order because they’re “almost out of time” and need to order by December 20 to receive their orders before Christmas Day.
• The image featured between the countdown timer and this information is crisp and clearly shows off one of Harry’s high-end products, helping to remind the email recipient what it is that Harry’s has to offer customers.
• The clear “Shop Immediately” CTA prompts customers to jump in there and complete a purchase before they miss out.

3. Abandoned cart emails.

An abandoned cart is the last thing you want.

Usually, it means that something was wrong with or missing from the customers’ shopping experience.

Imagine what proportion of these you could convert just by setting up a compelling and automated abandoned cart email flow.

During the holidays, here are three of the main reasons people abandon their carts (and what your email needs to answer to solve for them):

• Shipping costs: Is it feasible for you to offer free shipping? Do you track parcels?
• Better deal elsewhere: Tempt customers back with price, sales and emotional cues.
• Out-of-stock: How can you capitalize once your products become available again?

For these people, it is crucial that you trigger automatic and instant abandoned cart emails that address their needs.

Let’s look at each, and what you can do to address them so you can start seeing abandoned cart numbers like these:

Reducing shipping costs.

In a survey conducted by BigCommerce, 80% of Americans cited shipping costs and speed of shipping as a major factor in determining where they shop. Furthermore, 66% decided not to buy entirely because of shipping costs.

Sure, offering free shipping is one way to reduce cart abandonment. For many businesses, however, offering free shipping just isn’t an option, especially if you’re shipping items across the United States.

Large companies like Amazon can offer free shipping simply because of their size, but what about small-to-medium-sized businesses? When and how can they start to offer free shipping, or shipping at a rate that doesn’t put customers off?

• If you’re a seller competing primarily on the uniqueness of your product, try increasing the average order value (AOV) by offering free shipping after certain conditions have been met. You’ll often see this as a floating banner on websites stating something like: “Free shipping on orders over $100.”
• If you’re competing on price and are not willing to absorb the cost of shipping as a marketing expense, then you’ll need to raise the price of your products to cover shipping. Remember though, price rises can be a recipe for losing valuable loyal customers, so make sure you think carefully about how you’ll do this.
• If you are willing to absorb the cost, then do so.
• If you’re somewhere in the middle, and you’re based within the United States, try offering free shipping to certain locations only.
• Do you offer expedited shipping? If so, including a surcharge for this service could help eat some of the deficit.

Better deal elsewhere.

If your customers are finding better deals somewhere else, all is not lost.

Sure, sometimes customers genuinely find a better deal; however, they could be playing hard to get. Some shoppers will abandon their carts on purpose, in order to trigger a discount or deal email. Before you start offering discounts in your abandoned cart email, there is little evidence to prove that offering a discount in abandoned cart emails works.

Figure out what your customers want from you. If your abandoned cart email conversion rates are too good to be true, perhaps consider readjusting your flow or adding certain conditions such as the discount only applying if the customer spends over a certain amount.

If you are losing a lot of customers to competitors with cheaper prices, then you might have a bigger problem than your price point.

What should you do instead?

• Create scarcity and the fear of missing out. Remember the email above from Harry’s? Language is key: clear “Back-in-stock” language reminds your customers that this item often isn’t in stock. Buttons which allow customers to sign up for alerts for when items are back in stock give you even more opportunity to maximize on this.
• Use influencers. Offer your product for review to a well-known person in your industry so they can put you ahead of your competitors, or you can also use micro-influencers to drive increased awareness of your product. With the changes to major influencer platforms like Instagram, you need to be increasingly careful who you approach with influencer offers and make sure that their audience is your audience, too — but get it right and you could see very fast results.
• Bundle products together. By offering key products together you can sell more than what shoppers were originally looking for, and they usually save money either on shipping or on the products themselves.

Out of stock.

You should have ample inventory to make sure items don’t go out of stock. While BigCommerce has the functionality to ensure that out-of-stock items are removed immediately if something does become unavailable, then responding to customers in the right way can make or break a sale.

Take Suzanne Moore, founder of So Suzy Stamps, who uses InStockAlerts to send a personalized message to shoppers when their items are back in stock:

“With InStockAlerts, I was able to send a customized email to people who wanted alerts when a product was back in stock. I’d say:

‘Hey, hurry up, it’s back in stock! You need to order it before the other lady does.’

I was able to add my personality into those automated messages and it’s that personality that really attracts and retains my customers.”

— Suzanne Moore, Founder of So Suzy Stamps

Those InStockAlert emails, by the way, enjoy an 80% conversion rate.

Suzy’s message of, “Hey, hurry up, it’s back in stock! You need to order it before the other lady does,” is simple and effective. Messages like this can make all the difference.

You can (and should) plan for people potentially abandoning their carts due to stock issues by keeping your inventory in check. If you have plans to move a particular product in its entirety and you’re prepared for BigCommerce to remove it once it goes out of stock, then prioritizing scarcity and urgency should be your focus.

Tips For Your 2019 Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns

We’ve optimized emails, now let’s look at some holiday campaign strategies and tactics you can implement this holiday season.

1. Check out last year’s trends.

Why reinvent the wheel?

In 2018, there were some noteworthy email marketing holiday trends:

• Holiday gift guides. A roll-over from 2017, but the gift guide is a goodie bag in itself, and for good reason.
• Winback emails. Been a while since you’ve seen a certain group of customers? Send that segment an email reminding them what you’ve got on offer this season.
• Mobile-friendly content. We’ve already touched on this but can’t express the importance enough.
• Holiday-centric themes and imagery. This is an easy one… remind your customers why you’re getting in contact and that there’s something in it for them with on-brand imagery that references the holiday season.

Holiday gift guides.

Holiday gift guides are the perfect opportunity to curate your best sellers, top-rated, and other top products in your inventory for your target audiences.

Using dynamic content, you can create digital gift guides that show relevant products to specific audiences that will help you cross-sell and upsell based on a user’s price sensitivity, demographic, and personal interest.

Winback emails.

Winback email campaigns target customers who previously showed an interest in purchasing from you, but some time has passed since they’ve engaged with you. These campaigns are the perfect way to re-engage. Remind these customers why they were interested in you in the first place and even introduce one of those countdown timers we mentioned earlier.

The email should focus on:

• Reminding them about your brand.
• Reminding them why they initially showed interest in purchasing from you.
• Showing what product or related products they viewed.

Mobile-friendly content.

Let’s just revisit this again very quickly. The stats say it all — Small Business Trends attributes as much as 56% of Black Friday 2018 online fashion sales to mobile.

 Focus on getting the basics right:

• Clear, high quality images that have been compressed to allow for fast loading.
• Concise content that grabs the customer’s attention and entices them to engage.
• CTAs that invite customers to your store.
• Website compatibility on mobile is core to the success of this. If completing an order on your store is a nightmare with a smartphone, don’t bank on any of the above.

Holiday-centric themes and imagery.

This is a simple one. Get your customer in the spirit with themed content, just as long as it’s on brand.

Pop-ups.

Finally, strategically placed and timed pop-ups on your site can help you grow your customer base.

A 2017 Listrak study found pop-ups can improve an email list growth by about 20%, and welcome email series saw a revenue increase of 23% for new subscribers who submitted their email through a pop-up. Just look at the pop-up that APTO uses to capture newsletter subscribers and entice them to shop again with a welcome email offering free shipping.

2. Start planning early.

You may have heard, “Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.”

For a holiday email marketing strategy, this saying could be, “Poor planning on your part does not necessitate a purchase from a customer.”

Planning your holiday email marketing strategy and teasing it out is important so your customers know what offers they might expect.

Just over 20% of marketing professionals plan more than 3 months in advance for the peak email season.

By planning out in advance you are able to:

• Create the various pieces of content necessary to improve conversions.
• Review content and strategies that led to high conversions previously and implement them.
• Ensure you are tracking important micro- and macro-conversion points for future data analysis.

3. Segment your list.

Segmenting your email list is crucial.

When 27% of email subscribers over 55 years old believe their emails are meant to appeal to millennials, then they have a high chance of not converting.

Break out your email list into various segments that allows you to show relevant products to each segment. This can be a big job with a lot of factors to consider, but some email marketing apps like Marsello do this organisation for you.

Customer segmentation creates an opportunity to cross-sell and upsell your customers, but it goes beyond that, you can use these groups to create lead campaigns and even use the same lists with your social media marketing.

Holiday email marketing segments to consider are:

• VIP customers.
• High average order value customers.
• High total transaction customers.
• Lapsed-purchase customers.
• Subscribers who have not made a purchase.
• Customers who haven’t bought recently: 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days ago.
• Demographics: age, location, income.

Creating targeted messaging for each of these customer segments will improve your conversion rate compared to a generic, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all email.

Improve your customer targeting with BigCommerce customer groups. Offer your important customers discounts, access to special products, and more by creating Customer Groups within BigCommerce’s control panel. No apps are necessary. Learn how to set up customer groups and the effective ways you can use them.

Black Friday Email Examples

1. Murad’s on-brand excitement.

It may be Black Friday, but Murad got into the spirit in a colorful way. This big, bright image puts a festive touch on Murad’s typically more neutral aesthetic, but does it in a way that still stays on brand — choosing colors that complement the products’ packaging.

The email subject line — “Ready. Set. Black Friday!” — capitalizes on the excitement of Black Friday as the starting line to the holiday shopping race.

The primary message inside, “All About the Present,” and accompanying CTA of “Shop Now,” connect back to that excitement and sense of urgency and provide a clear path to the product category featuring gift sets. And the bit of clever wordplay reinforces the email’s light, fun tone without going overboard.

2. Kelty’s Bright Idea.

Black Friday can have a negative connotation: mobs of shoppers looking to scrap and claw their way to a great deal.

Kelty does a great job of putting a fun spin on Black Friday by calling it Bright Friday Savings.

Beyond the wordplay, they also make their customers feel smarter by taking advantage of the various discounts and free shipping they are offering.

They show a selection of products and at the bottom of the email also offer a gift guide their customers can use to find the right products for their friends and family.

Cyber Monday Email Examples

1. Mario Badescu Skin Care brings clarity.

This Cyber Monday email from Mario Badescu Skin Care opted to forgo any unnecessary cleverness for clean but festive holiday look and clear, direct messaging — packed with incentives.

The subject line gets straight to the point. “20% off + Free Gift | Today Only | Cyber Monday is Back.” This email works to cut through the noise and tell you exactly why it’s worth your time to shop today.

Discounts of 20%, 15%, or 10%, depending on how much you spend, are compounded by the promise of a free gift. In addition, free U.S. shipping eliminates the risk of cart abandonment due to high shipping costs.

2. Cutter & Buck cutting to the chase.

Simplicity can be effective.

Cutter & Buck keeps their email simple:

• They provide a discount code.
• A large SHOP NOW call-to-action is front and center.
• They include a soft call-to-action: Free ground shipping for $100 or more spent.

Cut to the heart of what your customers want to know: what discount do I get, and is there free shipping?

Christmas Email Examples

1. Precision Gift Giving.

Precision Camera & Video focus on their major offerings: products, classes, and gift cards.

The core focus of the email is on their affordable and lower-priced last-minute gifts, but they do toss in one mid-range priced product.

They note upcoming classes they offer, allowing their customers to provide continuing education as a gift. This is perfect when you consider the amount of customers they’d capture who know someone that wants to learn more about photography.

Finally, for gift givers who are not sure what a photographer or videographer may want or need, they can simply get a gift card. Never underestimate the power of a gift card, particularly during the Christmas gift-giving season.

2. Kelty Gifts by Christmas.

This a great email for last-minute gift givers.

Kelty’s Christmas email starts off with a clear subject line,

Ends Soon: Free Next Day Shipping, Guaranteed by Xmas.

The sense of urgency and offer of a guaranteed solution would generate a high open rate.

Once open, Kelty sets the expectations of when customers should order by (date and time) to ensure their gifts are delivered by Christmas. Additionally, they clearly mark off what shipping options are no longer available if the customer wants the shipping guarantee.

Top Email Software For Holiday Campaigns

Finally, we’ve picked out some of the most useful third-party app and service integrations available with BigCommerce.

Use these to build better campaigns both on-site before visitors become subscribers, and when you’re sending those important holiday emails.

1. Marsello.

Marsello is a high-powered email marketing companion for ecommerce and POS retailers. With features such as customer segmentation, loyalty marketing, pre-designed automated email flows, customer feedback collection, and one-off email campaigns.

We’ve touched on it — customer segmentation is the secret to mastering email marketing, and by appealing to your customers with exactly what relates to them, you’ll see your conversion rates climb.

Marsello creates customer segments based on your customers’ shopping history and site interactions, grouping them into such segments as ‘Lost,’ ‘At Risk,’ ‘Best,’ ‘Loyal,’ ‘Promising,’ and ‘New,’ making it so much easier to target each group. And as we’ve mentioned, you can even export these segments into social media and carry your campaigns through to your social media plans.

Here’s everything you get with Marsello and BigCommerce:

• Customer segmentation: RFM-based segmentation is almost an industry standard, and Marsello’s AI groups your customers into the segments above, making it easy to drill down and develop targeted marketing.
• Automated email flows: With pre-designed, optimized email flows such as Welcome email and Win-back campaigns, Marsello makes it pain-free to start targeting customers with automated emails that trigger instantly. It’s as easy as adding your branding, enabling the emails, reviewing them and then saving. And should you wish to, these email flows are fully customizable.
• Loyalty program: Promote customer loyalty and increase sales by prompting customers to join your branded loyalty program. With the ability to add tiers and customize the program to suit your branding, your loyalty program is quick and easy to set up.
• One-off email campaigns: Want to let your customers or a specific customer segment know about product updates for a flash sale? It’s a lot easier when you can create one-off email campaigns. Marsello makes this easy with segments, drag-and-drop email builders and saved branding.
• Customer feedback: Understand your customers, what they think of your store, and how they rate their experience by collecting feedback. Customer feedback is an important tool for business development, and Marsello’s feedback tool makes it easy to regularly gather feedback.

2. Springbot.

Springbot does some seriously cool data manipulation for BigCommerce store owners.

Using your out-of-the-box analytics or your Insights (or both), Springbot layers on additional user data and provides actionable steps you can take to segment your lists and make more money. Some customers are raving: “This is the best app ever!”

Here’s everything you get:

• Marketing dashboard: Robust data and analytics based on your customer and product data.
• Email marketing: Integration with your favorite email service provider so you can easily send personalized emails to customers as well as automated emails triggered by your customers’ actions.
• Social media: Schedule, edit and review your social media posts across Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Also, make your Instagram shoppable.
• Online ads: Re-engage visitors who view but don’t purchase your items by showing them a display ad on the web, mobile and social through our integration with AdRoll.
• Marketplaces: With Amazon Marketplaces, expand your products’ reach by quickly migrating your listings to Amazon. Match your store’s products, set pricing and optimize listings to win the Buy Box, as well as manage product listings, inventory and shipping updates.
• Onboarding and training: Once Springbot’s installed on your site, you are assigned your very own Customer Onboarding Manager. They will help you get up and running to get the most out of Springbot.

3. dotmailer.

With dotmailer, you can:

• Make contact, product and order data automatically flow into your account to supercharge your email marketing.
• Use the data you hold in dotmailer to better target users and create powerful multi-channel automation without the need to code.
• Send personalized campaigns powered by customers’ order history, web behavior and more.

4. Constant Contact.

With Constant Contact, you can:

• Create mobile-responsive emails customized to your brand that look great on any device.
• Set up an automated email series to send your customers personalized welcome, birthday and anniversary emails.
• Track results in real time, and build your list with free list-growth.
• Ensure your emails get delivered to inboxes, not spam folders.

5. MailChimp.

With MailChimp, you can:

• Send personalized product recommendations to individual customers in just a few clicks.
• Follow up with, delight and re-engage your customers using our preset customer lifecycle automation workflows.
• Create targeted campaigns that get the right messages in front of the right customers at the right time.
• Monitor our robust campaign reports to measure ROI, see what’s working, and learn how you can get better.

6. Privy.

With Privy, you can:

• Rapidly grow your email list and store sales with high-converting pop-ups, spin to win, and offers with bulk and unique coupon codes.
• Trigger popups using exit intent, time on site, scroll, cart size and more.
• A/B test campaigns to continually optimize performance.
• Sync new contacts to all email marketing platforms including MailChimp, Bronto, Klaviyo, Soundest, Constant Contact, SendGrid, Adroll, Zapier and more.

7. Happy Email.

With Happy Email, you can:

• Automatically send a thank-you email from store founder/owner to new customers.
• Connect, make your customers happy and build trust for your brand.
• No need to worry what to write to your customers. We’ve done it all for you.

8. JustUno.

Hailed by many brands as the most powerful free app in the marketplace, JustUno helps you to collect more emails so you can better segment, grow sales and increase lifetime loyalty.

Here are just a few of the things they offer:

• Email pop-ups: The simplest and most effective way to build your email list and generate sales opportunities.
• Exit pop-ups: Add exit intent pop ups to your site to capture emails before your visitor leaves.
• Mobile-optimized pop-ups (SEO-friendly): Engage and convert mobile traffic with mobile-specific pop-ups. In compliance with Google’s recent mobile SEO policies.
• Cart and checkout abandonment offers: Prevent cart abandonment with targeted offers proven to convert shoppers into customers.
• Banners, bars and slide-ins: Use for email capture, sale notifications and effective website messaging.
• Form integrations: Add the emails you capture to any list from MailChimp, Bronto, Klaviyo, Hubspot, Constant Contact, Rejoiner and more. Plus, add any HTML form to your pop-ups, banners and slide-ins.

9. In Stock Reminder.

With In Stock Reminder for BigCommerce, you can add a customized subscriber box to any product page, which, when completed, will inform customers by email when that item is back in stock.

Final Words

Email marketing is irrefutably important and can be a high-converting traffic channel for your business, especially during the holiday season.

Take the time to:

• Optimize key emails to drive conversations, and ensure you account for mobile compatibility.
• Plan and strategize for the holiday season far in advance.
• Select the right email marketing tools for your business.

Now that you have the information, it’s time to start working on optimizing your holiday email marketing strategy and making sure it’s geared to get the results you want. Start by taking a look at the welcome emails from stores like yours and see how you can make the most out of your marketing.