6 Ways to Create Holiday Campaigns That Convert

We’re coming up on the biggest retail event of the year: the holidays. While shoppers look for gifts (and deals), retailers vy for their attention in a crowded marketplace. How can you stand out?

As marketing powerhouse Neil Patel has mentioned¹, email has nearly three times the number of accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined—2.9 billion! When mixed with a loyalty program and all the ways they reward customers, you can make the most of the season without breaking the bank.

We’re putting the spotlight on a handful of promotions that you can use as inspiration for your own holiday marketing campaigns.

1. Create an undeniable loyalty program

Loyalty programs reward your customers for completing purchases with you. Considering the high-spend rates of the holiday season, they’re a powerful way to keep your customers coming back as they see the rewards quickly. 

Signing customers up for your loyalty program ensures they have a reason to come back after the holidays are over as well. They help you save on customer acquisition costs by reinforcing loyalty through repeated purchases. 

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You’ll need to get a customer loyalty cycle going, which is easy enough with the right loyalty program. 

• First, customers need to be rewarded for signing up (with bonus points, a free gift or a voucher for their next purchase)—this helps them get over the decision hurdle, because it’s clear they only benefit from joining your program. 
  • At this step, make sure you’re collecting emails and permission to email them. You’ll need that later.
• Add VIP tiers to keep customers excited about shopping with your store again and again. This means that they’re not just being rewarded for coming back—they’ve got a goal they’re working towards. 
  • Offering customers seasonal rewards can also help them to feel appreciated during a busy and expensive season.
• Remember those emails you collected? Using your loyalty program platform, craft promotional emails—more tips on what to write later in this guide—and send them to your loyalty program members. You’ll stay top of mind with people who have indicated they are engaged with your brand
  • When the holiday season is over, use those collected emails again to reinforce that you’re not just a place for gifts, but rather a store to consider all year long.
• Finally, reward your loyalty program members for referring new customers to your store; more on that later.

Have you heard? With Lightspeed Advanced Marketing, you can offer rewards online and off, build and send emails and reward customers for referrals from one place, seamlessly integrated into your POS. And you can track how your program is doing with built-in reports, so you’ll always know how effective your tactics are.

2. Incorporate holiday themes into your emails

This may sound obvious, but many merchants continue to send uninspired and generic emails during the holidays. Don’t be one of them! Write and design your emails in such a way that they embody the holiday that you’re celebrating while staying true to your brand and excite your customers along the way. 

If you’re sending emails for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then your design and messaging should bring about excitement and a sense of urgency. 

Go through your marketing emails and ask yourself the following questions:

• Do they contain key holiday terms? (e.g., ‘gifts’, ‘happy holidays’)
• If not, have you considered adding a seasonal emoji to make your message more in line with each holiday?
• Is your color palette in line with the holiday you’re celebrating but also complementary to your branding? (e.g., black and white for BFCM)
• Is the design of your email relevant to the season?
• Is the written and visual content of your email relevant to the season?
• Are you positioning your products as holiday purchases? (e.g., ‘Dresses for your next holiday party’ vs just ‘dresses’)

Here are a few holiday email examples you can use as inspiration.

OSMOSE creates an immersive theme for Chinese New Year

OSMOSE, a Singapore-based specialist in women’s fashion, knew that Chinese New Year was the perfect holiday to market to their current customers. The overarching theme of their email was the color red, which is considered a symbol of luck and prosperity during the hugely popular holiday. In fact, red is the official color of Chinese New Year. They encourage email recipients to “paint your wardrobe red” to “welcome a prosperous new year”. Check out their gorgeous customized email flow below.

Area 51 keeps customers informed with holiday season in-store hours

When the holiday season came nearer last year, Area 51 took the opportunity to remind their customers of their hours over that season, but they also sweetened the deal by offering 20% to their online customers, making sure their customers knew that online shopping at Area 51 was still an option.

3. Reward holiday shoppers for social media shares and referrals 

Acquire new customers and turn existing customers into brand ambassadors by offering a referral program tied to your loyalty earn and reward options. Or, in other words: get your holiday shoppers to do some of your marketing for you. 

The best part about this tactic is how hands-off it is for you. 

Using your loyalty program, automatically award points to program members for social media shares and friends who are successfully referred using a unique URL to complete their first purchase. All you need to do is let them know they’ll be rewarded for doing it—potentially in their order confirmation email, or in an email requesting a review after their purchase.

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4. Personalize your marketing with customer segments

A well-written and beautifully designed email won’t be effective if the content is irrelevant to the recipient. That’s why you should always incorporate personalization into your campaigns². 

Studies show³ that eCommerce emails with personalized subject lines have 29% higher open rates so really it’s a no-brainer—personalization and loyalty go hand-in-hand. And with the growth of email marketing (expected to reach an astounding 4.3 billion users in 2022⁴), you should be utilizing every tool at your disposal to help you increase open rates and stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds.

So consider incorporating tricks and tools like customer segmentation, purchase history included in email content and wish lists. Being able to easily tailor the content of your messages to each user will help you to reach them on a personal level and improve customer engagement drastically. 

Take a leaf out the playbooks of these companies:

UGMONK created a holiday gift guide with clever segmentation

When UGMONK released an email gift guide last year, they didn’t just stick to the mainstays of ‘gifts for mom’ or ‘his & hers’ organization. With guide sections such as ‘cozy comforts’ and ‘mountains’, they were able to curate a guide that would appeal to anyone.

Tip: Did you know that Lightspeed Advanced Marketing's holiday email flows come with seasonal templates? No need to design an email from scratch; just take one of our best-practice templates, designed to keep your customers coming back, and then tailor to your business.

Barebones recommend products based on previous purchases

If you’re marketing to existing customers, then use their purchase data in your product recommendations. This is a good way to show customers that you’re paying attention to their shopping habits. And if you implement this strategy in a friendly way (like what Barebones is doing in the example below), you’ll encourage people to continue shopping at your store.

Tip: Lightspeed Advanced Marketing's holiday email flows make it easy to send personalized product recommendations. Simply drag and drop the product widget onto your email, and it will automatically populate with the top 3 items that your customer is likely to purchase, based on their shopping history, and the shopping histories of customers like them.

5. Run compelling and creative offers

In an age when numerous brands are vying for shopper attention, it’s imperative that you craft offers that are both compelling and creative.

There aren’t any one-size-fits-all promos that would work for every campaign, as your offers would depend on your customers, merchandise, and objectives. 

For example, if you’re trying to move slow-moving inventory, then multi-buy promotions (e.g., “BOGO,” Buy 2 get 1 free, etc.) would be the best offer type. On the other hand, if the goal is to increase order values, then conditional offers (e.g., “Free shipping on orders over $75”) could be a better way to go.

Have a think about the right type of offer for your campaign, and once you’ve decided on the type of promotions to run, inject holiday themes to make them relevant.

Promote your holiday offers with Lightspeed Advanced Marketing

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Consider the following: 

Flynn Skye shows shoppers how much they’re saving

You know what they say: showing is better than telling. Apparel retailer Flynn Skye puts this nugget of wisdom to good use by creatively “slashing” their product prices. Check out the image of their email below and you can clearly see the original price crossed off and replaced with their promotional pricing.

Fossil uses some holiday puns

Accessories store Fossil created vibrant and on-brand emails with a cute differentiator—a stand-out, festively decorated pun. They wished that their customers “have a tree-mendous holiday” and then drew attention to their early access sale and perks such as gift wrapping. 

Witty content, cute imagery, on-theme colors, and simple design make this email stand out to customers and invites them to shop.

6. Instill a sense of urgency

Urgency can give your promotions an extra boost, so find ways to use it in your holiday campaigns. Things like a looming deadline or fear of missing out (FOMO) on a great deal can really drive people to act.

Use these emails for inspiration when building your own:

BioLite reinforces that sense of urgency with sale dates

Being clear about your sale terms and timing can give your customers the sense that they should buy sooner rather than later for fear of missing out.

BioLite has created this sense of urgency by reminding their customers exactly when their sale ends and leaving that reminder in bold. They’ve then gone the extra mile and suggested some of their categorized top picks.

Udemy uses a countdown

Want to get more visual with your messaging? Countdowns can do wonders. If you’re running a promotion that’s approaching a deadline (ideally 24 hours or fewer), use Lightspeed Advanced Marketing to throw in a working countdown in your emails so recipients know exactly how much time they have left before the deal is gone. 

Here’s a great example from the online course provider Udemy:

Final words

Email marketing and a loyalty program can elevate your holiday performance, but only if you do them right. 

To boost your marketing success this holiday season, keep your messages relevant and personalized and throw in some compelling offers for good measure. To top everything off, optimize the scheduling of your messages you can get in front of your subscribers at the perfect time. 

Lightspeed Advanced Marketing integrates with your Lightspeed Retail POS (X-Series) to make your holiday marketing tasks a breeze.

1. https://neilpatel.com/blog/email-crushes-social-media/
2. https://resources.marsello.com/blog/master-email-marketing-with-custom-segments
3. https://www.quicksprout.com/best-subject-lines/
4. https://www.singlegrain.com/email-marketing/how-to-use-personalization-to-increase-the-impact-of-email-marketing/