7 ways to personalize your 2022 holiday email campaigns

Winning the hearts (and wallets) of shoppers during the busy holiday season is about so much more than your on-site experience. Email is just as important as ever in driving awareness of your products and offers, and most importantly, driving excitement well beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).

When you're queuing up your holiday email strategy however, remember that one size doesn't fit all. 70% of millennials (a key spending demographic for the holidays) have stated they feel frustrated that emails aren't personalized to them. Promoting your baby line to people who have never browsed that section of your store is probably going to kill your open rates, or worse, lead to them clicking the dreaded unsubscribe button.

Personalization in email is absolutely clutch to making your emails customers actually look forward to receiving - not to mention opening and clicking through. LimeSpot's Email Personalization tools are included with our pricing plans and can give your business the competitive edge it needs to make your emails pop out all holiday season long (and beyond).

In fact, we've rounded up some of our favorite strategies for making your emails shine for the 2022 holiday shopping season, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).

1. Include 1:1 personalized recommendations in your holiday emails

When you’re sending out promotional emails, such as for a sale or new gift guide release, serve up a more tailored experience by including recommendations tailored to that customer’s buying habits or previous purchases. It’s as simple as adding LimeSpot recommendation boxes and letting our advanced personalization solutions do the work. You can also control the layout and styling of your LimeSpot recommendation boxes from mobile to desktop to ensure an optimal viewing experience.

Remember, you can insert different styles of LimeSpot recommendation boxes according to your email layout. Want to showcase a gallery of items? Choose the grid layout. Or make recommendations more subtle by adding in a simple row to the bottom of whatever you’re promoting. No matter what, your customers will be more motivated to click through your emails when they see products that align with what they've already shown interest in.

Find out how to get started with LimeSpot email campaigns here.

2. Tailor the headline, hero image, and CTA in your holiday emails

We've already established customers don't like receiving an email that doesn't reflect what they've shopped for in the past. And while recommendations are just one way to serve up a more tailored experience, you can take things a step further with LimeSpot's Segmented Experiences, the perfect way to capitalize on the growing trend of better understanding and segmenting your customers.

Customize any HTML element in your emails, including images, CTAs, and text, based on a customer's browsing or buying behavior. The possibilities for segmentation from here are limitless. For example, customers that have repeatedly bought from one collection (like 'Men's Running Shoes') may see a hero image and headline that promotes new arrivals in that collection, while others might see a totally different image and copy based on their interests (such as shopping 'Women's Leggings').

Or you could send separate emails for low, medium, and high-value customers based on the frequency of their purchases and offer customers with a higher lifetime value different types of exclusive discounts or early access to your BFCM promotions.

All it takes is one email and as many segments as you want to serve up different content to different customer groups. Learn more about content personalization and email here, or contact your LimeSpot Customer Success Manager.

3. Keep customers clicking even if they can't checkout (yet)

The bad news: An out of stock item can mean your customer journey grinds to your result. The better news: Getting your customers to sign up for restock notifications is a great way to capture emails without much friction. The best news: LimeSpot can help you turn this dead end into a conversion. It's an unexpected way to turn a brick wall into a potential purchase.

The main thing to keep is mind is you can't bank on that restock notification to actually get a shopper to convert; by the time an item is back in stock they may have moved onto a new shopping crush, particularly during the frantic holiday shopping season.

When a customer signs up to be notified on a restock, auto-trigger an email that confirms you’ll keep them in the loop, and while you’re at it, include LimeSpot recommendations in your email to see if something else inspires them to keep shopping. You can auto-curate recommendations on a 1:1 basis based on the customer’s browsing behavior, or include recommendations based on the collection the customer was browsing. They might find the next great gift idea instantly, keeping them engaged with your site even if their original item isn't available.

4. Boost the effectiveness of your abandoned cart emails

By now you know that abandoned cart emails are a no-brainer when it comes to capturing lost revenue, with some stats suggesting as many as 1 in 5 abandoned cart emails actually drive clicks. One way to get even more action on your emails? Highlight things the customer may have missed with 1:1 personalized cross-sell recommendations based on what the customer left in their cart, or their browsing behavior before they left your store.

This tactic works for two reasons. For one thing, it reminds customers of what they were already interested in. If they weren't quite moved to buy just one or a couple of items, highlighting other things they might love is a surefire way to boost their interest. After all, the more products a customer adds to their cart, the more excited they might be about hitting checkout.

5. Line up your next sales by making the most of post-purchase emails

It's really easy to forget about the sales potential of your post-purchase transactional emails, including order confirmations, shipping notifications, and review requests. But you can insert LimeSpot recommendation boxes into all of these emails, serving up tailored product recommendations based on the product a customer has just purchased. Open rates on transactional emails tend to be as high as 80-85%, while most marketing emails average somewhere around 20-25%, making this an unsung spot to tee up your next sale.

6. Create holiday FOMO for your trending items (on autopilot!)

LimeSpot's Trending boxes highlight which products are going viral on your store, based on the number of page views, purchases, and other activities from your most recent traffic. The more traffic you have, the more frequently your Trending boxes will update - anywhere from 3 hours to 24 hours.

Let customers know which products are selling like hotcakes to inspire social proof and purchase urgency by inserting Trending recommendations into an email. If you really want to ramp up the excitement over the holidays, consider sending out a weekly scheduled email featuring your top sellers so customers are kept in the loop on what they need to buy (or think about adding to their wish list) for the holiday season.

7. Go LIVE with your holiday season emails

Think serving up live content is just for video? Think again. Your emails can also be 'live'. LimeSpot recommendation boxes can update in real-time via email, just as they do on your website. Our standard cache for recommendation boxes is 30 days, meaning that every time a customer opens your email within 30 days of you sending it, they will see the same recommended items, enabling them to easily get back to an item they were interested in. However, you can actually adjust the cache to be as short as you like.

This means if a customer visits your site and starts browsing or buying additional items, when they go to open that same email, they may see entirely different recommendations, ensuring you’re always showing the most relevant products.

Remember that opting for a ‘live’ or static email are two specific marketing strategies. One caveat with live emails, or emails with shorter caches, is a customer might end up getting frustrated if they can’t find the product they originally saw in your email.

Ready to personalize your emails for the holidays?

Personalized email = results. It's really that simple. Luckily, so is LimeSpot. If you're interested in taking your email strategy to the next level, install us today or contact your LimeSpot rep to get started with customizing your emails and making your messages can't-miss, must-open-worthy missives.

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