Tis the Season... To Measure Email Deliverability!

To stay competitive, many companies ramp up their email tactics during the holidays by boosting the amount of emails they send. With some alternative methods to heavy sending and best practices, companies can best ensure that their strategies are effective and not landing them on black lists.

Start Early…. Earlier Than You Think

The winter holidays seem to come earlier and earlier each year. Therefore, it’s never too early to start planning your holiday marketing campaign.

Give your holiday marketing team 2-4 months to accomplish everything you want to. Engage in pre-holiday messaging, simply to test the engagement levels of your subscribers and better understand their consuming needs. Tinker your subject lines, graphics, and copy and see how subscribers respond.

Give People a Heads Up

Additionally as is outlined by the above article, organizations should partake in heavy email sending to keep up with the competition. After all, consumers are in a buying mood and actively looking for services and products to purchase.

However, you should also let your subscribers know you’ll be doing so to lower the chances of going on the naughty list. Send an email out giving a general idea as to what you’ll be sending in your emails and how often.

Even if subscribers opt out, it’s still much better than getting a spam complaint. Letting your service provider know will also minimize your chances of being blacklisted.

Measure Results (Like the rest of the year)

One of the most important elements of a successful holiday campaign is to maintain your results monitoring (which hopefully is happening anyway). Giving your company enough time to carry out an effective holiday email marketing campaign means you’ve studied your subscribers over a long enough period of time to generate actionable, valuable insights about your subscribers. Now it’s time to ask the questions that will help your team reorganize and group your email list accordingly.

Consider factors like engagement levels, shipping addresses, new customers, his versus her gifts to tailor your promotions. Investing in quality tools and software to help monitor deliverability and analyze certain email metrics is a great way to consistently stay aware of the effectiveness of email campaigns.

By accurately understanding what does and does not work, your company will be one of the few to stand out in an inbox flooded with other company’s holiday emails. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to email marketing, so don’t send out one mass email and expect to see conversions.

Quantity matters when it comes to your email list, but quality always matter more. 

Jonathon Mahon is a content marketer, writer and designer based in Boston. He writes for various digital publications and blogs specializing in the cloud, email automation, software, and technology.