And it’s not just me; retailers tend to abide by this same holiday timeline. As soon as the candy comes down off the shelves, the ornaments go up. As consumers mentally prepare for the next two months of holiday celebrations, we as marketers also need to be preparing our messages. In other words: it’s time to plan your holiday email sends if you haven’t already. Most retailers start back in June while B2B companies have a little more time.

Here’s how:

1. Get out your calendar.

Nothing smacks of reality quite like a visual of those 3 tiny weeks left until Thanksgiving, and there are only 9 more weeks until the New Year. Determine which campaigns need to go out and when. If your email marketing plan is well documented, it is more likely to materialize on schedule.

2. Schedule backward.

The stellar design takes time, and don’t forget that it’s never a good idea to rush your subject line and pre-header. Allot enough time to perfect your campaigns, complete with an A/B split test and rendering test (we use Litmus) before they need to launch.

3. Advise your audience and seek permission.

Although listed third – truly the most important. If you’re planning on increasing your email sends during the holidays – let them know and give them the option to step-down or opt-out before you gift them with additional messages. The goal should be to help, not hinder.

To give you an example, Pottery Barn has already kicked off the holiday season as told in the image below. Lisa Wester, our Chief Engagement Officer, typically receives several campaigns a day and was a little worried of her inbox blowing up during the holidays.

Curious to why, and if options are given to receive fewer campaigns, Lisa and I went into her subscriber profile and noticed that ALL options to receive emails were checked. No wonder!  She went ahead and unchecked a few to fit her interests. We will wait to see what happens…

4. Enjoy the gift of time.

By not waiting until the last minute, you’ll launch more thoughtful campaigns. Plus, when the holidays roll around (sooner than you think!), you’ll be able to enjoy them knowing you don’t need to pull any last minute campaign miracle on Christmas Eve.

Finally, below is a cheerful and decorative favorite received before the little goblins and ghouls had time to pick out their Halloween costumes (at least my kids.)  Although I enjoy receiving the Pottery Barn email campaigns, I would be amiss if I didn’t point out that they should use real text instead of images as text and convert their code to responsive design for maximum rendering and engagement on all devices.

Let the holiday season begin!

RESOURCES TO HELP YOU FLOURISH:

Holiday Emails to Admire

Campaign Monitor: 4 Email Marketing Tips for the Holidays

Litmus: 3 Emails to Send Now to Improve Your Holiday Campaign Results

Outdoor Envy: If you work in an office, you might notice your co-workers taking longer lunch breaks or staring longingly out the window at times. The nicer weather is certainly something you want to enjoy, so rather than let it distract you, take your work outside! Schedule business meetings at outdoor cafe spots or find a quiet, shady spot in your favorite park to knock out an important proposal or a discovery conversation with a client regarding their pressing needs.

Vacation Void: Chances are, you have a summer vacation planned. If you’re like us, you plan in advance to ensure that your clients’ needs are met and someone is in place to take care of everything while you’re away. But it’s not just your own vacation that affects the flow of business. Clients and vendors and employee vacations all factor into the flow of business, sometimes slowing down projects or causing missed connections. Rather than fight it, embrace the fact that project implementation may take longer. Instead, summer may be a great time to sit down with your own team and review what’s worked well in the previous year and make plans for new ventures.

Summer Slump: Whether you’re business is retail-based, or not, you may experience a decline in sales during the summer. This is partly due to your customers having their attention focused elsewhere–on vacations and downtime–and partly due to a natural sense of lethargy that the summer heat encourages. You can preempt some of this lag by having a plan in place to drive customer engagement during the summer months, whether through a special sale, email campaign, contest or other.

Embrace Idle Time: Summer is also a great time to catch up on your reading–personal and business. We’ve recommended a few content marketing books below to enjoy while walking the dog, traveling, or even while you’re sitting at the beach! A great way to just stimulate the day and the mind.

• Content Marketing Inc. by Joe Pulizzi
• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
• Audience by Jeff Rohrs
• Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi (our next audio book for inspiration)

Share With Others: What’s your summertime strategy?  Tweet & tell us @RootedELM using the hashtag #EmailMktgSummer.

It’s okay to step away. There’s no rush. Think about your true goal—whether it be personal or related to the message you want to impart to your audience. If you’re under the wire and feeling pressure, add some space. Go for a walk. Take some time to mull it over.

There’s no better time to step back and take a deep breath than this week. Spend some quality time with your family and friends. Close up your laptop for a while and just revel in all that you have to be thankful for this year.

You’ll come back refreshed and full of enthusiasm for your work…..That’s our plan.

We wish you all the best this Thanksgiving and we hope you enjoy a relaxing, rejuvenating weekend!

Our offices will be closed December 23 – January 3, 2017.

Elise Menold, Marketing Director at Lexington Podiatry, has put this theory to the test using responsive design in email campaigns. “After last year’s luck with holiday sends, I was more inclined to test out different holidays to see if the same held true,” she says. Lexington Podiatry aims to send emails on a monthly basis, but with no hard deadline. “This allows us to be more flexible and send when the information is truly relevant,” says Elise. “Sometimes, that just happens to be right on a holiday.”

Is anyone paying attention?

Elise says they were not disappointed in the campaign results. “The phones were ringing off the hook and we learned that maybe we ought to have more than just a skeleton crew manning the phones on New Year’s Eve if we’ve sent an extended hours campaign the day before,” she says. “It was excellent to see the conversion – the open rate was high quickly and the call-to-action worked. Some clicked through to make an online appointment, but many more picked up the phone to call and make an appointment.”

More than just email

And emails aren’t the only thing you can send on a holiday as part of a successful campaign. We helped several clients pre-schedule social media posts and launch special blog posts for Thanksgiving. Monitoring of these posts showed that audiences were indeed engaged with the material, despite or perhaps because of the holiday.

Keeping this in mind, now is the time to think about responsive design Christmas and New Year’s campaigns. Would a December 25th send benefit your message?

Journey of collaboration and the sharing of data across all departments in 2014

Sales teams and marketing departments will be on a journey to collaborate, find purpose with and share data across departments to increase sales, meet the demands of the company and connect on a 1:1 basis with the audience. Long gone will be silos of disparate data and instead we will further enter into the world of cloud-based data sharing and sales automation.

Journey to develop relevant, truthful, constant and sharable content in 2014

The self-educated buyer will be on a journey to research the best solution to fit their needs. It will be essential that companies are pro-active in original content-creation and develop a content management strategy with multiple touch points across multiple channels – including the ability to share relevant information across social media channels by the entire sales team. Each moment of connection will be more meaningful and concise through the use of video, info graphics, online seminars and / or presentations.

Journey of customer engagement in 2014

The marketing department will further develop the lead nurturing journey and / or the customer purchase journey adapting to audience behavior; gathering deeper insight and qualifying prospects over time – reducing the sales cycle, making the sales call more powerful and relevant for the entire sales team.

Journey of in-depth listening in 2014

Listening to the voice of the customer through all channels (sales, social, online, call-center, support, primary research, etc.) will be a necessary journey for all departments of the company to forecast sales, forecast trends, hire the right people and identify areas for improvement.

Journey of the mobile experience in 2014

Everything will be mobile. The buyer uses their mobile device to read email, subscribe to email, visit websites, shop online, make recommendations and engage through applications. If you’re not mobile, it’s time to start this journey. According to the latest statistics by Litmus, the Apple iPhone holds the #1 spot with email client marketshare http://emailclientmarketshare.com/.

The following resources have lent insight to RootedELM’s journey. Check them out:

• The Invisible Sale by Tom Martin

• Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers by Jeffrey K. Rohrs

• “A Never Ending Journey” American Marketing Association, Marketing Insights Fall 2013

• “The Five SuperPowers of Marketing” Harvard Business Review

This post is modified from a guest post by Lisa Wester – Chief Engagement Officer, RootedELM for our client OptifiNow.  OptifiNow is a Software as a Service (SaaS) that helps sales teams engage with their customers though an integrated marketing communications platform.

We hope that you’re planning on relaxing over the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday. Here at RootedELM we’ll be spending some time with family and friends. Even though we’ll be taking a break, we’ll still make time for you if you need us.

Days we’ll be out of the office

Wednesday, November 27 – Friday, November 29

If you have an emergency, please email us at 911@rootedelm.com to ensure a RootedELM team member can help.

From Friday, December 23rd through Friday December 30th, RootedELM will be off cultivating holiday memories.

We wish you and yours the very best holiday and we look forward to growing together even more in the coming year.