Your email marketing channel can be a significant driver of awareness, engagement and conversion during peak. How can you maximise the success of your email channel with peak-specific messaging, segmentation and strategy?

Email can be a key driver for both engagement during the consideration phase (ahead of BFCM and Christmas), as well as being fundamental for enhancing conversions during promotional periods.

As the peak trading period begins earlier and earlier, devising a strategy for the use of your email flows, campaigns and list-building techniques is key for reaching success during this time.

How to prepare for the lead-up to peak

#1 - Increase your audience sizes ahead of key trading with data capture

By increasing your email marketing lists in the weeks leading up to BFCM, not only are you able to deliver your key trading messages to potential new purchasers, but by driving increased sign-ups you can increase the size of your remarketing audiences across your social platforms.

To boost signups to your email list from users on site, test your data capture points to ensure you are getting the highest percentage of users signing up for your email newsletters. We’d recommend testing across the following:

• Pop-up behaviour
  • Test the time taken to show a capture form to a user once they’ve landed onsite
  • Test the method the form is shown to the user - pop-up, slide-out etc.
  • Test the time taken to re-display your pop-up, with the potential of shortening this to increase awareness of exclusive offers
• Data capture messaging and visuals
  • Test CTAs
  • Test incentives for sign-ups
  • Test imagery and photography

Showcasing exclusive offers by email can also be used as a prospecting tool across Meta to increase the reach of your email sign-ups through the use of lead generation paid social activity. We often see positive results for brands using lead generation activity ahead of BFCM, with brands finding that users who signed up during sales periods also went on to become regular customers at full-price trading.

To increase signup volume across Meta, we recommend offering early access or exclusive product discounts during sale periods to incentivise signups. You can also begin lead generation activities in late October or early November to capture users ahead of your sale.

For ease of analysis, make sure that customers who have signed up during these campaigns are tagged and segmented correctly within the CRM platform.

#2 - Set up the right segments for your growing lists

While growing your email lists is essential, proper segmentation is equally important to ensure that your email messaging remains engaging to each user and avoids a drop in deliverability.

Segment users based on their behaviours during previous sales and peak periods, and ensure creating the following audiences:

• Previous sale purchasers - For larger lists, think about narrowing this further to users who have only ever purchased at discount.
• VIP users - Strategise how to continue nurturing your loyal customers with exclusive access and enhanced benefits.
• Lapsed-customers - Use strong sales messaging to entice lapsed purchasers before removing them from your targeting.
• Engaged but never purchased - Utilise messaging to convert those who show interest but haven't converted.
• Users who only purchase during full-price trading - Think about excluding these users from any email campaigns that only include sales offers and instead share full-price trading moments with them.

For users already signed up to receive email marketing, send an opt-out email to allow customers to confirm whether they want to receive emails about promotions during peak trading periods (this also works well during more sensitive consumer moments like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day).

Throughout your key sale periods, ensure that you are using your segments to drive the strongest messaging to each of these audience pools. It’s also important to remember to exclude users who have opted out of receiving sales messaging from both campaigns and flows, as well as echoing this across your social campaigns.

How to optimise during peak trading

#1 - Implement email flows - a fundamental tool for driving revenue

Automated emails remain a key revenue driver during peak trading, and special care should be taken to update each flow in order to ensure messaging is up to date. Audiences should be checked ahead of time to apply the correct exclusions to each triggered flow.

To maximise the effectiveness of the content within your flow emails, take the following steps:

• Relevant CTAs - Add any relevant CTAs for promotional periods or gifting messaging
• Highlight discounts - Add banners into flows to highlight discounts and timelines for promotions
• Maximise abandoned cart flows - Have a key focus on updating flows for your abandoned basket emails as a way to increase CVR
• Ensure consistency in offers - Echo sign-up messaging from your data capture forms into your welcome flow messaging, with consistent promotional messaging being highlighted alongside key brand USPS and categories

You should also ensure that your flows and messaging are set up to display to the right audience, with the following:

• Product tags - Utilise your product tags to segment your flows further than behaviours, excluding those who should not receive them
• Exclude certain audiences - Make sure that your flows are set up to drive users who do not want to see promotional content to your normal flow messaging
• Remove irrelevant offers - Remove any additional discount code offers from flows or pause these from being triggered if not available during key sale periods, such as an abandoned basket discount.
• Additional flows - Set up additional flow emails for those who have signed up through lead generation activity if offering a special incentive, such as early access or select products.

#2 - Make your messaging work harder with engaging campaign emails

During peak, much of your email campaign messaging will likely centre around your discounts and key sale periods, with BFCM likely being a larger focus. Crafting your emails carefully during this time is a large driver of success in both driving users back to your site as well as driving revenue.

With enhanced competition for capturing your users' attention within their mailbox, it’s key to remember that your subject line and preview text are still pivotal for the success of your email campaign, despite the difficulty in tracking true open rates. Our key tips here are:

• Engaging titles - The use of personalisation, capitalisation and emojis are easy to implement and allow your email to stand out within an inbox more effectively
• Pique interest - Messaging that piques interest or creates mystery can also be applied to enhance the want for the user to open the email and discover what’s inside
• Add humour - Using puns and jokes is also a strong strategy for driving open rates
• Don’t ignore preview text - Remember not to ignore your preview text, as many users will use this as a deciding factor for opening your email

To further enhance your ability to drive optimal engagement with your email campaigns, consider the following:

• A/B tests - Use your integrated A/B tool to test send times across each of your segments
• Email resends - Resend your email to those who didn’t open it the first time. With the increased volume of emails to inboxes during peak it’s likely that a user isn’t ignoring the email but was seen at the time of initial sending.
• Simplified layouts - Once a user has opened your email, focus on driving them to the site with a simplified layout and effective calls to action buttons (CTAs). We’d recommend testing your CTA messaging to drive a higher CTR.
• More testing - Further testing around your CTA can be done to find the right placement or colour of the button to further drive incrementality to your campaigns.
• Don’t ignore BAU campaigns - Make sure that during peak you don’t neglect BAU messaging. This is particularly important for those who fall into your non-sale engaging segments. Also, make sure to effectively communicate new product launches, collaborations, and gifting.

Final thoughts

Email marketing is a key channel for driving revenue during peak trading months and plays an indispensable role in helping you stay ahead in a fiercely competitive environment. To ensure a successful strategy:

• Increase your email marketing lists
• Segment your audiences to tailor messaging
• Steer clear of generic batch messaging
• Maintain up-to-date flows, alongside using campaign emails to drive both sale and BAU messaging throughout the peak season

If you want more consultancy support for your data capture and email setup ahead of BFCM and peak trading, then get in touch.