Two Surprising Holiday Marketing Ideas

Snowflakes, mistletoe, menorahs, kinaras…the whirl of another holiday season is almost upon us. Now is the time to send those holiday promotions.

But what to send? Last year’s offers are as stale as Aunt Holly’s fruitcake. The blizzard of competing ads keeps getting thicker, and consumers are more skittish than ever before.

Fear not, email marketers! We bring you good tidings of great inspiration. Two major retailers have just unveiled strategies that can take your campaign from monotonous to merry.

Buy Now, Gift Later

Desperate dashes to the mall, premium prices for lackluster presents, gift wrapping at 2 a.m….every year, many of us make the desperate vow to shop earlier next time.

But who’s thinking of holiday shopping in October?

Well, Neiman Marcus‘ subscribers are. The retailer promised readers to delay shipping on gifts until the holidays. Then they added free gift wrap and free delivery – the ultimate hassle-free gift-giving.

Nieman Marcus

To create your own “buy now, gift later” program, arrange to postpone shipping on gifts purchases. Then tell subscribers about their new, convenient option.

Holiday shoppers can start buying earlier and you can get everything packed up to go. By the big day, you’ll be relaxing by the fire with the eggnog.

Recommended for: e-stores with giftable merchandise, particularly physical goods, where timely shipping delivers significant value.

A New Kind of Christmas List

Snapfish has dozens of products perfect for gift-giving. So they created the Merry Deal Reveal, a deal-a-day email series.

Now, plenty of retailers offer daily deals. But Snapfish knows some people may resent too many emails. So they invited those who requested the Reveal to a new list.

Now while those holly jolly spirits get their daily deals, the rest of the grinches – er, subscribers – are left in peace.

Snapfish

To set up your own holiday promotion list, invite subscribers to sign up to a new list specific to those emails. Without risking unsubscribes from your main list, you can make daily offers in the busiest buying season of the year.

Recommended for: gift shops and e-commerce sites with enough giftable products to send a new promotion every day.

How Happy Is Your Holiday Marketing?

Snapfish and Neiman Marcus have created offers that are, in themselves, little gifts to subscribers.

How do you market during the holidays? Have you found ways to give a little something to your readers?

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8 Comments

  1. Liat Gat

    Fantastic post, as usual! I love the idea of "buy now, gift later…" I think with a few creative twists I could implement this for knitfreedom.com by December 1st!

    Thanks so much for your great tips.

    11/2/2010 11:03 pm
  2. Sable

    What a timely batch of ideas. And providing the choice of delaying the delivery after the purchase is a strong motivator for action. Love the tips…

    11/3/2010 5:45 pm
  3. Honest Jay

    I like Snapfish’s approach. Since I don’t run an ecommerce store I’m wondering how I could put this to use and it’s given me quite a few ideas.

    11/16/2010 10:45 pm
  4. Lori

    Just wanted to share my experience with Black Friday, using the secondary opt-in email list akin to Snapfish.

    I had the sign-up on the homepage of my website two weeks before Thanksgiving. Before even advertising it to my standard list, I had a dozen sign-ups within the first 24 hours. I advertised it via Facebook, then just before Black Friday to my standard email list, with a reminder on Black Friday. I had roughly 10% of my standard list sign up for the high-rate email list, where I send out 3-6 emails/day on limited availability deals.

    I started the Black Friday emails on Black Friday, and sent out a 10% coupon to the rest of the list. I am finding my sales have increased over last year. I won’t have final figures for a few more days, but I think I am hitting roughly a 20% increase.

    Interestingly, people don’t seem to be jumping on the sales items as much as I thought they would. I’m assuming the repeat emails are keeping me in everyone’s mind enough for people to make purchases when they feel is right. Even the 10% off coupon isn’t being used as much as I would have thought.

    We’ll see what Cyber Monday brings…

    11/28/2010 5:40 pm
  5. Amanda Gagnon

    Lori ~ Thanks for sharing! Those sound like great results. Let us know how Monday goes!

    11/29/2010 9:26 am
  6. Stephanus Hariadi santoso

    As something good, so it can be an example to follow, I like. This is something unique.

    12/16/2010 11:48 am
  7. tinagleisner

    Agree that Snapfish seems to have a great idea but translating this to in-home services is a challenge …

    2/26/2011 11:09 am

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