Making the Most of Email and SMS Marketing for the 2021 Holiday Season

Forward-thinking retailers are already looking to strengthen their marketing strategies for the holiday shopping season. It's never "too early" to prepare for the holiday sales rush. With intelligent techniques and a strategic approach, you can make this holiday season one to remember! This year, marketers are forced to refine their email marketing strategies to account for Apple Mail privacy updates. To learn more about Apple Mail’s iOS 15 update, read our blog post.

Here are a few tips on how to maximize your email and SMS campaigns for the 2021 holiday season:

Integrate Email and SMS Campaigns

As the holiday season arrives and consumers' lives get busier, it's even more critical to reach your customers in a way that they're comfortable with and that's convenient for them. Increase your engagement rate four times by integrating email and SMS messages and you can create an overall workflow and communication cadence that reaches your customers across both platforms. For example, if someone doesn't engage with your email, you can follow up with a text message. Or you can send personalized, actionable offers and deals via SMS messages. Most importantly, SMS marketing is unphased by Apple’s iOS 15 privacy updates. Multiple channels of communication with high-impact touchpoints will yield dividends for marketers this holiday season.

Analyze Your Data and Implement List Cleaning Tools

Before beginning any new campaign, it's crucial to review how your email campaigns performed last year and make any necessary refinements to optimize email delivery.

Email list cleaning is essential in any marketing toolbox, but many marketers forget this vital component. Some marketers do the basics and clean their lists through their email service providers, but is that enough? The short answer is no. Whether your goal is to increase revenue or reduce customer attrition, email is a great connector. A responsible email verification service is the best way to maintain a healthy email domain reputation and will help your overall customer engagement. Take the time to thoroughly verify your email list before hitting send on any of your 2021 holiday campaigns.

Get Up to Speed on Apple Mail Privacy Changes

Apple recently announced Mail Privacy Protection which is set to launch sometime this fall. This new privacy feature for iOS users will change how marketers analyze email marketing data. The latest update could cause inflated email open rates and impact how marketers measure the efficacy of their email marketing campaigns.

Now, take time to understand Apple Mail Privacy Protection's effects and prepare your holiday email campaigns for better segmentation and more accurate analytics. For example, you might want to redesign your email campaign workflows to trigger from your conversion tracking data instead of opens. Apple's changes to its email client are also another good reason to consider integrating your campaigns to reach your customers with SMS messages combined with email.

Give Customers 'Nudges' About Online Purchases

As people start shopping for the holidays, they may browse your site more often as they begin to research and consider which products to buy. People will often abandon their shopping cart at checkout once they've seen the final price and the shipping costs, or they might forget about it. When they do this, sending them an email reminding them and adding in a discount to help you close the deal is highly effective. Some examples could be free shipping or 10 percent off the order.

The ability to communicate with your customers is priceless, especially during the holidays. Choosing the right mix of email and SMS marketing strategies can help you reach customers at the right time.

Alaa Gedeon is senior vice president, revenue, Moz Group, a collection of marketing technology brands, including Moz, iContact, Campaigner, Kickbox, SMTP, eVoice, Line2, and eReceptionist, which together operate as a subsidiary of J2 Global.