Every company owner understands that the holiday season is the busiest and most profitable time of the year. During the winter holiday season, the majority of firms generate 30% of their yearly revenue. As a result, your competitors are also likely to put a lot of effort into their marketing initiatives. Emails can be your go-to marketing channel since they provide an automated, scalable, and personalized platform for reaching out to your customers and prospects.
As an email marketing expert, I find that most messages sent around this time of the year are pretty much similar looking. A good way to stand out this holiday season is by adding a pinch of interactivity. Follow this mini-guide on why interactive emails work like a charm for holiday season marketing efforts.
Understanding The Impact Interactive Elements Create For Your Holiday Emails
There have been a considerable number of technological restrictions in the conventional email marketing environment. However, now, the scope of adding an interactive element to email marketing campaigns has grown dramatically, making every digital marketer’s dream come true.
Here are five such amazing interactive features that you can use to hit the proper festive chord with your audience! We will also see why audiences love to see them in holiday emails:
Adding An Element Of Fun With Games
Email gamification is the use of game aspects in your emails, as the name indicates. This method ticks all of the boxes that make interaction desirable to a consumer. When your subscribers receive an email, they’ll see something completely different from what they’re used to. There’s a fascinating button that encourages to be pressed, and it comes with the promise of a prize on the other side.
The goal is to make it very difficult for the reader to dismiss it and go on. In the eyes of your subscribers, gamification creates a link between activity and reward. So, if you want to utilize it, make sure you provide them quick pleasure along with a reward and a performance score at the end.
This is a fantastic way to get your potential consumers to look forward to your emails and form an emotional bond with your company.
Use GIFs
The average attention span of a user reading an email is 11 seconds. You must write emails that a reader can not only read and grasp in this amount of time but also feel motivated to take action on your CTA. You must make it impossible for them to glance away from their displays to do this.
GIF animations are interesting and enjoyable. As a result, they’re recognized to boost consumer engagement and click-through rates. Furthermore, they are the quickest-loading type of animation, which means they can catch the attention of your potential consumers before they lose patience or interest!
Scratch Card Effect
The scratch card effect in emails appeals to the curious nature of humans. Instead of presenting an offer or fresh information in plain sight, it is buried under a layer, much like a scratch card in real life. To access this concealed information, your consumers must do a certain action, such as clicking or scratching on an icon.
Instead of passively processing your message, this encourages the recipient to participate with it. The scratch card effect, like gamification, is based on revealing marketing principles.
This interactive element is most often utilized to provide potential customers with discounts, coupons, gift cards, and other saving alternatives. However, it may also be utilized for new product releases, cart abandonment prevention, and welcome messaging for new subscribers.
Countdown Timer
Countdown clocks are effective in instilling a sense of urgency among your customers. It’s the greatest method to remind your subscribers that a sale or discount you’re running is only available for a short time, nudging them to act before it’s too late. This method may also be used to reduce cart abandonment or provide consumers with special, tailored offers based on their browsing history or previous purchases.
‘A gift exclusively for you’ followed by ‘offer expires in X hours: Y minutes: Z seconds’ might persuade a client on the fence about purchasing to do so!
Always Include Something Useful In Your Interactive Holiday Emails
When sending interactive holiday emails, make sure to include something useful that recipients may utilize throughout the holidays. What you provide should, ideally, be related to your brand in some manner.
If you were selling cookware, for example, you might include festive recipes. You might use an interactive email marketing approach for a retail business to allow customers to mix and match different clothes on a digital model to obtain outfit suggestions. These strategies make your holiday email design more interactive, offer value to the consumer, and help you sell more items.
Wrap Up
At a time when everyone is vying for their attention, simply reaching your target audience is no longer enough. You must capture and engage them to the point that they will comply with your request to complete a CTA. You don’t need to be an email marketing specialist to understand that interactivity can become your greatest bet for standing out and leaving a lasting impact on your customers’ thoughts, especially during the busy holiday season. I hope this article helps boost your holiday season email results.
Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, which specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blogs.