Avoid a slump this summer, boost your seasonal sales with email marketing.
Ahhh, summer. We Brits are obsessed by it. Seemingly endless days, soaking up warm rays at the beach, barbecues, and tennis. It’s undeniably the best of the four seasons.
But while many businesses slowdown in the heat, it’s arguably one of the best times of the year to send email campaigns to boost your seasonal sales.
If you are tempted to take a holiday from your email marketing this summer – resist! There are several good reasons to keep your email marketing activity running.
Reasons to increase your email marketing in the summer.
- People spend more money during the summer. Because of this, it’s a great time to send out offers, discounts, and sales messages.
- Most people check their emails daily – even when they are off work. When they’re on holiday and slowing down, they’ll have more time and energy to give your messages consideration.
- There’s less competition – many companies take a break during the summer because they don’t think it’s worth it, so there’s less ‘noise’ in the inbox, giving your messages more opportunity to stand out and be read.
- Summer is short. By keeping in touch with your contacts during this time, you’ll strengthen your relationships and be one step ahead of the competition as you increase your autumnal activity in preparation for Christmas.
We’ve pulled together some content ideas for your summer email newsletter campaigns to help you drive traffic to your website and increase your revenue during the sweaty season.
Summer Email Marketing Campaign Content Ideas
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Run a summer clearance and get rid of old stock, ready for Christmas
The summertime is a great time to run a summer sale email marketing campaign to drive sales of stock or your service for a limited period.
Designing a series of email newsletters that break down your sales period and your offers is a great way to keep your customers interested. Build momentum before the sale starts, send out reminders, coupon codes, discounts and enticing calls-to-action (don’t forget abandoned basket campaigns too). During the promotion, focus people’s attention on certain categories, star deals and additional savings.
When the sun’s out, your discounted product or service is far more likely to gain attention. Make sure your recipients know that they’ll miss out on a great opportunity if they don’t buy now.
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Summertime Competitions and Giveaways
A fun and dynamic way to keep people opening your emails is to offer a summer competition that gives away a great prize. They’re quick, simple, and relatively inexpensive to put together. They’re also a great way to build your email list if you include an opt-in checkbox on your entry landing page.
Make sure your offer is enticing enough to get people to enter and therefore sign up for your emails. Combine the competition with your social media profiles to get a wide reach for your campaign but use emails to encourage entrants and current customers feel like they have an advantage. You can send reminders emails or offer people the opportunity to boost their chances of winning by sharing your email content with friends and family.
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Tie in national days and holidays
There are as many national days each month as there are ice cream flavours. When you’re running out of ideas, use an event to inspire your newsletter content.
Mark the first official day of summer (June 1st), the start of the summer holidays, the summer bank holiday in August, the start of Wimbledon, the end of Wimbledon, give something away day, (July 15th), or even #NationalLazyDay on the 10th of August.
Don’t forget about local events and festivals happening in your area too. Tying content into relevant, local activities is a great way to drive open rates and increase interaction.
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Sunshine-y user generated content
If all your staff are away sunning themselves and enjoying a well-earned rest, look to your customers as a source of content creation.
Ask your subscribers to share their own summery photos with you that you could share on a company blog. Whether you sell hats, cupcakes, or toys, ask your customers to snap a picture or video of them (and your product) to share with you.
Combine this idea with your summer contest or giveaway (see point 2) and you might just be surprised at how many people go for it.
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Add Value with Handy Tips and Practical Activities
If you’re not expecting to drive sales during the summer months, it’s still a great time to build your reputation and gain trust with your customers (this will also help improve your open rates and click throughs). Offer activities, free advice, tips/hints, lists, things to do in the sun/rain, or recipes – anything that might help them have a great summer season. This approach will do more than bringing in sales, it will help customers associate your brand with summertime – which ultimately improves their lifetime value.
Last, but by no means least, make sure you exploit the season by designing a summer-y email template. Go bold with colour, include graphics filled with sunshine and blue skies, and don’t forget those summertime subject lines (filled with bright emojis!). Always remember to include a compelling call-to-actions too, they’ll get your readers clicking through to your website and delving further into your offering.
Keeping your email design clean, succinct and straight-to-the-point will allow your customers the opportunity to indulge in your content or get back to the summer weather sooner if they wish.
The summer months can prove to be a great time to mix up your content, improve your sender reputation and deliverability in time for the ever-important festive season. If you plan ahead and schedule your summer newsletters, you’ll save time, stay ahead of the game and enhance relationships with new and existing customers. Sounds like a win-win-win situation, doesn’t it?
If all this sounds a little confusing, or a bit much – rest assured it isn’t. Speak to a member of our team today, and we’ll help you get your emails sizzling by the time the sun (eventually) shines this year.