Halloween is creeping up on us in a hurry, and so begins the official induction into the Holidays 2012. Many of you are starting to feel the spooky wrench of Halloween biting at your wallet just running errands around town, but did you know that Halloween is actually a billion dollar industry in the United States? And it’s not just all candy and costumes, but a huge money making movement that penetrates multi-faceted industries.
The Halloween phenomenon has far-reaching roots in scores of other well-recognized major national retailers and department stores, including specialty Halloween pet toys at Target, to large volume school snacks at Costco, to even high-end Halloween home accessories at Nordstrom.
So, here are some top email marketing tips to spook up your campaigns.
1. Clean Your List: In previous blogs, we’ve stressed the importance of maintaining an up to date email contact list and an occasional list cleanup is super important to optimize your email campaign success, your click through rates and your overall online standing. So, if you haven’t done so already, now is truly the time. Because before you know it, the holidays will be in full swing and you don’t want to waste prime time-sensitive marketing opportunities on list hygiene.
2. Get Spooky: The best way to embody a Halloween campaign is to walk the walk and talk the talk. Sounding the part may be achieved in many ways, starting from your email subject line, to your festive email headers displaying images of ghosts and jack o lanterns, to your overall message. Maybe you will decide that in lieu of a Halloween promotion or coupon offering, you wish to send a simple “Spooktacular Thanks for Being Our Customer” message with a reward instead.
3. Host a Kid’s Event: If you have a physical location, you might consider hosting a kid’s event, where children can come dressed in costumes for a free activity and their chaperones (a.k.a. parents) can get extra special day of savings.
4. Bundle It: Try sprucing up your email offers with Halloween bundles of two, three or four items with a better rather than purchased individually, or offering other festive packages and gifts donning orange and black Halloween coverings. If you don’t have a retail business, maybe you could reach out to your following with an enticing collection of useful tips, just to keep your brand at the forefront of your audiences’ minds and thoughts in the event they need your products and services.
5. Look Around: Sometimes, when planning on what type of Halloween campaign you wish to devise, you want to look around for some inspiration. You can certainly save those emails you wish to reference in your inbox and study the individual campaign dynamics to see what attracted you to their email. It might be useful to specify a folder within your inbox to drag those emails into as a source of reference when you begin the planning process, not just for Halloween per se, but for the 2012 Holidays fast ensuing. You can also look to the online efforts of major retailers to see what they are doing to promote their products and adapt some of those ideas into what will work best for your brand.
6. Create a Day-After Halloween Promotion: Email marketing allows businesses the opportunity to think outside the box, to strive to be different and really let their creative energy drive the marketing reins. Besides devising traditional Halloween offerings leading up to October 31, you can continue the festivities with a Day-After promotion. A “Day-After Halloween Purge” or “Halloween Aftermath Event” is a creative way to drive up sales, riding on the coattails of the holiday momentum. Consumers seeking a great deal are expecting discounted items and super savings and you could be there to deliver the goods… it’s a sure thing.
7. Study Your Past & Stats: Unless you are a startup, look to your own past performance, whether you email marketed in the past and how successful your past efforts may have been. If you used an email service provider, like RedCappi, you could quickly access your past stats and study your opens, clicks and bounces, to understand and take point