Introduction

Torn sticky notes, back-to-back meetings, endless coffee—sound familiar? It’s that time of year when marketers are in full swing, with eyes glued to the calendar. Inboxes are flooded with offers, deals, discounts, and promo codes, leaving your subscribers with plenty of choices. So, how do you stand out this holiday season? How can you go beyond sending visually appealing emails? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ve gathered insights from ten top email marketing experts to guide you. Let’s dive in!

Spencer Kollas

Member/Southeast Committee Member, She Runs It

• Generative AI reshuffles and combines data rather than transcending it, leading to outputs that, while unique, can be rather mundane. So, should email marketers depend solely on AI to craft subject lines this holiday season?

I don’t think relying exclusively on any single approach is wise—unless extensive testing has proven its full value and nothing else can outperform it. AI is a shiny new tool that can achieve remarkable things, but marketers must always test tools against their specific business needs and goals.

• Over-segmentation complicates campaigns. How can email marketers find a balanced approach to personalizing emails, especially during the holiday season?

If you’ve been effectively using segmentation throughout the year, there’s no need to change strategies now. Many marketers feel pressured to do something big and bold during the holidays due to the competitive push to capture customers’ dollars—but that pressure is there year-round, isn’t it?

• Limited integration within martech stacks often hampers automation efforts. How can email marketers maximize automation this holiday season despite these challenges?

Automation should be a year-round strategy, not just for the holiday season. It’s an excellent way to engage customers, reduce manual tasks, and free you up to tackle bigger opportunities. Evaluate your customers’ lifecycle and identify where automated journeys can be built, then refine and test those to drive optimal engagement.

• With email clients not adhering to universal standards in parsing HTML emails, what’s your advice to designers to navigate these inconsistencies while delivering well-designed emails?

If your focus is on delivering quality offers through well-designed emails, keep doing that. As Merkle highlighted in their 2023 Holiday Playbook, appeal to customers’ emotions, not just their logic, through design and messaging. Go beyond communicating discounts or conveniences—highlight what those translate to for the shopper, like more time with family, extra relaxation, or money saved for dining out. For experience-based retailers, emphasize feelings of warmth, connection, and relaxation. An emotional appeal can be just as, if not more, impactful than a logical one.

• How would you advise readers on addressing the persistent issue of deliverability during the holiday season? Can AI help tackle this challenge?

Marketers should remember that if you’re sending campaigns to people who genuinely want to hear from you and with offers relevant to them, you shouldn’t encounter significant deliverability issues. If AI can help marketers identify and design more relevant campaigns, then by all means, use it. The key is to put the customer at the center—focus on sending personalized, relevant offers to those customers who have expressed interest.

• Introduction
• Spencer Kollas
• Laura Sullivan
• Jay Schwedelson
• Beata Linz
• Tom Sather
• Sarah Stiffin
• Andrew Kordek
• Lauren Meyer
• Eliott Ross
• Jessica Best
• Kath Pay

Number of Pages:

• 35 pages

Pricing: 

• Free