Planning Your Holiday Newsletters with Email Automation

Use Email Automation to set up your holiday newsletters in advance.

We may only be a few weeks away from “Silent Night, Holy Night…”, but there’s usually little silence in the holiday business. After all, the holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year in sales and ecommerce.

We’ll show you how to make your customers happy with automated holiday newsletters and save valuable time during the busy holiday season.

Automated Christmas Newsletters for a Relaxed Start to the Advent Season

Email Marketing Automation allows you to easily set up email workflows for St. Nick’s Day and Christmas in advance with predesigned emails. In other words: Email Automation is like filling an Advent Calendar as you determine in advance which day will contain which content. Once you have filled the calendar, you can sit back and relax. Everything is ready.

Since many newsletters with discount offers, gift tips and holiday greetings are sent during the holiday season, email automation is especially useful during this time. Once set up, the automation runs automatically and you don’t have to send each newsletter manually.

7 Reasons to Automate Your Holiday Emails

• Pre-plan your holiday campaign with all newsletters and promotions
• Create your newsletters in advance and not at the last moment
• Send out newsletters based on your readers’ interests, triggered by their interaction with your emails
• Send automated follow-ups to people who don’t open your emails
• Schedule all emails and never fail to send them out at the right time

Ideas for Your Holiday Newsletters with Free Automation Templates

To make creating automated Christmas newsletters even easier for you, we have prepared 3 typical sample automation workflows – you can find them directly in our Newsletter tool:

1. Advent Sunday Newsletters

Conveniently for all of us, the time leading up to Christmas is already broken down into small chunks: the Sundays of Advent. So it makes sense to take advantage of this division of time in the final sprint to Christmas for your newsletter as well. Send your offers, Christmas greetings or exclusive content on the four Sundays of Advent.

Our automation templates already contain pre-dated newsletters for each of the four Advent Sundays. You only have to select your recipient list and, if necessary, a specific segment  and create your four emails.

Our Tips for Filling Your Holiday Emails with Content:

• Weekly changing offers: Publish a different discount code for different product categories each Advent Sunday.
• Exclusive content for download: Offer free digital products such as gift tag designs for download.
• Gift tips: Put together suitable Christmas gifts for your partner, parents, siblings, or friends. After all, we can all use some Christmas gift inspiration.

2. Holiday Offers for Boosting Sales in Your Online Shop

As an online store, the focus during the holiday season is naturally on sales. Your recipients are looking for Christmas gifts for themselves and their loved ones and are often tempted by discount offers.

1. Our automation template for your holiday sale already starts on Black Friday – the inofficial start of the holiday shopping season. If you have already planned out an extensive Black Friday newsletter campaign, you can have it flow seamlessly into your holiday email campaign as well.
2. Send out your next email on St. Nick’s Day: Your recipients will be happy to find great discounts in their inbox. For all non-openers, you can send another reminder two days later. Encourage them to redeem their discount code.
3. Let your recipients know the last possible order date just before Christmas Eve so they can receive the product in time for the holidays. This little piece of information can help boost sales.
4. Finally, the day before Christmas Eve, send a holiday newsletter to all customers who have not yet ordered a product, mentioning your digital coupons. Let’s face it, we’ve all had to buy a last-minute gift.

3. Holiday Greetings and Forecast

Of course, email automation is not only useful for online shops. Use our automation templates to send out digital season’s greetings to your customers and business partners. Then start the new year by giving a forecast of new events, products or topics that recipients can expect from your business.

4. Advent Calendar

Use our automation template for your email advent calendar to surprise your readers every day with exciting content, discounted products or exclusive offfers.

Looking for inspiration for your Newsletter Advent Calendar? We have dedicated an entire article to this topic.

How Many Emails Should You Send Out at Christmas?

There are no hard and fast rules about how many holiday emails you should send and when. This will depend on a number of factors, such as your industry, your target audience, and the goals you are trying to achieve.

If you sent a holiday mailing last year, you can take a look at the key newsletter metrics and learn from them. Otherwise, this simple rule of thumb will help: every newsletter should contain relevant information. If you have nothing left to say, do not send another newsletter.

If you are a B2B company using your holiday newsletter as a customer retention tool to thank your customers for a successful year, a single newsletter at the end of the year is probably sufficient. However, if you are a B2C online store with products that are often purchased or given as gifts during the holiday season, you can and should send much more frequently. But again, every single Christmas newsletter should have some added value for the recipient. This could be a discount code or useful information such as delivery times in time for Christmas.

You can even send out a daily holiday email – in shape of a digital Advent Calendar. Surprise your recipients every day with a little gift, a discounted item or exclusive Christmas content.

As you can see: There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how many newsletters to send at Christmas. When in doubt, go slow and learn from previous (holiday) campaigns.

Have a Relaxed Start to the Holiday Season

Start filling and planning your holiday automation workflow now. Hopefully you’ll be able to put your feet up and enjoy the Christmas season before Advent 1.

More tips for your holiday emails:

• Ideas for your Email Advent Calendar
• Holiday Newsletter Templates
• Checklist for Your Newsletter Christmas Campaign