With Halloween, the US presidential election and Thanksgiving in the rear-view mirror, we’re now headlong into the all-holiday-all-the-time stream. And, we all know what’s coming.
At this point in the marketing year, everything you have scheduled through post-Christmas is already in motion. If you built some flexibility into your plan, you know how to pivot if you have to.
Any advice about optimizing your holiday email is going to be worthless now because you locked it down three months ago.
So, let’s do something we don’t usually do this time of year. Let’s focus on you. Yes, you. The marketer who makes it all happen. Take the next few seconds to take a deep breath, hold it in, shut off the noise in your brain, and then let it out.
Go on, go ahead. Nobody’s looking. You might not get another chance until the end of the year.
Felt good, didn’t it? Want to do it again? Go ahead. I can wait…
Yeah, you’re great!
Okay! Now let me offer you a few words before you plunge back into the melee.
I’m not going to give you any advice, tell you what you should be doing or warn you about what you’re doing wrong.
No, today I would just like to give you a great big virtual pat on the back and some words of encouragement to help you push your way through.
This is a tough time of year for marketers. Everything is riding on this quarter. Everybody’s looking at you to deliver. Plus, you have your own lives to live, your own holidays to plan for with all the stress that can go along with this happiest time of the year.
Keep your chin up, and keep believing in the channel we have professed our work lives (Read more...) upholding and growing. This is an exciting time to be an email marketer, whether you’re in B2C or B2B email.
We’re getting better and better at creating, sending, and analyzing email so that it benefits everybody from the end users to our company goals.
Email is still an effective channel, and it has been for years, even in the dark times when people thought email was good only for driving short-term gains.
Don’t let the holiday Grinches get you down if they try to diminish email as a bargain-basement channel or that you don’t deserve to sit with the cool kids in social media or web marketing at lunch.
Remember that you work in the channel with the highest ROI in digital marketing. Your channel works and plays well with every other marketing channel. And, when you do email right, your subscribers and customers love you.
Study after study published this year, beginning with Adestra’s own Consumer Adoption and Usage report (registration required to download) shocked the world with the news that people, even the sought-after 18-34 demographic, prefer email over for brand communications.
Don’t let the demands of this holiday season get you down, no matter how many brand managers holler for last-minute campaigns.
Remember that they come to you because they know, deep down, that email works. Sure, you might want to bang your head on your desk or your cubicle wall because you have to fix somebody else’s stupid decisions, but we know how to make things work.
I’ve been where you are now. I know what a lousy season this happiest time of the year can be because you’re just sending another email. So, give yourself some email holiday treats.
Even though your campaigns are already set, add in something cool, like an A/B test, anything that will make you feel as if you’re contributing to the digital dialog and helping to make email even smarter and more valuable than it is right now.
Look ahead to 2017
So, buckle up, strap on your crash helmet, and get ready to have some fun. Maintain your focus until after you send your last post-holiday campaign. Exhale, and enjoy your own time with family and friends.
Then, come back in January and say, “Okay, guys, what are we going to do differently in 2017?”
Good luck! May the force be with you, and don’t let the zombies win.
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