How to Create Holiday Campaigns Focused on Customer Benefits

Although the holiday season hasn’t started yet, the decorations on the street announce its imminent start. Shops are painstakingly setting the scene for the most eagerly anticipated campaign of all: the winter festive season.

Some are arranging products in special categories, others are creating marketing campaigns for customers. All for a flawless festive shopping experience.

Have you strategized your holiday campaign? If not, stay tuned. We have some interesting ideas for you.

Holiday campaigns focused on customer benefits

Put the customer at the heart of your holiday campaign strategy and you’re sure to benefit. Forget the classic sales pitch! It doesn’t work anymore. Instead, focus solely on the customer’s needs and the benefits your products or services bring them.

Pro-benefit customer approach versus classic selling

In general, customer benefit-oriented strategies that emphasise convenience, style and product adaptability for different occasions are often more appealing to customers. This is because these approaches do not put pressure on buyers and focus more on the tangible benefits they will get from their purchase.

Example: you can sell a red dress 2 ways.

1. pro-client approach: Elegance and Style for Exceptional Events! Red dress for a sophisticated and confident look!
2. pro-sales approach: Red Dress – Special Offer! Only now at a sensational price. Buy now and step out of the shadows!

Which is the winning option? Well, the past shows that the former. The best example of selling products with a focus on benefits is the iPod. Remember the memorable phrase: “1000 songs in your pocket”? Versus, 5GB storage for your songs. 

Moreover, you can choose to do an AB testing email and see for yourself. Of course you could directly do two pro-customer benefit variants and see which performs better.

To make it easier, we’ve created a mini-plan for the holiday campaign

Holiday campaign plan to send to subscribers

Here’s what a benefits-focused campaign plan would look like for the holiday season,

November

• Last Week in November:
  • Email Teaser for Exclusive Holiday Offers:
    • Message: “ The holidays are almost here! Subscribe to get access to exclusive benefits and special discounts!”

December

• Week 1-2:
  • Newsletter Launch Holiday Offers for Subscribers:
    • Message: “Enjoy spectacular discounts on gifts for your loved ones! Now’s your chance to shop at special prices!”
  • Loyal Customer Discount Promotion Email::
    • Message: “ Thanks for your loyalty! Extra discounts for our loyal customers this holiday season!”
• Week 3-4:
  • Newsletter with Limited Offers for Unique Gifts:
    • Message: “ Discover our limited offers to find unique holiday gifts for your loved ones!”
  • Email with Free Shipping on Orders through the New Year:
    • Message: “ Buy now and get free shipping on orders through next year!”

January

• Week 1:
  • Holiday Offer Recap and Thank You Newsletter:
    • Message: “ We’re reminding you of the best deals and thank you for participating! We appreciate you joining us this holiday season!

These are just a few examples of campaigns for the winter holidays. For more inspiration, read our other article on holiday newsletter campaign ideas.

Now that you know what approach to use in your holiday campaign and have an outline plan at hand, you can think about sending it to your target audience.

Send your holiday campaign by email and sms

Choose to promote your festive offers quickly and easily through email and sms marketing campaigns.

Some reasons:

• 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content via email instead of social media; (source)
• 66% of customers bought products as a result of newsletters they received; (source)
• 91% of customers want to receive text messages from their favourite brands. (source)

Steps for creating your holiday email campaign at NewsMAN

Create a free account on an email marketing service platform like NewMAN if you don’t already have one. Then select one of the newsletter templates with predefined content, filter by ‘holiday’ or ‘Christmas’ tag and edit it to match your brand.

With the NewsMAN newsletter editor, you can drag and drop products directly into your email. You’ll save time, and their information, such as title, price description, discounts, etc will be picked up automatically.

Tip: to save even more time and diversify your strategy, include automated newsletters with product recommendations in your campaign set. This way, you’ll get more results through personalisation.

You can do this by using automated emails with dynamic products, which will automatically update based on the criteria you choose, such as newest, most viewed, most sold, etc.

Don’t forget to include campaigns for abandoned cart or viewed products. In both cases you can come up with alternative product solutions and extra customer benefits.

Last but not least, to enhance the performance of your holiday campaigns, add sms marketing to the promotion.

Create a holiday sms campaign for subscribers

This holiday season, it’s the perfect time to let your subscribers know about your festive offers with a short and effective SMS campaign. 

If you use the NewsMAN email marketing and sms platform, you can also use services such as quick sms or sending graphic sms campaigns. 

With the graphic sms you can directly include a link to a mini visual version of the campaign so subscribers will see what you have prepared for them more quickly. 

Festive email newsletter with SMS reminder

Another useful idea you can use in your holiday campaign promotion strategy is to add an SMS reminder after you’ve sent a newsletter. During the festive season the inbox is crowded and subscribers may miss out on some vouchers or limited offers. Why not remind them that you have something for them that they can still use? After all, we’re talking about pro-customer benefit campaigns.

We hope you have found our tips on holiday campaigns useful and if you need any help we are waiting for you on live chat or by email at info@newsman.com. Good luck with your conversions and as many happy customers as possible!