The Christmas season is a crucial time for any business, but especially for ecommerce companies. If you're an ecommerce owner, you may be feeling the pressure to make sure your sales numbers are up this year. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to give your sales a boost. One of them is using Mailchimp.
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Mailchimp is a powerful tool that can help you reach more customers and increase your Christmas sales. Here's a detailed guide to how Mailchimp works and how you can use it to boost your ecommerce business this Christmas season.
How MailChimp works
Mailchimp is an email marketing service that allows you to send newsletters, promotional emails, and other types of email campaigns to your subscribers. It's a great way to stay in touch with your customers and keep them updated on what's going on with your business.
There are two main ways to use Mailchimp: through its website or through its app. The website is great for creating and managing your campaigns, while the app is great for keeping track of your subscribers and analyzing your campaign results.
Why you should use Mailchimp this Christmas
There are several reasons why you should use Mailchimp during the holiday season. Mailchimp makes it easy to create beautiful email newsletters and promotional materials. With Mailchimp's drag-and-drop editor, you can easily add images, videos, coupons, and other elements to your emails. This will give your holiday emails a professional look that will help them stand out in recipients' inboxes.
Mailchimp provides performance statistics
Mailchimp provides detailed reports so that you can track the performance of your holiday marketing campaigns. With Mailchimp's reports, you'll be able to see how many people opened your email, clicked on your links, subscribed to your list, and more. This information will help you fine-tune your future marketing efforts so that you can get even better results.
Prepare for your MailChimp campaigns
Start Early
One of the most important things you can do is start your marketing efforts early. Don't wait until the last minute to start sending out emails or crafting your social media posts. The earlier you start, the more time you have to make an impact. Block out time in your diary for artwork, messaging and creating all the hyperlinks you will need for your email. Work backwards from special dates like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and bear in mind any postal strikes or delays in your supply chain.
Make a Plan
Before you start sending out emails, take some time to sit down and plan out your strategy. What are your goals? Who is your target audience? What kind of content will resonate with them? Once you have answers to these questions, you can start creating your campaign.
Read all the eCommerce Digital Marketing Christmas Guides
Segment your audience
One of the important things about Mailchimp is that it allows you to segment your list so that you can send targeted content to specific groups of people. For example, if you have a list of past customers, you can send them different content than what you would send to new leads. Segmentation ensures that people are getting content that is relevant to them, which increases engagement and conversions.
Take Advantage of Automation
Another important thing about Mailchimp is that it offers a variety of workflows and automation features that can save you time and help you stay organised. For example, you can set up automated welcome emails for new subscribers or thank-you emails for people who make a purchase from your store. Automation takes some of the guesswork out of email marketing and helps you stay on top of your campaigns.
Best practice tips
Create a Christmas-themed email campaign
Make sure your campaign includes festive colours, graphics, and messaging that will get people in the Christmas spirit. You can also offer exclusive discounts or coupons in your campaign to encourage people to buy from you during the holidays.
Send Christmas greetings to your subscribers
Wish them a Merry Christmas, or Happy New Year in your emails. This is a great way to show your subscribers that you're thinking of them during the holidays.
Offer free shipping or other Christmas-themed discounts
Use Mailchimp to create special discount codes that you can share with your subscribers. This is a great way to encourage people to buy from you during the holidays.
To do this, simply create a new campaign in MailChimp and offer a discount or exclusive offer on your products or services. Be sure to include an expiration date so that people have incentive to act fast. You can also promote your holiday deals and discounts through social media, blogging, or even traditional advertising like print or radio.
Send timely reminders about deadlines for Christmas orders
Make sure your customers know when they need to order by to receive their items by Christmas Day. Timely reminders will help ensure that people don't forget about your store when they're busy shopping for gifts.
Analyse your results and adjust accordingly.
After you've sent out your Christmas campaigns, take some time to analyse the results. See what worked well and what didn't work so well and adjust your next campaign accordingly.
Tips for Mailchimp Newsletters
One of the best ways to keep your customers engaged during the Christmas season is to send them a regular newsletter with updates on your latest products, special offers, and more. Your newsletter doesn't have to be long or complex; just a few paragraphs with some attractive images will do the trick.
To get started, create a template in MailChimp that you can use for all your future newsletters. Then, start brainstorming some ideas for what you'd like to include in your first Christmas newsletter. Some things you might want to consider are:
Introducing any new products or services that would be ideal for Christmas gifts
Christmas discounts or coupons that your customers can use on their next purchase
Sharing Christmas recipes, lifestyle tips or other festive content that will get your customers in the spirit and make your newsletter a pleasure to read.
Highlight your best-selling products in case your customers are looking for gift ideas.
Top Tip: Send Timely Reminders
The holidays are a busy time for everyone and it's easy for things to slip through the cracks. That's why it's important to send timely reminders to your customers about important deadlines, such as the last day for guaranteed shipping before Christmas.
Integrating email into your “Christmas Market” strategy
Christmas markets are a wonderful way to get your product in front of potential customers, but they can also be an effective way to gather email addresses from people who are interested in hearing from you in the future. Here’s how to make the most out of holiday markets this season.
Set up a sign-up sheet near your register or checkout area and offer a freebie or discount for people who sign up. This could be a percentage off their purchase, a gift with purchase, or entry into a contest or giveaways. Make sure the sign-up sheet is prominently displayed and easy to find.
Have a Christmas-themed photo booth set up at your market booth and offer people the chance to have their photo taken with Santa, Mrs. Claus, or one of your elves (aka employees). Again, offer a freebie or discount for people who sign up for your email list. You can also post the photos on social media and tag people who stop by your booth.
Get creative with your marketing materials by incorporating QR codes that people can scan with their phone to be taken directly to your website or sign-up page. You can put these QR codes on flyers, posters, business cards, or even on stickers that you hand out with purchases.
Have plenty of business cards on hand and offer them to everyone who stops by your booth, whether they make a purchase or not. You can also put an exclusive offer on the back of the business card (e.g., 10% off their next purchase) to incentive people to hang onto them until they’re ready to shop again.
Top 10 tips to build your email list
You might want to explore MailChimp for your campaign, but don’t have an email list yet! There are canny ways to quickly build an email list and create an audience for your emails and newsletters.
1. Create a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free bonus you offer (usually on your website) in exchange for someone's email address. It can be anything from a recipe book to a holiday guide. The key is to make sure that your lead magnet is relevant to your target audience and that it provides value.
2. Host a webinar. Webinars are a great way to build your email list because they allow you to share valuable information with your target audience without asking for anything in return. Instead, you can offer attendees the chance to sign up for your email list at the end of the webinar so they can continue receiving valuable information from you on a regular basis.
3. Write guest posts. Guest posting is a fantastic way to get exposure for your business while also building your email list. When you guest post on someone else's blog, make sure to include a call-to-action at the end of your post that invites readers to sign up for your email list.
4. Run a contest or giveaway. Everybody loves free stuff, which is why running a contest or giveaway is an excellent way to build your email list quickly. Just be sure to promote your contest heavily through social media and other channels so you can reach as many people as possible. Be sure to include a link to your sign-up form in the rules or terms and conditions.
5. Leverage social media platforms. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are great places to promote your email list and invite people to sign up. Use relevant hashtags, post engaging content, and run ads that target people who are likely to be interested in what you have to say.
Top tip: Include a link to your sign-up form in your bio or profile on each social media platform, as well as in the description of each post. You can also use social media ads to drive traffic to your sign-up form.
6. Collaborate with other businesses. Collaborating with other businesses in your industry is a great way to reach new people and grow your email list quickly. You could collaborate on a joint webinar, write guest posts for each other's blogs, or even run co-branded contests or giveaways.
7. Add an opt-in form to your website. Your website should have an opt-in form prominently displayed so visitors can easily sign up for your email list without having to go searching for it. Include the opt-in form on every page of your website, and make sure it's easy to spot and easy to use.
8. Use pop-ups on your website. Pop-ups may be annoying, but they're also one of the most effective ways to capture email addresses from website visitors. Make sure your pop - ups are relevant and targeted, and only trigger them after someone has been on your website for a certain amount of time. A good rule of thumb is to limit them to one per page on your website.
9. Host an event. Hosting an event is an excellent way to build relationships with potential customers and grow your email list at the same time. When promoting your event, be sure to include a link to your sign-up form in all of your marketing materials, such as emails, social media posts, and website banners or graphics. You can also promote your event on relevant online event directories and listings sites, like Eventbrite.
10. Add an opt-in form to specific pages on your website. In addition to having an opt-in form on every page of your website, you should also add forms to specific pages that are likely to generate leads. For example, if you have a pricing page, you could include an opt-in form that offers discounts or coupons for signing up for your email list. Your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to sign up for your email list.
Bonus tip:
identify influencers in your niche or industry and reach out to them about partnering with you to promote your business or product. Many influencers are open to opportunities like this and will gladly promote your sign-up form to their followers in exchange for a fee or commission.
How To Connect Your Shopify Store To Mailchimp
If you're looking for a way to connect your Shopify store to Mailchimp, you're in luck. Shopify has an app called ShopSync that will do just that. Once you've downloaded and installed the app, all you need to do is activate it and Shopify will automatically import all of your store's information—including customers, orders and products—into Mailchimp. Plus, we can also sync up custom merge tags like birthdays or anything else that's important to your marketing efforts.
Why You Should Connect Your Shopify Store To Mailchimp
There are a number of reasons why you might want to connect your Shopify store to Mailchimp. For one, it makes it easier to keep track of your customers' information. Having all of your customer data in one place—including their contact information, purchase history and any other details you might have collected—makes it easy to segment your audience and send them targeted emails. Additionally, being able to see what products they've purchased in the past can help you make recommendations for future purchases.
Automate your marketing
Another reason to connect your Shopify store to Mailchimp is that it allows you to automate some of your marketing efforts. For example, you could set up an automated welcome email campaign for new customers or a birthday discount campaign for customers with upcoming birthdays. Automating these types of campaigns frees up time so that you can focus on other areas of your business.
Reporting tools
Finally, connecting your Shopify store to Mailchimp gives you access to powerful reporting tools that can help you track your progress and make decisions about future marketing campaigns. WithMailchimp's reports, you can see how many people opened and clicked through your emails, which allows you to gauge their effectiveness. Additionally,you can A/B test different subject lines or email contentto see what works best with your audience. All of this information is invaluable in helping you create successful marketing campaigns that convert.
MailChimp and email marketing are important
There are dozens of ways you can go about building your marketing lists and leveraging the capability of MailChimp, but not all strategies are created equal. If you want to build a high-quality list quickly, you need to be creative and persistent. Try out some of these innovative strategies and see how they work you. With a little bit of effort, you will be well on your way to growing your business through email marketing.
Interested to learn more?
Treat is a MailChimp & Co Member, and we are ready to help you build your lists, clean and import your email lists, and set up & run all your email marketing campaigns. We are a member of the Information Commissioners office to ensure your data is managed in line with GDPR regulations.
Get in touch by email at hello@treattorbay.co.uk or book some time in the Treat diary below: