Personalization Tips for Holiday Season 2023

The fall is here, so it’s time to dive into your plans for the 2023 holiday season. And no, it’s not too early. If you want to maximize your sales during the holiday rush, you need to have a strategy prepared. 

A big part of that needs to include email personalization. Without it, you’re leaving a huge opportunity to connect with your list and convert shoppers into buyers.

So, before the holiday season kicks into high gear, it’s time to review your email personalization strategy. Make the right adjustments to ensure you’re optimizing personalization to maximize revenue. 

Here’s where to start. 

Use more name personalization

Brands are not using name personalization enough. Why use it once at the top of an email when it’s a proven attention grabber? So, add your reader’s name in all the places you want them to look — especially those spots that drive action. 

Check out how your eye drifts to everywhere a name is featured. It’s no coincidence they’re all at spots where clicks can boost revenue-generating or secondary actions. 

Let your readers know what parts of your emails are most important by using their names to highlight them!

Add more visibility to your triggered messages

One of the main challenges marketers face today is getting eyes on emails. Finding ways to increase visibility means you have a much better chance to improve your clicks and conversions. 

One area to focus on? Triggered messages. The data shows these emails are more likely to be opened and clicked than others — yet they only make up about 8% of send volume.

Now, rather than hoping a subscriber opens your triggered emails, use Smart Banners™ to increase their visibility. With a few simple tweaks, take your triggered messaging, personalize it, and apply it to your promotional emails. Our clients have seen a 10-17% lift in revenue from this approach.

Dive into performative personalization

Using generic personalization for the sake of it is old news — and it doesn’t drive the engagement it used to anymore. Instead, lean into your customer data and understand what really moves your subscribers to buy. 

We call that performative personalization. And it uses a data-driven approach to determine which hyper-personalized messaging is most likely to drive revenue. 

So, rather than guessing what may move the needle, you know what works for your readers. And Zembula makes it easy to personalize at scale. Now, you can personalize every email and SMS you send automatically.

Focus on SMS for abandoned cart recovery

During the holiday season, you’ll have a lot of shoppers browsing and putting items in their carts, only not to complete the transaction. Rather than relying only on the standard abandoned cart campaign, use a better strategy to win them back.

SMS is the perfect tool to send abandoned cart and browse messages that can result in action. It meets your shoppers where they are and on their terms. Plus, text messages are opened and read much more quickly than emails, keeping you top of mind.

Add personalized animation and links to each message you send, and you have a winning combination. You can reach shoppers through multiple channels, increasing conversion rates. 

Know your ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is an important metric to track in the best of times, and even more so during the holiday season. It helps measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, which helps determine which campaigns are generating revenue and which are stuck in the mud. 

That information is critical when you depend on a small chunk of time to bring massive revenue. So, set yourself up for success by making it easy to track your ROAS. Add UTM parameters on your links, set up dedicated landing pages for email promotions, and review your analytics. 

That way, you can tweak on the fly, making your campaigns more agile and responsive to customer data, driving clicks and conversions.

Let Zembula help you stand out this holiday season

With the holiday season 2023 fast approaching, you need to be ready. And we’d love to help ensure your email marketing is optimized for maximum impact (and revenue). 

Contact one of our email marketing experts and request a demo.