Giving your users a (summer) break: How to get your email marketing strategy right

Break through the noise

There’s no better time to get ahead of your competition and connect with your subscribers than the summer, whilst ‘the noise’ is slightly quieter. Not all of your customers will be abroad, soaking up the sun in sunny España. Some of them might be sat at home waiting for your weekly email to them. Yeah, that’s how much your brand means to them. So don’t alter your email marketing strategy too much during the holiday season you never know which one of your customers will miss hearing from you.

Make your contacts feel special

Remember, even though it might be a little bit quieter in your recipient’s inboxes’, now is not the time to forget how to stand out. Be relevant, make sure all your communications are tailored to each individual recipient. Simple principles like segmentation and personalization, (we know you’re sick of hearing about these two) can help you be more relevant to each of your contacts. Make your customers feel like you know their needs and desires. Treat them as an individual, on a mass scale. For example, if you’re an airline or a travel company that sells flights, segmenting your list based on the airport your recipients are most likely to/have previously traveled from could help to add relevance to your message.

Holidays are here, so you’ve lost the opportunity?

Not all of your recipients will have chosen to take their annual vacation during the summer months. Some might be looking to take a holiday later in the year, when the most popular destinations are a little quieter. Some might even be planning to save their dollars until next year and go on a more luxurious holiday then.

Whether your subscribers have just returned from an amazing destination or they’ve spent the summer slaving away at work, all of them will have spent a bit of time daydreaming about their next vacation. Let’s be honest, it’s hot, it’s sunny and that report is slowly losing all of its appeal. You’ve teased them with a personalized email featuring their prefered airport. Should you stop there? No! Now is the perfect time to engage them into booking their next escape with you. Why not use the next few weeks to plan a series of campaigns looking at off-season destinations and how frequently you should email your customers during the summer months? Or start thinking ahead to next year's ‘hot’ destinations, perhaps you’ll even help sculpt next summer’s list of top sunny escapes. Plus you’ll have a fresh pot of data to where your customers have visited this year, so you can make recommendations based on similar destinations, hotels, airlines and more.

A word to the wise, your recipients are unlikely to want to visit the same place they visited this year, so don’t think because they liked Mexico this year that they want to go to Mexico every year. Some might be margarita and taco mad (and we can understand why), but they won’t all be.

This is not exclusive to travel companies, though. Finding original ways of keeping your subscribers engaged this summer is something every business should consider when creating an email marketing strategy. These months might be the best time to promote those beautiful summer dresses, tease your recipients with the best books for their swimming pool Sunday or just tempt them to go out for an al fresco dinner.

Re-engage the unengaged

You may have noticed that not all of your recipients are engaging with your emails. Don’t worry, you’ll be glad to know you’re not the only one who battles with this challenge. Make time this summer to try to re-engage your inactive customers. Tell them you miss them, incentivize them to come back to your brand. If the relationship really is over, let them know that you’re letting them go for now (or, in other words, that you’re removing them from your mailing list), but, that they’re always welcome back when they’re ready to hear from you again.

So, now you know that the summer is not the time to give your readers a break. Instead, find new ways to engage them and play around with your email marketing strategy. Use the opportunity to cut through the noise and if they really don’t want to hear from you anymore, remove them from your list to help improve your email engagement metrics.

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