Summer isn't the busiest time for many companies. Often, it is a season for promotions and brand communication, with email marketing being one of the crucial channels to utilize. How can you connect your summer strategy with email marketing? Let’s find out!
Many people think that the summer season is dead in terms of promotions because people are focused on traveling and not interested in buying products or services. But that’s not completely true. Summer is often quite peaceful for many companies, with deadlines not being as pressing, giving specialists more time for self-training. Additionally, during the summer, people often have more time to surf the Internet and discover new things and products.
Moreover, some people are even more eager to learn new things during vacation. For example, they might spend one week traveling, and the next week they might be ready to improve their knowledge on a particular topic. Longer daylight hours are also an advantage - we go to sleep much later, giving us more time to learn or spend time both outdoors and peacefully at home.
- Summer promotions - how to run it?
- Summertime products
- Grow your audience
- Retargeted campaigns
- Advanced segmentation and personalization
- Upselling and cross-selling
- Events
- Weather conditions
- Brand recognition & CSR
- Launch the products
- Run a contest
- Color factor
- Test your campaigns
- Summary
How to run summer promotions with email marketing utilization?
Clients love promotions. Of course, this shouldn’t be our main focus all year round, but during the summer, it might work even better than expected. Especially considering that people might not have as much money to spend due to traveling and vacation activities. If, from your perspective, this season is not as effective as others, any way to monetize your clients will be beneficial. How can we measure the effectiveness of our email marketing campaigns?
There is an easy way to do it: create a special discount coupon that will be sent only by email. That will make it easy to measure the effectiveness of your promotion. You can later analyze your backend data to determine how many coupons were used and the revenue generated. This will also enable you to easily calculate the ROI of your email campaigns - you will just need to perform a simple calculation:
For example, if you spent $1000 on an email campaign and earned a profit of $7000, you achieved an ROI of 700%.
Even without using coupons, you can monitor user activity on your website following clicks from your campaign and assess the impact of your emails. Make use of additional analytical tools such as Google Analytics or Amplitude, which are commonly used in business operations for tracking purposes. Use our built-in UTM builder and then review your Google Analytics reports to track how many users from email sources have completed purchases of your product or service or just took a desired action.
Summertime products
If you offer a special summer collection or products that see increased sales during the hot season, now is the perfect time to feature them in your emails. Highlight their strengths and showcase them attractively. We have prepared numerous free, ready-to-use summer templates that you can implement right away and customize according to your requirements.
With our email designer, you can easily create your own templates. It's so intuitive and block-based that changing photos or adjusting colors to align with your brand shouldn't be time-consuming. See how our email designer works in this video - explore the possibilities it offers you:
We plan to create even more appealing templates in July, so stay tuned and get ready to use them!
Grow your audience
You can tie summer promotions to growing your audience by offering an exclusive summer coupon for users who sign up for your newsletter or email list. This approach offers dual benefits: it can increase sales and expand your email subscriber base."
You can capitalize on this group in the future months as well; having a larger audience gives you the opportunity to maximize the impact of your email marketing strategy. These one-time purchasers could potentially become loyal customers, consistently driving revenue through additional payments. While a larger audience doesn't always guarantee a higher open rate, it can impact other critical metrics, like email-driven revenue.
Retargeted campaigns
It’s always a good time for a retargeting campaign, and summer is no exception. In fact, abandoned carts during this 'quiet' season can have a greater impact than usual. The use of website activity-based retargeting can encourage users to complete their actions.
Who can you retarget? Those who started an action but abandoned it midway, individuals who opened a specific email, such as one of your white papers, or customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while. With a retargeting campaign at your disposal, you gain valuable insights into your customers that you can leverage to improve your results.
Advanced segmentation and personalized campaigns
With smart and advanced segmentation you can run more personalized and refined email campaigns.
If you gather data related to your clients, you can use it to personalize your offers. Users particularly appreciate personalization, which is far more valuable than random offers that aren't tailored to specific individuals. Personalized campaigns can significantly enhance your performance.
We mean not only personalizing the user's name. With this approach, you can offer different discounts to various groups based on criteria such as country, industry, or client tier (or any other custom field). Perhaps you have a segment of discount hunters who only purchase during promotional seasons? Take advantage of this!
Upselling and cross-selling are popular
You can also try upselling and cross-selling, popular strategies among all e-commerce and SaaS companies. If someone has already made a purchase or is your client on a free plan, you can utilize one of these approaches
Has someone purchased a toy for their dog? Perhaps they would also be interested in new food for their pet. Is someone already your client using your software, and you've recently launched a new feature? Maybe it’s time for an upselling approach, explaining the benefits of the new functionality.
Bundles could work well in this scenario too, where you sell not only one product but pair it with another item. This type of cross-selling can be effective for your company, such as offering shampoo along with conditioner in one package.
In fact, with email automation, it’s quite simple to implement all these workflows within your strategies.
People want events
The summer season presents a fantastic opportunity to promote events. As people enjoy their holidays and embrace the pleasant weather, they are more likely to participate in outdoor activities and attend events. It's a perfect time to invite them to a special brand presentation or organize a local event. Events featuring concerts or appearances by stars and influencers are especially attractive to attendees. Integrating these events with your company's promotional strategies can enhance your brand visibility and engagement
Hosting events during the summer not only increases brand exposure but also fosters a deeper connection with your audience.
Weather conditions? Use that!
You can link your campaigns with specific weather conditions. It's particularly straightforward when selling fans or umbrellas due to their weather-sensitive nature. However, even if your products aren't weather-related, you can still leverage this strategy. Use wordplays to boost the engagement. Integrating your content with weather conditions can be effective.
If you don’t have an idea for your subject or text content, use our AI text tool to generate some creative copy.
Great time for brand recognition and CSR
If you don’t have any products you want to actively promote and it’s not a popular season for your business, you can use your email campaigns during the summer to enhance your brand. Image campaigns, which are not sales-oriented, could also be effective.
For those promoting services, it could be advantageous to share reviews or case studies. Showcase how individuals utilize your product and explain its value to them
Do you run any CSR activities? Inform your clients about them! Research indicates that people are increasingly eager to support sustainable campaigns that prioritize environmental and local community concerns. If your business aligns with these values, make sure to communicate that to your audience
Launch products during the summer
During the summer season, many companies choose to launch products. Why? Because there is typically less competition due to vacations, which companies view as a favorable opportunity.
Will it work for you? There is no clear answer - you will have to test it out yourself. However, if you launch a few products every year, it would be interesting to see how a summer launch would perform, wouldn’t it?
Run a contest to activate your audience
Contests by emailing are also some kind of an idea to engage your audience. Especially that award doesn’t have to be too expensive to interest people. It's a great way to improve the engagement rate and raise new brand fans.
There are so many ways of running a contest - it might require just an answer to your question in a creative way or, if the prize is bigger, require some additional project or initiative. The amount of effort should be proportional to the value of an award.
But remember that you shouldn’t run the lottery - it might be illegal in your country or require additional permission. You could avoid that with a jury picking the best answer or project.
Colors as an important factor
Colors might also play a role here. During the summer season, we tend to prefer bright colors over darker ones. When designing your email campaigns, it's essential to consider this preference for bright colors.
Using vibrant colors not only matches the lively atmosphere of the season but also boosts the attractiveness of your messages. This strategic use of color can effectively engage your audience, making your emails more visually appealing and enhancing overall engagement.
Testing is always a good idea
A/B testing might also be crucially significant during this season. While we have shared many ideas with you, there is no universal solution. You need to discover which ones work best, especially for your specific situation.
Using A/B tests and precise measurement of crucial statistics will provide you with deeper insights into your customers and what resonates with them. Take advantage of this data-driven knowledge to enhance your campaigns and achieve better results.
To sum up
Email marketing can be an important channel for your company regardless of the season. There are numerous ideas and approaches that you can test and implement, even during vacation. For example - email marketing and e-commerce are a great combination to use and can effectively boost your revenue during off-peak seasons.
Test chosen ideas by yourself to see which work best for you. Whether promoting seasonal offers, announcing product launches, or nurturing customer relationships with valuable content, email campaigns can adapt to various business objectives. You're sure to find effective tactics that will help you maintain strong results during the summer.
Filip Blajet
Filip is a marketing specialist at Elastic Email, who spends a lot of time with data and ads. Outside of work, he loves football, binge watching tv series and travelling.
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