The festive season can do miracles for your email campaign. There’s a rush to get the best gifts for loved ones, and it’s the perfect time to capture the audience’s attention. But to do so, you need to send your customers the right kind of emails. So here are five types.

The early bird newsletter

Before the festive season fully kicks in, you need to start your Christmas push. That’s because you want to be ahead of the competition. Some experts even say, your marketing should start as early as September. This is because a great deal of consumers start searching for holiday gifts at that time. This would be a great opportunity to remind them that you have what you need by sending them an email which provides ideas for gifts, décor and parties.

1.Black Friday

Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping events of the year in both the US and UK, and is slowly becoming very popular in South Africa too. It falls on the 28^th of November, just after thanksgiving. In 2015 Black Friday saw shoppers spending $2.72bn dollars online. Therefore, this is a perfect time to be promoting products using email marketing.

By sending an email before the shopping event, you can maximise your ROI significantly. To do so however, you need to rely heavily on offering competitive discounts, packaged bundles and loss-leader door buster offers. This is because customers expect deals during the massive sale event.

2. Cyber Monday

Just after Black Friday, Cyber Monday comes into the fore. If you’re an online business, you definitely need to be active during this event. That’s because you stand to gain a greater deal of revenue, with 2015’s sale generating 3.1bn.

As this is solely an online event, emails are a perfect mode of marketing. They’re proven to generate 40 times more customers than other forms of direct marketing. The key to a Cyber Monday emails is building some form of urgency. You can do so by including phrases such as Last Chance or hurry before deal closes. To make more of an impact, you can also add a countdown timer showing how many hours are left before the sale closes.

3. Delivery cut-off email

There’s already a sense of urgency when customers are doing last minute shopping. You can use this to your advantage by sending an email notifying your customers of a holiday cut-off date. These deliver massive results. In your email you need to provide information on the last day – the 24^th of December is usually the most ideal cut-off date. However, if you’re using third-party couriers, you’ll have to also notify customers when they’ll be stopping deliveries.

4. The gift card email

Shoppers can often find themselves stuck without gift ideas. This can be even worse if they’re doing last minute shopping, and the delivery cut-off date is already in effect. This is where gift-cards come in handy. They provide convenience at a time certain customers need them the most.

As was mention earlier, gift cards are perfect because they don’t rely on physical delivery. A customer can purchase them at any time. So you can send out an email promoting gift-cards even on the 24^th of December.

5. The Christmas Day Email

Why send an email on Christmas Day? This must be intrusive, right? Wrong. The 26^th of December is one of the busiest days for online shopping. Countless consumers, therefore, read emails for the best deals on Christmas. So having one planned for the 25^th is a great idea, as you don’t want to miss out on the 114 million online visitors who go browse the web on the day. This mailer can be targeted at customers who would like to purchase gifts they didn’t receive.