Christmas is a busy period for shoppers and all of them will be out for a bargain, meaning you as a business can take advantage of this by offering a great deal and boosting your sales dramatically. But what is the best way to go about achieving this?

Not all companies have the budget for a TV or radio commercial. You could turn to direct mail but that can be slow and often goes unread. Email, on the other hand, is the perfect option for a company on a budget looking to maximise the sales potential of a Christmas campaign.

Better yet, using a company who offer managed email marketing services will mean you don’t have to spend hours on that part, you can focus on fulfilling the orders that are sure to come your way.

You should plan to start your Christmas email marketing campaign early. Late November and December may be the time you see most sales, but the majority of people start thinking about Christmas much earlier. Getting your very generous special offer in front of them then could have them sold on your product well before anyone elses.

You should also consider running it well past Christmas, to mid or late January, as there will be people waiting for the Christmas and New Year sales rush to die down before picking up the late bargains.

Make your offer easy to remember too. Christmas is a busy time for everyone so having a long running, simple offer is better than several shorter period ones. You’ll pick up far more sales with a generous, long term, memorable campaign.

Now we get into the nitty gritty of email campaigns – timing, compatibility, design and testing.

A managed email marketing campaign through a specialist company will be able to advise you on this to ensure you get the best from your campaign, but there are some things you should consider from the start.

First of all, timing – a lot of people will have half days in the run up to and during Christmas so it might be better to send your emails early in the morning. You don’t want to harass people with your campaign either, so how often do you email them? It will depend on your campaign but once or twice a week at the most should be enough, though you can increase that slightly towards the end of your campaign.

Compatibility means ensuring your email can be read in the various different email providers and readers – Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc – and your managed email services company will make sure that happens.

The design of your marketing email should be carried out by a proper designer and should contain your offer and your call to action clearly and obviously. Nothing will put off a potential buyer more than a poorly designed email or one that doesn’t ‘get to the point’ – again, especially around Christmas, people are busy!

Finally, there is testing to be done. Split testing, or A/B testing as it is sometimes known, is a way for you to send two slightly different emails to two different groups and se which performs better. Then you can resend the most successful email for even greater sales.

Testing your email marketing campaign at several stages will ensure you get the most from your Christmas email campaign. Your managed email marketing company will be able to do this for you and report on the results so you can make informed decisions throughout the life of the campaign.

Happy Christmas selling!