Top 7 Holiday Marketing FAQs: Answered!??

Hey Budai Nation ??,?

Holiday season is a busy time for e-commerce owners, and a lot of businesses have been asking me questions about how to prepare for the holiday season.??

I compiled my answers from the seven most frequently asked questions about the holiday season to help you prepare better for this important time of the year.

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions from you:?

1. When to start preparing for BFCM?

In previous years, big brands extended the Black Friday-Cyber Monday event to become Black Week or even Black Month in some cases.?

However, if you follow them, you risk devaluing your brand for being seen as the “constant discount store”.?

So, we suggest promoting an early Black Friday VIP list to the brand's audience, getting subscribers to it in October and early November, and opening up the BFCM sales event to them 1-2 weeks before Black Friday.?

This is a great way to extend your event while still keeping the element of scarcity around it.?

2. How is Christmas different from BFCM??

The main difference between the two is that customers buy on Black Friday but for Christmas, they buy at least a few days, or even a few weeks before.?

This is why you should run your Christmas sales event fitting your shipping time. You want them to get their products just before Christmas.?

So if shipping takes 2 days, run the Xmas promo on Dec 22nd but if it is 2 weeks, then run it around Dec 10th.?

3. How many emails should I send during Black Friday?

Before I answer this question, you should consider these factors:

What is the size of your email list??

Can you create a well-defined segment in it??

What is your list engagement?

If you have a relatively large list with many segments and they are engaged, don’t be shy to send even 1-3 emails to each engaged segment per day during Black Friday and Xmas.?

However, if your list is barely 5,000 and not engaged, you should send not more than 1 per day and only to your most engaged subscribers.?

4. How to manage a high spam complaint rate/unsubscribe rate?

The great thing about email marketing is that everything can be measured.?

Even if you receive a few ugly comments from subscribers, if your KPIs are on track, you have nothing to worry about.?

Here’s Klaviyo’s guide about benchmarking which you can refer to for more details. (this guide isn’t specific to only Klaviyo users)

5. Should I run split tests during sales campaigns?

You don’t want to run split tests during the most important promotional events of the year because you lose money on your losing variations.?

Instead, you should gather data on what offers, creatives, angles work in your retention marketing in the previous weeks and learn from those.?

Use that knowledge to create your winning BFCM and Christmas holiday strategy.?

6. Best time for sending emails?

When it comes to days and hours, there’s nothing new under the sun in the holiday season.?

Tuesday and Thursday are usually the best days but Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Dec 24th is a great day as well.?

8am, 2pm, 4pm, 8pm are the best times of the day to send emails, however, you want to use AI tools such as Klaviyo to test this out on your list.?

7. What if Q4 is not relevant for my business?

Minority of ecommerce companies don’t find the holiday season relevant for their businesses, many B2B stores, furniture, or automotive companies.?

In this case, you can still try a product launch in this time period of the year to draw attention to your business.?

I hope you enjoyed getting this holiday surprise delivered straight to your inbox.

I’m always happy to hear from you so please let me know if you have any questions/feedback.

By the way, check out my mini-course to learn everything you need to know to get started with Klaviyo email marketing.?

Click here to check it out.