What’s your Q5 email strategy?
In sports, the fifth quarter is the big post-game party. In ecommerce, it’s the slice of your fourth quarter ecommerce calendar that begins right around Christmas and extends into January. It marks the last big push for holiday sales and the transition into your Q1 strategy and calendar.
Your customers are still buying, but they have different motivators, like spending gift cards and bargain-hunting. At the same time, many brands, especially market leaders, pull back on email frequency and promotions in what’s typically the post-Christmas quiet.
In 2021, brands followed these regular patterns, even as they increased frequency and promotion rates over 2020:
Frequency fell 17% from earlier in December 2021 but rose 4.9% YoY Dec. 22, 2021, to Jan. 7, 2022
Promotion rates increased 5.4% YoY in the same period
As an ecommerce marketer, Q5 could be your time to step up and get noticed in the inbox—if you can give customers value-driven reasons to click.
1. Help customers redeem gift cards
About $3 billion in gift cards never gets redeemed, despite efforts like National Use Your Gift Card Day (coming up on January 21, 2023). Maybe it’s because not enough brands send reminders like this one from Shinola, which lures cardholders with the promise that they can get what Santa didn’t bring.
Need more inspiration? Visit our Gift Cards list! We have you covered both ways, with hand-curated emails to sell more gift cards before the holidays and to nudge more recipients to cash them in quickly afterwards.
2. Reach out through your loyalty program
When the holiday rush has slowed, you should have collected a sleigh-load of new customers. Now’s a great time to strengthen your ties with your newcomers! Send a standalone email that reminds regular customers to join your VIP program, or add it to your welcome journey, as ULTA does so well. Better idea: Send both!
Timing is everything in a welcome journey. View ULTA’s complete welcome journey to discover where the loyalty invite fits into the four-email series and which other messages the beauty brand includes.
3. Rise above the clearance clatter in the inbox
When the after-Christmas sale emails flood customers’ inboxes, you can make yours stand out with a fresh take that promises bargains and value in the same breath. We love Marine Layer’s irreverent email that begins with the subject line “Holiday Hangover (!)”.
There’s a reason why our curated Sales and Discounts list is one of our most frequently visited sources of inspiration. Check it out for fresh takes on the kinds of emails your customers love to open.
4. Recap the year that was
No data? No problem! Personalized recap emails are popular with customers because they show how much your customers spent, flew, or engaged with your brand. But if you don’t have that data, you can still send a recap worth opening. Thank customers for their charitable contributions, like Carter’s. Or have fun with it, like Marine Layer does here.
Need more Q5 ideas? We have a list for that!
Our Fifth Quarter/Q5 email inspiration list will help you find ideas for strategy and creative content for your Q5 campaigns. Discover dozens of hand-curated emails like discount campaigns, loyalty emails, year-end recaps, gift-card nudges, and more.
For more email and SMS examples like these, try MailCharts for free.
