3 Email Marketing strategies to nail your Halloween Campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most important tools not only to reach new customers, but also to promote loyalty among those who already are. In fact, 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success, and 73% of millennials prefer communications from brands to come via email and check their email on a daily basis.

As we know, we are now approaching Halloween holidays; one of the most popular and cherished celebrations of the year, in which the leisure industry plays the main role when it comes to themed offers and events.

Because it only comes once a year, it is an awesome opportunity to create fun and engaging Halloween emails that your customers will love. It is in fact a great moment to make your brand stand out from competitors, but sometimes this is not as simple as it sounds right?

This is why we have decided to share 3 email marketing strategies that will help you get some ideas in order to succeed in this year’s Halloween when it comes to your emailing campaign.

1. Do use an appealing subject line or headline

Did you know that the average time that an email receiver spends reading is only 10 seconds? We really need to catch our customer’s attention with an attractive and preferably short headline that makes them want to keep reading our email. Halloween is a time to get creative with your emails! That means they should not look like every other email you send out.

Do use Halloween-related wit and humour to make your customer smile.

A very easy way to get the readers' attention and interest is by starting the email with a clear message which is fun, and Halloween-related. There are some examples given below from which you can take some ideas, but remember that the hack is keeping it clear, short, and fun.

Take a look at these examples:

o   “Haunt your house with these deals!”

o   “Treats that aren’t tricky!”

o “Check out our sale before it GHOSTS away!”

Make a call to action to involve your customers.

There is nothing more effective than user-generated content for driving social proof and engagement. In Halloween, that is of particular importance because consumers are likely to have a circle of friends with similar tastes and of similar ages. So, anything you can do to get them to share their costume ideas, Halloween recipes, cozy purchases, great deals, or any kind of giveaway with their friends is important.

The call to action allows us to transition the buyer to the next phase, and therefore a well-placed CTA will ensure that the buyer takes immediate action. Why don’t you offer a free ticket for those who wear the best costume on your Instagram challenge?

If your campaign includes a promotional discount, consider highlighting this in the subject line, and even better if you can create a sense of urgency by emphasizing that it is time-limited. If your business is ‘Haloweenable’, consider themed offers, events, classes, or whatever your business is into, but take the chance to impress both new customers and those who already are. Use your emails to communicate important information like the last day for shipping, when promotions end, or when your inventory is running low on popular products. Providing the readers this type of information will make them feel they are receiving valuable data, not spam.

2. Get the time and audience right:

The implementation of the following techniques or technologies can give you great insights about your guests’ behavior and preferences, which you can use to your advantage for future improvements. 

It is a fact that 41% of Halloween shoppers start taking into consideration all the related offers before October even begins. It is important to keep offering Halloween-themed emails throughout the month; it is useless to send some last-minute emails when people have been looking at Halloween offers and promotions for a whole month. Consequently, it is crucial to plan or to schedule in advance which emails are you going to send in what specific dates, and to what customer segment, in order to make sure that the campaign is effective.

Make a plan and specify the dates and emails you will send.

First, think about the frequency, which will determine how many emails will you be sending out for this specific campaign. According to a MarketingSherpa survey, 61% of users prefer receiving a promotional email at least once a month. Surprisingly, 15% of users say they would not mind receiving a promotional email every day. However, this depends on each marketer’s perspective, its industry, and its audience, which you can find out by taking a closer look at your customers with the aim of getting to know what exactly works best for them.

Secondly, it is important to choose the right time of the day to send the emails. How much attention do you pay to all the emails you have in your inbox every morning when you wake up? You could get a great increase in conversion just from sending emails at the time that someone is most likely to be more attentive. But, as for the frequency, there is no hard, fast rule for when to send out your emails; again you need to know what times work for your audience and adapt to the different set of people with different habits that your customer database might contain.

Customer segmentation.

According to different campaigns analyzed by eDataSource, only 6% of Halloween campaigns analyzed had open rates over 20% last Halloween, mostly due to weak or non-existent targeting. It is key to remember that your buyers are not all the same, and this means that in order to be effective and reach all those different types of customers that you have, it is important to address their separated problems and needs. Also, bear in mind that your email database is probably made up of contacts who are at varied stages of interaction with your business. This means your contacts are at different points within the sales cycle, and therefore require different types of information and communication depending on which point they are at.

3. Adequate design and message:

Although Email Marketing is a great way to communicate in a direct and personal way, many of the emails get ignored or remain unread in the audience’s inbox. As we don't want this to happen, we need to make sure we are sending an attractive and a captivating content, because as we have mentioned before, together with the headline, the overall structure and look of the email is the quickest and the safest strategies to make sure our customers want to keep paying attention to our email.

Text and design.

We often hear that it is better sending plain text emails rather than emails full of images and icons, because they are perceived by the users as a one-on-one conversation and they are not seen so much as “advertisement” content. But, as we have explained before, Halloween is a time to get creative and to surprise your readers, which means that it is better to use different, visual and fun content and design.

Why don’t you use animated GIFs in their back pockets until a special holiday or promotion comes along? Or a bulletproof CTA button that says “BOO!”? There are many easy ways to sprinkle a little bit of friendly and thrilling vibes into your emails, which will attract your customers for sure. 

Provide value.

Again, it is not only about selling and getting the customers to the final product, but it is also about adding value to the reader so that they feel more engaged and so that they become more loyal to the brand. So, besides telling your audience about the great Halloween deals or events you have going on this month, you could also give them some ideas on how to wear an original custom, how to create handmade treat bags, and many other ideas. They will love this!

Test, test and test.

Ensure your call-to-action links back to a designated landing page, otherwise, you will immediately lose out. It is in fact hard to get the customers through the funnel until they are ready to convert, and we want to make sure that if they have arrived this far, everything will work perfectly. Checking that all the links and attachments work before sending them out is a good way of making sure that they will not end up in a “page not found” error. In addition, many companies forget about double-checking that their emails work for smartphones too. We work in an increasingly mobile-oriented world and according to a report carried out by Ericsson Mobility, smartphone subscriptions and traffic per phone will have annual growth rates of 15%. This means, we also need to make sure that our content will be suitable both for computers or laptops and mobile devices.

Is your Email Marketing ready for spooky season?

We hope you got enough ideas for your Halloween email marketing campaign! Remember that relevancy is the new currency and therefore, providing a relevant experience to your reader is key so that they will be more likely to engage with your brand.

If you want to learn more about how to tailor a great customer experience for your leisure venue in the online world, check out the Convious Blog. 

Let your creativity run free and surprise your audience in this year’s Halloween!