To make the most of the holiday season it’s a good idea to start planning your email marketing schedule in advance with your loyalty success manager.

The culture of sending numerous holiday marketing emails well before the normal holiday shopping season can cause general email fatigue – sending too early risks your emails being ignored by customers. Now more than ever, timing emails strategically is vital for engaging subscribers.

What factors should you consider when building a smart holiday email schedule?

• • Your buying cycle: Determine when to start sending emails by working backward from the holiday using your average time to purchase. Then allow yourself a week or so on top of that. For instance, if your buying cycle is typically 1-2 weeks, start sending emails between December 4th and 11th to target Christmas shoppers.
• • Use logic: Shoppers still navigate the typical purchase funnel during the holiday period. Build campaigns to respect their stage of the buying cycle, starting by creating product awareness, then focusing on specific product features and benefits, and finally offering a promotion or incentive to secure the sale.
• • Follow up: After the holiday, follow up with an email campaign designed to plant the seeds for future purchases.

How many emails is too many?

It’s also worth considering your sending volume during holiday campaigns. If you’ve been quiet over email this year, don’t send a big wave of holiday emails all at once!

It’s better to start small and ramp up your efforts as the holidays approach. A good rule of thumb: don’t increase your year-to-date email frequency by more than 3X during the holidays. Otherwise, your emails will start to look like spam, which can result in unsubscribes.

With the right schedule in place, you’ll have a solid plan for how and when to tackle your holiday email campaigns. This strategic planning will also lay the groundwork for the holiday emails that you’ll need to design.