Shopping events and thank you notes at the end of the yearGenerate attention for your own offers and show appreciation
Canceled Christmas parties and Christmas markets are causing trouble for many people this year. But especially in the pre-Christmas period and at the end of the year the need for human contact is especially great – the dark season is getting to us. Due to the current situation we have to find alternative, mostly digital ways to show appreciation and interest to our fellow men.
This year, the Christmas business is also likely to shift even more to the digital world. Full city centers are hardly conceivable. Regardless of whether customers, employees or partners, communication is running at full speed again towards the end of the year. This makes it all the more important to convince with structure and design in addition to suitable content. Small effects or gimmicks attract additional attention. To make sure that you don’t get lost in the competition, we have put together a few possibilities and suitable occasions to arouse your interest.
The best occasions at the end of the year
As always at the end of the year, there are some dates that are particularly suitable for customers to remember and to boost year-end business with one or the other campaign. They are also a good way to say thank you to partners and your own employees. We have selected the most important ones for you here:
November 27th Black Friday
November 29th 1st Advent
November 30th Cyber Monday
December 6th St. Nicholas Day
December 6th 2nd Advent
December 13rd 3rd Advent
December 20th 4th Advent
December 24th Christmas Eve
Dezember 31st New Year’s Eve
January 1st New Year
January 6th Epiphany
Shopping Highlights
The start of the year-end business will be Black Friday on November 27th. This shopping day from the USA has only been around in Germany for a few years. In addition, there was also the Cyber Monday, which was made famous by the online retailer Amazon. This year the event happens on November 30th. The long weekend is now the strongest in Germany in terms of sales over the year. Especially clothing and electronic goods can be sold. Thanks to Corona, online trade is likely to profit even more this year, while stationary trade is likely to fall further behind. This makes it all the more important that stationary trade also becomes active online in order to not lose too much sales to the purely digital competition. And it doesn’t even have to be their own online store. Often it is enough for customers to find out about the company’s own promotions and offers in the first place, the online sales can also take place via marketplaces. Depending on the customer base, this can be done via newsletter or postal mailings. Depending on the contact details of your customers, each customer can also be addressed via his or her preferred channel or across channels. With professional e-mail marketing tools, such as the EMM, in which additional channels are integrated, this is no problem.
Attention: If you are planning Black Friday campaigns, it is important to know that despite some complaints, it is unfortunately still a registered trademark of Super Union Holding in Hong Kong. An exception is now only for advertising services and electrical and electronic goods, for which there is no longer trademark protection. If you want to advertise with the word mark Black Friday, a license is therefore required to avoid falling victim to the warning lawyers. Alternatively, you can also use similar terms such as Shopping Friday, Black Friday or Black Shopping Day.
Christmas for consumers and trade
After Black Friday is before Christmas! Now the annual Christmas madness really starts. People are on the road again to get presents for their loved ones – probably more online than on foot. You can feel sorry for the parcel carrier already, because crowded pedestrian zones are rather unrealistic at the moment. Whether digital or stationary – make sure that your customers know about your Christmas promotions.
There are certainly more than enough campaign ideas, here are a few classics:
- Christmas calendars are particularly popular – here, for example, registered customers could receive a special offer every day by newsletter.
- The four Advent weeks can also be used as a hanger – you could, for example, advertise a different product category with special offers every week. With these weekly offers, the newsletters can in turn be easily supplemented with print mailings to create a varied multi-level campaign.
No matter what you use as an occasion, the important thing is that the content is noticed. You will get more attention if you don’t just rely on standard mailings, but also try something special. Animated content and elements that appeal to the play instinct get particularly high attention:
Black Friday starts in:
The countdown is running
The countdown is a proven measure of generating attention, but also for building up pressure to act on the recipient side. Providers for countdowns are available free of charge, usually with small self-advertising, as well as with a fee. The generated HTML code only needs to be integrated into the newsletter.
Current offerings with Dynamic Content
For short-term and time-limited offers, you can rely on Dynamic Content. Dynamic content makes sense, especially in conjunction with an Advent calendar, if the bargains on offer are really only limited to one day. Reference tables can be used to define when which advertisement is played – regardless of when the mailing is opened, the recipient always receives the current offer. We will be happy to help you implement dynamic content in EMM.
Put your trust in the playing instinct
The playing instinct is still present in adults, so even a small memory or puzzle with your own products or Christmas motifs can be a nice change and challenge for the recipient, which he or she will gladly accept. With games, however, a redirection to a landing page is necessary, on which the actual game is executed. When solving the task, a voucher may appear.*
Digital scratchcard
Scratch cards also have a playful effect, as they arouse curiosity. These are now also available in digital form. Also for this a Landingpage is necessary, on which the desired field can be scratched free, under which then a coupon is hidden .*
Christmas for consumers and trade
Christmas is not only the time of consumption, but also the time of appreciation. Just in this for many so difficult year it is appropriate to say thank you – to the supplier, who perhaps granted some postponement with the payment of the calculation; to the landlord, who did without a contractually agreed upon rent increase; to the partner enterprise, which helped, if emergency was at the man; to the customer of many years, who held one despite Corona-conditioned closing the loyalty held or the coworkers, who had to work from today on overnight at home… A standard Mail seems however little appropriate for such cases. Therefore, we have summarized various possibilities for you to transfer the appreciation into a mailing.
Personalized images
A picture is worth a thousand words… A beautiful motif with a personal message simply makes an impression. Your own name in the picture, for example, conveys a particularly high degree of sympathy. Show that your counterpart deserves this appreciation.*
Moving messages
Animated PNGs or GIFs in mailings also leave a lasting impression. On the one hand, make sure that they look professional and not cheap, and on the other hand, make sure that the image rights are respected so that there are no problems afterwards. For individual animated PNGs or GIFs it is best to use a graphic artist. For PNGs, pay attention to the image size, so that there are no problems with sending.
Classic automated
Everybody knows the classic Christmas cards, which often mean a lot of work, especially if there are not only a few dozen recipients. The EMM now also offers the possibility of creating personalized and individual postal mailings, which are then sent to Deutsche Post for production and then delivered directly to your recipient. This gives you just as much creative leeway as with a digital mailing, but the feel of the mailings adds a certain value.
Do not forget the most important ones: your employees
In normal years at this time in the enterprises also a Christmas party takes place. However, this year this will probably be cancelled in most companies or converted into a digital alternative. If not everyone can sit together and enjoy mulled wine and food, then why not give your employees a voucher for a delivery service? That way, everyone can eat together and virtually meet for a mulled wine. The advantage is that everyone can order what they want. In larger companies, the vouchers can be easily integrated into an internal newsletter via a reference table. But a haptic variant is also possible with our current Deutsche Post cooperation. With this you can also send personalized postal mailings from the email system.
We hope we could give you some nice suggestions to make Christmas a nice and successful time for everyone (despite the circumstances). We hope you enjoy your presents!
*a service from postina.net