The holiday season offers retailers and brands a multitude of opportunities. It’s peak sales time, and businesses that capitalize on this demand can see a significant boost in revenue.

Retailers and brands need to stand out and ensure their products are available when customers want them. Here are some tips on how to make the most of the holiday season.

Four Tips for Prepping for the Holidays with Alpine IQ

Using the right tools for your campaigns is essential for success during the holiday season. Here are some tips on how to effectively use Alpine IQ’s suite of marketing tools:

1. Audit your campaigns

First, it’s crucial to audit your previous campaign stats before you launch your new campaign. This will give you an idea of what’s worked in the past and what hasn’t. You can use Alpine IQ’s Campaign Reports to quickly check for any deliverability issues.

Read more on how to audit your campaigns here.

2. Use Intelligent Timing when sending your campaigns

Timing is everything regarding marketing, and this is especially true during the holiday season. You need to ensure your campaigns are sent out when people are most likely to be available and interested in your products.

Alpine IQ’s Intelligent Timing feature allows you to automatically send your campaigns at the best time for each individual contact, based on their engagement history with your business.

For the holiday season, in particular, you might want to consider setting your campaigns to go out a bit earlier in the day. This way, people will have time to browse your products and make their purchases before the holiday rush.

Learn more about enabling intelligent timing here.

3. Utilize Waterfall for delivery assurance

One of the most challenging parts of marketing is the lack of reliable delivery assurance. The Waterfall is Alpine IQ’s solution to this problem.

Waterfall automatically attempts to deliver your campaign through multiple channels (email, SMS, web push notification, etc.) until it reaches the contact, all while remaining compliant with the most recent privacy and usability laws.

It also monitors engagement from your audiences, such as email and app opens, clicks, and unsubscribes, so that you can have an accurate picture of your campaign’s performance. This way, you can be sure that your campaigns are getting delivered and seen by your contacts.

Read more about how to enable waterfall technology here

4. Follow recommended best practices for your campaigns

The right tools like Alpine IQ’s suite of AI-powered marketing tools are but one step of many towards having successful campaigns. It’s also important to follow recommended best practices to fully maximize the potential of your campaigns.

Some best practices to keep in mind for your holiday season campaigns include:

SMS Best Practices:

• Keep your messages short and to the point (under 160 characters).
• Avoid flagged SMS keywords.
• Personalize your message as much as possible. Intelligent timing is one way to do this, as well as including the recipient’s first name in the macro.
• Schedule your messages in advance. Make sure to use Premium Walled Garden (Alpine IQ’s MMS delivery campaign) to make your messages stand out all while ensuring their delivery.

Email Best Practices:

• Similar to the SMS best practice, it’s important to avoid trigger words in your email. Some examples include “Hurry now,” “free,” and “cure to your medical condition.”
• Authenticate your domain. This will improve your deliverability rates and be compliant with CAN-SPAM and CASL laws.
• Format your email properly. This includes simple yet often overlooked formatting such as avoiding all caps, avoiding multiple punctuations, and using too many font sizes and font styles.
• Ensure that your content is compelling. This is achieved by adding value, being personal, and keeping your tone friendly. Pay attention to your grammar and spelling too.
• Include a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA). The CTA should be easily visible and stand out from the rest of the email.
• On a similar note, the URLs and links in your email should be anchored to a relevant descriptive text instead of a naked URL. All URLs should also be working.
• Include images to make your email more visually appealing, but make sure that they’re optimized for web view.
• Ensure that all metadata is correct and accurate. This includes the subject line, sender name, preheader text, and more.

CHECKLIST: Account and SMS Setup

Before you get started with your holiday campaigns, make sure that your account is properly set up and ready to go. You can print out and use this checklist to do so:

• Audited most recent campaign stats to ensure no deliverability issues
  • Reached out to CSM/OBS if low deliverability
• Sent out any / all holiday-related campaigns before the official day
  • Enabled intelligent timing for campaigns sent for the holiday season
• Created a message for each marketing channel in each campaign (Email, Browser push, Native push notification, SMS)
• Prioritized messaging channels for each campaign using Waterfall
• Made sure I was on Premium Walled Garden
• No notice of new messages contains any of the flagged words
• Personalized a notice of new message for each SMS campaign
• No flagged words in any of the other texting defaults

CHECKLIST: Before Sending Out Your Campaigns

Double-checking everything on your end before you hit send is crucial to the success of your campaign. Use this checklist as a guide:

• Authenticated Email Domain
• Did not use too many (over 5) text colors in my email
• Did not use too many font styles
• No URL shorteners were used
• Tested all email links were working
• There is a clear balance of text-to-image ratio
• Email is optimized for mobile
• Reviewed email for spelling and grammatical errors
• No flagged words are in my email or subject line
• No ALL caps in my email or subject line
• No double use of punctuation in subject line or body (???) (!!!!!)

Alpine IQ: Your Partner for Your Marketing Needs

Whether you’re sending out campaigns on Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve, Alpine IQ has you covered. We offer a suite of tools to help you grow your business, including an industry-leading SMS and MMS platform, email marketing, loyalty program, and more.

Contact us at Sales@AlpineIQ.com or call us at 650-382-0029 to learn more!

To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!