Businesses walk a fine line in marketing and selling, and email marketing offers an opportunity to get your message in front of people with higher delivery rates than other platforms.

Why Email Marketing Is Important for Retailers and Brands

Before we discuss email subject lines for Thanksgiving, let’s review why email marketing is so important for retailers and brands.

Email marketing provides a direct way for retailers and brands to connect with customers and promote discounts or new product arrivals. As we mentioned earlier, email marketing is considered one of the most effective marketing channels for several reasons:

1. Emails help with customer engagement and retention

One of the most appealing aspects of email marketing is its ability to help build relationships with customers and keep them informed about your brand. By sending regular updates, discounts, and promotions, you can keep customers engaged and coming back for more.

2. Emails are personal and customizable

Another great thing about email marketing is that it’s personal. You can segment your email list based on customer preferences and cater the content of your emails to specific groups. This helps to ensure that your message is relevant to the recipients and more likely to be opened and acted upon.

3. Emails can bring traffic to your website

In addition to promoting your brand and products, email marketing can also help drive traffic to your website. By including links to your website in your emails, you can encourage customers to visit your site and learn more about what you have to offer.

4. Emails prompt your audience to take action

Email marketing is a great way to encourage customers to take action, whether visiting a store, making a purchase, or signing up for your loyalty program. Including a call-to-action in your emails makes it easy for customers to take the next step with your brand.

5. Emails generate better results than most marketing channels

With all that’s been said, it’s no surprise that email marketing is a cost-effective yet powerful marketing tool. In fact, studies have shown that email marketing generates more ROI than any other digital marketing channel. A recent study found that email marketing had an average return of $36 for every dollar spent — compare this to social media marketing, where the average ROI is $2.80.

5 Tips for an Effective Email Subject Line for Retailers and Brands

Customers receive thousands of emails every day, so it’s important to make sure yours stands out — and it starts with your email subject line.

Email subject lines are the first thing recipients see when they open their inboxes. They can make a powerful impact on whether or not customers actually open and read your email, so it’s important to get them right.

Here are five tips to help you write a compelling and relevant email subject line:

1. Keep it short and sweet

With so many emails vying for attention, it’s essential to keep your subject line short and to the point. Long subject lines are more likely to be truncated, and customers may not even bother reading the full message.

In addition to its length, it’s also important to use relevant keywords that stand out and accurately reflect the content of your email. This will help customers quickly determine whether or not your email is worth reading.

2. Avoid spam words

Email subject lines that include spam words are more likely to be caught by spam filters and never reach the intended recipient. Unintentionally sending spammy emails could also hurt your reputation, and it puts you at risk of being blacklisted by email providers.

To avoid this, steer clear of words like “free,” “win,” and “sale.” There are nearly a thousand spam trigger words, so it’s important to do your research and stay updated with the list.

3. Ask open-ended questions

Asking a question in your email subject line can be a great way to pique customers’ curiosity and encourage them to open your email. However, it’s important to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”

Instead, try to ask open-ended questions that prompt customers to want to know more. For example:

• Have you seen our new Thanksgiving collection?
• Not sure what to get your loved ones this holiday season?
• What are you thankful for this year?

4. Give a clear command 

As we mentioned earlier, a call to action (CTA) is essential to prompt customers to take action. But it’s also important to make sure your call to action is clear and concise.

Including too many calls to action in a single email can be confusing and overwhelming for customers. Stick to one primary call to action, and make sure it’s prominently visible and easy to understand. Some examples of CTAs you can use are:

• Visit our website to learn more!
• Stop by our store today!
• Sign up for our loyalty program!

5. Be unique and creative 

The competition is tight, so it’s important to make sure your email subject line is creative and catches customers’ attention. A witty subject line is more likely to be remembered and shared, so don’t be afraid to have some fun with it.

The holiday season is the perfect time to get creative with your subject lines! Add a little spice to your emails with some Thanksgiving-themed puns, jokes, or pop culture references, which brings us to the next section.

Creative Email Subject Lines for Thanksgiving

Humor is the perfect way to stand out in customers’ inboxes this holiday season. Here are some Thanksgiving email subject lines that will definitely get attention:

• Eat, drink, give thanks
• Entering feast mode
• I’m thankful for you
• Stuffed and grateful
• Turkey, spice, and everything nice.
• Home for the Holidays!
• Gobble Gobble
• I cran and will eat everything today
• Turkey for me, please
• Raise your fork for a toast
• Gobble ’til you wobble with our latest products!
• Time to get lit for Thanksgiving!

Amp Up Your Email Marketing for Thanksgiving

Email marketing is among the most reliable methods to reach and engage customers, and its effectiveness is amplified when you use the right subject lines. You can make sure your emails stand out in customers’ inboxes even more by using Alpine IQ’s AI-powered marketing tools.

Use intelligent timing to send emails at the best time for each customer, personalize your content with dynamic information, and track your results — and that’s just among a few of the many things you can do with Alpine IQ.
To learn more, visit our website at https://alpineiq.com/!

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

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

4 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 when it comes to 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 enaballing 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!