Digital marketing, especially over email, is only effective if it is tailored specifically and deliberately to reflect the season that is in effect at any given time. When marketing during Christmas, for example, you will want to use idiolects and language that reflects the Christmas Season. However, when marketing using email during a period like Halloween, choosing the right technique is likely to ensure that your products stand out from the rest during the marketing campaign.
Marketing during Halloween requires a lot of diligence and research since using regular campaign strategies would adversely affect your brand and its reputation. Not all Halloween-themed options must be filled with gore and be in bad taste. Using the proper techniques will ensure that your brand and what it represents have significant traction even after the Halloween season.
The following strategies give you ideas on effectively undertaking a marketing campaign over email, especially for eCommerce stores. These ideas will increase your brand reputation, brand coverage, and reach and, ultimately, boost the brand revenue and the sales that your company earns.
Email Marketing In General
Before considering the various Halloween email ideas you can employ, consider looking at email marketing in general, and what you should have under your sleeve as you begin the strategic marketing planning. Follow fundamental rules and principles when undertaking email marketing, especially during a specific holiday.
1. Leverage The Spirit Of The Season
Every holiday season has a specific spirit that is often related to it. For instance, the spirit of Christmas is cheering and giving out while remembering the events of the year and what you are grateful for. It is also a time for family and friends to come together and share meals and celebrate in anticipation of the new year. As such, as you undertake your strategic marketing planning for such a season, you must reflect that specific spirit. The same goes for Halloween.
When strategically planning for the emails to use in the season, emails that reflect the Halloween theme are not just a marketing ploy or technique. Still, it resonates deeply with the emotions and thoughts of the people you are reaching out to at this specific time. That is also a technique numerous television shows and media entities use. You may notice that during a particular holiday season, all the episodes in TV shows and other media outlets mirror the season of the time.
This is because people are likely to remember, enjoy, and respond positively to your messages and marketing techniques towards them when they reflect on the season in question.
2. A Sense Of Urgency
Some of the best marketing techniques, even when used over written communication such as emails, must create a sense of urgency. When customers see that their actions are contingent on a certain time frame, they will likely act quickly and use the offers you are giving them.
As such, using language such as hurry before stocks last, time is of the essence, or offer valid up to a certain day will create an emotion of urgency and allow the parties involved or the customers to act expeditiously. Alternatively, you can also add a timer to your emails to allow them to realize that this offer runs out at the end of the timer.
3. Entice Your Audience With A Treat
Everyone wants a treat now and then. The same is true for customers. Many customers are impulse buyers who are likely to get a product simply. This is because they are enticed by their marketing strategy at the given time, enticing them with a treat tailored. Such a response will make them reach out and buy your goods from an eCommerce point of view.
Enticing a treat such as buy one get one free, free trials, free shipping, a gift, or a significant discount is likely to get them to buy your goods as opposed to simply telling them what they are likely to enjoy. Therefore, as you create your marketing strategy for the holiday season, presenting your audience with a treat will benefit you in the long term.
4. Ease Customer Concerns
When customers are worried about the long-term benefits of the product, they are unlikely to respond positively to your marketing campaign. As such, creating a marketing strategy that directly addresses their concerns will benefit your revenue streams and the profitability of your eCommerce platform in the long run. Considering that customers do not have the opportunity to evaluate a product before they purchase it on an eCommerce site, offering a lenient return policy on your email and digital marketing strategy will benefit your company and increase its revenue streams.
You can do this by offering warranties or allowing their customers to return the goods within a specific time frame. Additionally, providing an elaborate but easy-to-understand return policy will allow your customers to consider you a trustworthy entity and reward you by providing you with sales.
5. Technology
In modern times, marketing via email should reflect the changing technology trends. Besides, when marketing via email, ensure that all your emails and tools are customized and optimized for mobile devices. Remember, many people will shop from their mobile phones. As such, if the email is not customized and optimized for mobile devices, the visual impression of the email to the customers will deter them from even proceeding further with it. Using a UX or UI specialist can enable you to create optimized content for all kinds of devices using a UX or UI specialist.
Now to the specifics of email marketing during the Halloween Season:
Halloween Email Marketing Ideas
As agreed above, marketing during a specific holiday period must be structured to comply with and reflect the mood and spirit of the holiday in question. You must contemplate the season’s spirit when running a marketing campaign during Halloween.
Logically, the question to ask yourself in such times is what exactly is the essence and mood of Halloween. When thinking about Halloween, the first things that come to mind are fear, tricks, and spooking. These reflect the Halloween spirit. As such, you should endeavor to create an email marketing methodology that exudes these emotions to the general audience of your content.
1. Halloween Language Strategy
Nothing reflects a specific season like language. From ho-ho-ho during Christmas to talk about the Pilgrims during Thanksgiving, language taps into the holiday mood and resonates deeply with your target customers. Halloween language involves spooking and fear and the terms associated with such emotion. A low-hanging fruit to exploit in this regard is puns that incorporate fear and spook into the items you are marketing.
For instance, if you sell books, you can phrase the books as “booooooks” to mimic the sound a ghost would make. Alternatively, you can use a phrase such as “Do you want to Trick or Treat Yourself to a new book?” which plays on the Trick or Treat expression associated with Halloween.
2. Fonts
Creating a visual impression for your customers when selling goods via online marketing strategies such as emails is crucial, especially if you want to increase sales and revenue. Marketing to customers during a visual holiday such as Halloween becomes very easy. Firstly, you may want to use colors such as orange, black, red, green, and grey, which create an eerie feeling. Such colors are notorious among Halloween Enthusiasts and would therefore serve your marketing needs well and target the customers’ emotions.
When it comes to fonts, using fonts that have a Halloween mood will be a great advantage for you as it also helps to build the mood. Fonts like Dramatico or Mr. Pumpkins can set the mood instantly. You can also create custom fonts that work well with your brand.
Creating fonts that look like ghosts or ghouls, a familiar Halloween theme, is critical if you want to maintain the Halloween mood for the season. However, remember that some Halloween fonts may be hard to read at one glance. Therefore, even as you use the fonts, try to use them sparingly and only in large titles. You can use your ordinary fonts in the general body of the text.
3. Graphics and Images
Graphics and images are critical for any digital or online marketing campaign. During the Halloween season, specific images and graphics are associated with the Halloween mood and spirit. For instance, graphics such as pumpkins with carved-out eyes and mouths, vampires, and ghosts are a keen reflection of the holiday spirit and Halloween mood.
As such, if you want to capture the mindset of the customers you target during Halloween, you will want to use these images. Additionally, you can also try and provide the customers with a guide that has Halloween characters involved. For instance, if you are selling soap or beauty products, the characters using the products in the guide can be ghouls, ghosts, or vampires. This will also help maintain the Halloween mood for the customers.
4. Halloween Product Descriptions
Describing your products to reflect the Halloween season can be a great idea, especially if you are starting a business or an e-commerce platform that does not sell Halloween-specific products. You can describe the products in a way that emphasizes Halloween’s spooking or fearful aspect.
Suppose you have an e-commerce platform that sells houses; you can describe the houses as a fearful or frightening place to stay. Under ordinary circumstances, a customer would not be willing to buy a house located in a scary place. However, during Halloween, when a customer sees that your products are tailored to reflect Halloween, they will be interested in them and will want to buy them.
However, you may want to emphasize this aspect in the marketing email if you sell Halloween-specific products. This will also help maintain the intrigue of the customers and allow them to buy your goods on a large scale.
5. Content Specificity
When marketing to customers on an online platform such as email, you need to ensure that the content you are providing is targeted and curated for this specific target audience. For instance, if you are marketing content to children, you must ensure that the content has children’s themes, such as games, cartoons, and graphics. On the other hand, if your content is curated for adults, ensure that the content has adult-specific themes even though you are marketing during Halloween.
6. Animated Tools
When sending emails to your customers, using Halloween-sensitive animated tools will benefit you in the long haul. For example, using a dripping animation to simulate blood dripping instead of a traditional timer will be Halloween-sensitive. As such, even as you work on an appeal of urgency to reach out to the customers, reflecting that urgency by using animations based on Halloween will be vital for increasing revenue, sales, and profitability.
7. Call To Action
The last thing to ensure that you have on any email campaigns undertaken during the Halloween season is a call to action or CTA that reflects all the aspects you want the audience to gather as part of their awareness of the eCommerce offerings. A good CTA summarizes the entire marketing campaign and asks the audience to perform a specific action. In the CTA, using verbs that imply an action ought to be done will also have a lasting effect on the customers, leading to increased sales and profitability.
Additionally, a CTA should be clickable when using emails as a campaign mechanism and lead directly to your site or the product in question.
Parting Shot
Ecommerce requires a great deal of digital marketing to reach out to audiences. While digital marketing has wide varieties, emails are one of the best. Email marketing can be an effective tool, primarily when undertaken effectively. Using the strategies discussed above, you can launch an ideal marketing strategy during the Halloween season that leverages the Halloween mood and increases the brand’s reputation, reach, and profits.