Etsy Promotional Email Template
For Etsy sellers, now is one of the most important times of year. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, potential customers will be jumping in line (and online) to buy holiday gifts for their loved ones. Make sure you’re ahead of the rush by including a promotional email in your marketing this year!
Make sure you’re ready for the rush with a promotional email!
In this post, we’ll talk about when to send the email, who to send the email to, and (finally) what to send in the email.
When to send the email
Just before Thanksgiving, buyers will be prepping their sides, desserts and Turkeys. On Thanksgiving, they’ll be feasting. The day after Thanksgiving, they’ll be busy shopping for Black Friday deals— so when should you send your promotional email?
Our research shows that you should send the email on the Friday before Thanksgiving. If you have more than one email (for example, an email to promote your best sellers and another to offer a discount code), you should send the promotion on the Friday and a follow up coupon code on Tuesday.
If you want to send more than one email, make sure to tease the second email in the first one. For example, if your first email is the promotional email and the second one is the coupon code email, end the first email with something like “Be on the lookout for our 20% off coupon code in your inbox early next week!”
Doing this will keep you fresh in your buyers’ minds and give them something to look forward to from you. Some reports urge sending at least 3 emails in anticipation of Black Friday. However, you are likely a smaller seller and big brands and cannot afford much in the way of losing on your email sending reputation.
Who to send the email to
As a seller, you should have a list of past buyers. You don’t want to send the email to every single past buyer in your system. You’ll want to send the email to people who show a high intent to buy. Here are some tips for filtering who to send to:
People who have made purchases in the last 6 months
People who have made purchases using previous promotional coupon codes
People who have spent over some threshold in the last 18 months (for example, over $500)
Additionally, you should send the email to potential buyers if you have a CRM that tracks them. Here are some examples of those people:
People who made purchases in the past and have items in their cart
People who made purchases in the past and visited your site from a promotional email in the last 12 months
People who have not made purchases in the past, but signed up for your mailing list
The reason you want to limit the email to “high intent” buyers is to avoid being marked as spam. Additionally, you should make sure to respect the list of people who have previously unsubscribed from your marketing emails.
You want to make sure you send the email to the right people, as 76% of email newsletter subscribers have reported making a purchase from a marketing email.
What to send in the email
The content of the email itself is probably the most important part of this marketing campaign.
The first thing to focus on: the subject line. The subject line needs to be compelling because 47% of people report they open the email solely based on the subject line. To maximize engagement, send an email with 6-10 words in the subject that summarizes the promotion. For example: “Save 20% on your Black Friday purchase”. These subject lines maximize open rate and minimize spam filters by avoiding the “spam” words like “free”, “100% free”, etc.
For the email itself, keep it concise and to the point, don’t distract with too many pictures or links:
Subject: Save big on our Black Friday deal!
Body:
Starting on Black Friday morning, save 20% on all purchases. Just use the code BLKFRI20 at checkout!
If you spend over $300, take an additional 10% off — a total 30% savings!
Start browsing our latest best sellers (include link here), and check out our deals page (include link here) for even greater savings.
Happy shopping!
- Sharon
When you send the email, make sure to send from a person (e.g. “Sharon from Custom Maps”) and not from a generic email alias (e.g. “no-reply@custommaps.com”). This will show up in your recipients inbox as your name and will increase open rate.
The reason it’s important to have a coupon code is so that you can track how successful your campaign was, and keep a record in your CRM of which buyers used the coupon code, so you can target them for future promotional emails, too.
For more information, such as how to send a mass email from your Gmail account, visit our post on Sending Bulk Emails from Gmail.
