How to create a pre-Christmas campaign

The lead-up to Christmas is one of the most important times of the year for e-commerce marketing. Everybody is shopping, but not for themselves! People all over the world are struggling to think of gift ideas for loved ones, which makes it the perfect time for e-merchants to swoop in with ideas and inspiration!

Christmas marketing starts earlier every year, so if you haven’t planned your pre-Christmas campaigns, don’t waste more time!

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, there are two key campaigns that you should send:

1. A Pre-Christmas Campaign - to inspire all your contacts with gift ideas
2. A Win-back Campaign - to bring back lost customers just before Christmas

First, let’s see how you can create the best Pre-Christmas campaign using your Carts Guru account. To see how to create a Win-back Campaign, click here.

Pre-Christmas Campaign

Step 1:

The first thing you’ll want to send in your pre-Christmas campaign is an email to your entire contact list (created in the lists page on your app), getting them excited for Christmas and recommending products that will make great presents!

To build your email, head to the ‘ page and click ‘add template’, select the most relevant base template (in this case ‘back to school’), and choose the layout you prefer (which can then be modified as much as you want).

Here, you can use our drag-and-drop editor to input images, logos, edit the color scheme, and fonts to create a template that fits perfectly within your brand’s existing messaging.

Some sections to include are:

• A text box - where you get your customers excited about the upcoming Christmas sales
• Three text and image boxes - where you showcase some products that would make great Christmas gifts
• A ‘follow us on social’ block, which includes linked icons to each of your social media sites

Step 2:

Next, create another email for your VIP customers with a 10% coupon code. Before designing your email template, you need to create the coupon code in the coupons page.

For the VIP template use the following sections:

• A text box, where you get your VIP customers excited about Christmas and let them know they’re receiving a special discount
• Three ‘image and text’ blocks, containing gift recommendations.
• The discount code button, linking to the coupon code you created earlier - just click the discount drop-down menu and find your coupon code.
• A ‘follow us on social media’ section.

Step 3:

The final email template you will need to create for this campaign is for non-VIP customers. Since this email is closer to Christmas, it should be used to instill a sense of urgency that Christmas is coming and if you haven’t done your present shopping yet, it’s time to start now!

This email should include the following sections:

• A text box, telling customers that Christmas is fast approaching and that it’s time to do their gift shopping before the best items sell out!
• Three ‘image and text’ blocks with the perfect gift recommendations for three members of the family.
• A ‘follow us on social media’ section.

Step 4:

The next step is creating an SMS to send to your VIP customers. This SMS will include the same 10% discount you created for the earlier VIP email, so there’s no need to create another coupon code.

When building your SMS template, you should include text explaining that Christmas is coming up and that they’ve been offered a special 10% discount to get their gift shopping done.

Include the following tags:

• Contact’s first name
• Website name
• Discount code

Step 5:

The final template you’ll need to create in this workflow is an SMS for your non-VIP customers. This template won’t contain a discount code and will be used to get your customers excited for Christmas and encourage them to start their gift-shopping!

For example:

“Hey <contactfirstname>! Have you done your gift-shopping yet? We have the perfect presents for every member of the family at <sitename> so get shopping now!”

Step 6:

Now that your templates have all been created it’s time to build your campaign! Head to the campaigns page in the Carts Guru app and create a new time trigger campaign to send to all your contacts. Fill in the following information:

Then, choose the “all contacts list” you created earlier on the lists page of your Carts Guru app.

Step 7:

Once you’ve configured your campaign, switch to the workflows tab, and follow these steps to build your workflow!

• Click the start block and select action, choose email, then scroll through and find the 1st email template you created.
• Next, select continue, then add a time delay of one day so that you don’t bombard your customers with too many messages.
• After the time delay, insert a condition. This condition will be used to segment your VIP customers, by using “average purchase amount is greater than or equal to 300” (or whatever value is relevant for your store).
• From the condition, select true (meaning that customers meet this condition), then insert another action. This time, select the email template you created for your VIP customers.
• Next, select false from the condition (which segments the customers that didn’t meet the condition), then click action and insert the Pre-Christmas non-VIP email template.
• Now select continue from both of the email templates you just added and insert a 1-day time delay after each.
• Finally, from each of these time-delays, insert the two SMS templates you created. The VIP SMS should go in the same branch as the VIP email, and the non-VIP SMS will go after the non-VIP email.

And that’s it! Your Pre-Christmas Campaign is ready to send!