As everyone gets busier in the lead-up to Christmas, non-essential emails are much likelier to be ignored. So if you’re planning to send out a Christmas email this year, follow our tips to make sure people take the time to read it.
- What worked before? The best place to start when constructing your newsletter is with emails that people responded to well in the past. Can you do something similar this time around?
- Keep it subtle. Waving snowmen and spinning snowflakes, cute as they might be, will only distract from your message.
- Celebrate your successes. A year-end newsletter is the perfect time to highlight what you’ve achieved over the past 12 months, making it clear why people should continue to work with you.
- Show how you’re giving back. Similarly, the Christmas newsletter is a good time to highlight any work you’ve been doing to support the local community, or any donations you might have made.
- Target where you can. Should this email be going out to everyone in your database, or can you create a few different versions to target specific demographics?
- Keep it local. Similarly, the more hyper-local content you can include, the better. Market snapshots are a good place to start - even better if you can add them to recent news about the community.
- Give them a reason to say “thank you”. Even if your newsletter isn’t going to cover anything as detailed as local market information, make sure it offers people something of value, and isn’t simply beating your own drum.
- Invite feedback. Make sure your email leaves room for a two-way conversation to start up, inviting people to send a reply or contact you via channels like Facebook and Twitter.
- Keep it short. The closer it gets to Christmas, the less likely people will be to read your entire newsletter. Put yourself in the position of a busy house hunter, then edit ruthlessly.
- Have it proofread. This crucial step is too often overlooked. It need only be a 10 minute task, but it will make all the difference.
- Promote it. You don’t have to limit the newsletter’s circulation to your email database. Blog it, tweet it, then put it on Facebook.
- Monitor responses. Make a note of anything that got a really positive response (and anything that didn’t) so you can refer to that information next year.
[Image: wester]
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