Independence Day is a time for festivities, fun, and patriotism. The 4th of July is the time of the year when friends, family, and neighbours celebrate barbeque parties. Many go on camping adventures and rest, relishing the Backyard Fireworks brightening the night sky. 

It is a time when businesses selling food, outdoor barbeque and camping equipment, and fireworks reach out to their customers. During Independence Day celebrations, the food industry itself amounts to sales of about $6 billion (about $18 per person in the US). Just one day offers such an enormous opportunity.

However, not only the food industry, other businesses can also employ 4th of July holiday email marketing campaigns to boost their sales. Before looking at some email marketing ideas, let us dive into some essential elements of these campaigns.

Essential elements of a 4th of July email marketing campaign

Since the 4th of July is a patriotic celebration, an email marketing campaign for such an event must contain elements suited for the occasion.

• It must have greetings for the 4th of July.
• It must invite customers to celebrate Independence Day with you. 
• It must instill patriotic pride.
• It must convey the idea of freedom.
• It must be light and fun-oriented.

Some powerful email marketing ideas for the 4th of July

Traditionally companies that deal with food, fireworks, camping implements, and barbeque equipment market their wares before this event. However, companies offering other goods and services can also use this opportunity effectively.

The holiday email campaign will differ from company to company. The campaign will depend on the business, its brands, and its customers.

Some of the ideas are:

Exclusive discounts

Who does not love a good discount? Businesses can offer exclusive discounts for the exclusive holiday. Discounts are a sure way to maximize sales, whether the business deals in products, services, tickets, or memberships.

Great offers

Customers love great offers. This aspect is especially true during any holiday. Independence Day is one of the days when businesses devices are offered. Some of these are:

• Free products or services on purchase value exceeding a certain value
• Buy one and get one free offer
• Heavy discounts on second or third products purchased.

These offers bring an element of surprise to the customers.

Rewards for referrals

Referrals are a fantastic way to add more customers. There is nothing like satisfied customers referring to their family and friends. It is free and positive marketing for the business. 

Businesses understand this and run referral programs throughout the year. Independence Day is a good occasion to run exclusive referral programs. Some ideas are:

• One-time attractive bonus for joining the referral program in July.
• Extra reward points for each referral for the entire month.
• Additional discounts to the one referred as well as those being referred during July.

Competitions and quizzes

The 4th of July is a good occasion to remember the heroes of the American independence movement. Email marketing campaigns can include competitions and quizzes based on American history. Correct entries can be awarded points. Accumulated points can then be exchanged for discounts and services offered. Such competitions and quizzes evoke responses as they add values of rich history to the campaign.

Some effective points to remember when crafting emails

A 4th of July email marketing campaign must effectively create the right festive atmosphere. Hence, it is good to remember a few points while designing the marketing campaign. Each element of the email must be carefully designed. It must be original. It must relate to the idea of freedom. It must be about celebrating independence. 

Let us look at each element and some important points for each.

Email subject line

Creating an engaging email subject line is primary as this is what decides the open email rates. Although drafting a good 4th of July email subject line can be challenging, you can overcome it by:

• Keep it appealing and memorable.
• Bring some patriotic element to it.
• Keep it as concise as possible.
• Convey a sense of urgency by using the fear of missing out strategy.
• Are creative with word usage. Words like ‘hot deals’ and ‘bright ideas’ attract attention quickly.
• Bring a smile to the reader’s face.

Content of the email

Once the email has been opened, the next important thing is reader engagement. This aspect can only be achieved through great content. Therefore, a content design must include these important points:

• The text must be fun to read.
• It must have patriotic elements.
• It must invoke a feeling of nostalgia.
• It must be short, sweet, and simple to read and understand. 
• The graphics must be lively.
• Effective use of colours is important. Colours of the flag, like red, blue, and white, can be used. July is a warm month, and using warm colours is a good idea.
• The design must include elements of the flag, like the stars and the stripes.
• Motifs relating to the 4th of July, like barbeques, camping, and fireworks, must be used. Motifs relating to summer can also be included.

CTA (call to action)

The effective subject line and catchy content are good for engaging the reader. However, an effective holiday email campaign must include an effective call to action. This CTA decides the conversion of the campaign into sales. 

While designing an efficient CTA, it is important to be aware of a few things.

• The business must be aware of what the reader wants.
• The CTA button must be eye-catching.
• A single click must lead the customer directly to the website or landing page. Ideally, a special landing page must be created especially for the 4th of July.

Conclusion

4th of July is a time of celebration that customers spend with a spirit of freedom. Businesses position themselves to help customers with their purchase decisions. Holiday email marketing campaigns vie for the reader’s attention. A marketing campaign that gives value to the customer is a sure winner. Regardless of the product or service offered, you can easily kickstart your 4th of July email marketing campaign with these powerful ideas.

Author Bio:

Chris Donald is the Director of a professional email marketing agency that specializes in providing email marketing services from production to deployment. He has worked directly with Fortune 500 companies, retail giants, nonprofits, SMBs, and government bodies in all facets of their email marketing services and email campaign management programs for almost 2 decades. Chris’s success track record covers building email programs at competitive email marketing pricing and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.

The rise of social media and blogging have led many marketers to question whether email is still a relevant channel in their marketing strategy. So let’s look at the numbers. Worldwide there are almost 3 times more email accounts (4.4bn) than the number of users on Facebook (1.1bn) and Twitter (500m) combined. Email is also a more active channel than Facebook and Twitter, producing 45bn emails per day, against 4.7bn shares of Facebook content, and 400m tweets, and that’s not including spam emails.

It is safe to say that email is alive and well. So if you want to reach a large audience, email marketing is a valuable tool that shouldn’t be ignored. Here are five essential top tips for effective email marketing:

1. Manage your database

Poor quality data is probably the biggest barrier to effective email marketing. Your client database is the most powerful tool you can have as an email marketer, so make sure you’re using this information to tailor the content and relevance of your emails down to a customer level. Segment your data into as many groups as your resource can manage, and send each group emails that are relevant to them. It is also important that you keep your database up to date, and clean. Process any unsubscribes, and remove hard-bounces and undeliverables to make sure you email reputation isn’t harmed.

2. Optimize your emails for mobile

Mobile data traffic is skyrocketing. In 2012 mobile data traffic was nearly 12 times that of the entire global internet in the year 2000. It’s predicted that mobile data traffic will increase by 300% by 2017 and as of January 2013 mobile represented 43 per cent of all email opens. But while companies adjust their websites for mobile visitors, few are doing the same with their emails. Emails not optimized for smartphone and tablet viewing give your recipients a very bad experience, and often get deleted. With this is mind responsive design is the best approach, and makes your email look good on all screens in all sizes – mobile, tablet and desktop.

3. Timely and relevant content

Being relevant is still relevant! The most important moment to you as an email marketer is the point at which your customer’s attention is at its peak – for example, immediately after signing up for emails, or abandoning their shopping basket. This is when a personalize event-driven email containing relevant content and a clear call to action can make all the difference not only to your opens and click-through rates, but also ultimately to loyalty and retention levels.

4. Test, test, test

Testing is possibly email marketing’s worst kept secret. And yet so many businesses still don’t do it. It’s difficult to know what to do next if you don’t know what’s working (or not) for you now. Unless you are sure beyond doubt that the time of day, day of the week, subject lines and other elements of your email campaigns are working as hard as they can for you, then you should have a testing plan in place. Split-testing is the most effective way to learn more about your audience and improve open and click-through rates.

5. While we’re ‘on the subject’…

Your subject lines are fundamental to your campaign open rates. They are the interface between your email and your customer, and are one of the primary drivers behind your customer’s decision to open your email or not. Days of work on responsive design templates and content could all be for nothing if your customer never actually sees the thing. So what makes a good subject line? Keep it short – subject lines under 35 characters perform best. Keep it relevant and accurate to what’s inside – don’t frustrate your customers by fooling them with a misleading subject line.

In summary…

Keep it relevant, timely, don’t forget to optimize for mobile. And when in doubt, test.

Author Bio

Keredy Andrews is an account director at Punch Communications. Serving a wide range of clients, from start-ups to global brands, across the integrated disciplines of SEO, PR and social media.