Running your own company means having yourself as a boss, a flexible schedule, and creative control. For many entrepreneurs, ecommerce is the right place to start: Online sales means lower overhead, faster startup, and is easier in a lot of ways.
But getting an online store set up properly still takes a lot of commitment — whether or not you have a storefront or now.
We’ll make it easier for you with 7 steps and 5 tools you’ll need to launch your ecommerce store.
First let’s dive into what it means to have an ecommerce store:
What is an ecommerce website?
An ecommerce website is a store that sells products and services online only.
Ecommerce stores used to be almost exclusively on websites with a higher level of security and a streamlined store web design. But that’s not true anymore.
If you plan on having a large store with tons of inventory, you may still want a robust ecommerce tool. But, often when starting an ecommerce business you want to get going quickly and affordably — then scale up as necessary. Below we’ll cover tools for both situations.
Whether you have a large site or a simple one-pager, a few things are essential for an ecommerce business.
First, your payments must be secure and easy for the customer. They must know exactly what they’re paying for and trust the system they’re plugging their credit card into.
Second, you need to have accurate and attractive pictures and descriptions associated with whatever you’re selling (images are essential to making the sale).
That’s it! Basically, your virtual store website simply needs to be professional and trustworthy.
What makes ecommerce ideal for startups?
Not all startups are fit for ecommerce. But for many, ecommerce offers freedom from a physical location and works well for their target audiences. Customers can browse products and check out at any time since ecommerce stores don’t have hours of operation.
Some startups even set up their stores so orders go directly to the manufacturer and products ship straight to the customer. This method can be helpful if you want to avoid investing in product quantities or storing merchandise. However, it also means you are likely to have a much smaller profit margin and slower turnaround time for the customer.
Who shouldstart an ecommerce business?
Anyone can start an ecommerce business. If you have a product or service you’d like to sell, then you can start your business online.
Even if you’re currently selling products online through Etsy, Amazon, eBay, or another third party service, starting your own ecommerce business can allow you to have greater control over your audience. Plus you keep more of your profit as you won’t have to pay the transaction fees of the third party services.
Steps tostart an ecommerce business
Are you ready to get started? Here is your quick checklist for starting your online store.
1 - Determine your product or service
First, you need something you can sell. Ideally, your product or service will be something you can get excited about and something you think is missing from the current market.
2 - Check the market
Don’t just assume you have a winner—check the market to see what else is out there. If someone is selling the product you had in mind, see if there is a niche part of that market that might not have products marketed specifically for them.
3- Identify your target audience
Get an understanding of who will benefit from the product or service you’ll be selling. Not only will this step help you source the right product with the right features, but it will help you market effectively.
Don’t assume you know your audience, create a few different buyer personas that exemplify real customers.
4 - Set your goals
Goals are the first step to building your strategies and process. They help you balance between zero sales, and so many sales you can’t keep up (which is actually a well-known ecommerce problem). Create SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals that push you to really think through your plans and vision for your new company.
5 - Build your website or landing page
Okay, now onto the good stuff. Depending on your inventory and budget, you can build a robust website or simply a one-pager using a landing page tool. This is where you show off your products and, more importantly, where people can buy them!
No need to be a coder here. There are many website templates and drag-and-drop options to help you get started. Use a landing page builder to get a professional-looking page that is effective at converting your visitors. With the right tool, you can easily design the features, customizations, and site capabilities your store needs. Just a note: if you do build a bigger site, you may need a specialist to help you.
You need a site that is optimized for mobile, loads quickly and offers plenty of information to help your visitors feel confident in your brand.
6 -Choose a payment process
It’s time to find a payment processor in order to safely and securely collect payments from your customers. This process is easy with the right landing page or website builder platform. They may have a payment processor already built into the platform.
You will also need to determine if there are other payment options you will accept such as check or PayPal or Venmo. Offering more than one option is a good idea, since many customers are more comfortable with certain payment options compared to others.
7 - Set up your email list
Finally, start marketing to your leads and your customers to help sell them more products in the future.
Email marketing will help you connect with your audience by sending out announcements, deals, updates, abandoned cart reminders and more.
According to the Pareto Principle, around 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers. So remarketing to your existing customers is a crucial part of building a strong business.
5 Tools for startingan ecommerce business
Here are five tools to make your new ecommerce business easy and efficient to start.
Ecommerce landing page
Your ecommerce landing page is the backbone of any online store. This page is where people can browse products, read descriptions, look at product images, read customer reviews and make their purchases.
AWeber has all the tools you need to get your online ecommerce pages up in minutes with pre-built templates, free stock images, drop-and-drop builder, plus a direct integration with Canva.
Payment software
You will choose a payment software to handle purchases made through your website. The right software will offer the security you need with the features you want to offer your customers.
There are two things you can do to increase your number of customers without even changing your prices:
Accept different payment types – Your customers may prefer PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Venmo or Apple Pay.
The more you can offer, the more flexibility you provide your customers. You might even want to consider accepting other currencies.
Recommended: Stripe
Stripe will allow you to accept credit card payments online and have those funds directly deposited into your bank account.
Best of all, if you go with AWeber to create your ecommerce landing page, Stripe is already built into the platform. This will help save you time and streamline your payment process.
Email provider
The right email marketing provider will make it easy to set up your email campaigns with pre-built templates, a strong customer support team, and other solutions needed to be successful.
Email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all newsletter; you should have access to your email analytics and control over segmenting your subscriber list for more effective messaging. This means your emails should be sent to the right customers, at the right time, with the right message for the most impact.
Recommended: AWeber
AWeber has been provider industry leading email marketing solutions since 1998. In addition to email marketing and an ecommerce landing page builder, we also have easy-to-use marketing solutions which will allow you to communicate with your customers in multiple ways.
Bookkeeping software
You need software to help you track business expenses and profits. Not only will this come in handy during tax time, but you will also want to use your business finance details to help you strategize for future growth.
Recommended: FreshBooks
FreshBooks is one of the easiest to use bookkeeping software on the market and is a great option for ecommerce business owners looking for an all-in-one solution. This product is built with small business owners in mind.
Inventory management software
An inventory management software will help you keep track of your whole supply change. It will help you know what’s in your inventory, what’s selling, and if a discount on a specific product is needed because it’s not moving.
Recommended: Cin7
Cin7 is a fully automated online inventory management software the will connect your orders, inventory, shipping, and accounting workflows. This streamlined process will allow you to spend more time driving more sales.
Bonus Tips: Social media
Use social media to help spread the word and increase your loyal fan base. Include your ecommerce landing page link within your bios and post about your products. Ensure your email and social media marketing are customer-centric and not solely focused on what you want to get out of the relationship.
Need help? Talk to our team today and we will get you started on the right path towards a thriving ecommerce business.
Start selling online
You now have everything you need to start your own ecommerce business. So what are you waiting for, sign up for a free AWeber account and see how easy it is to create your first product page.
There are an infinite number of articles we could write about Facebook, sorry, Meta’s performance at its Connect event. The whole thing was a trainwreck. It’s a situation where I feel stuck between laughter (“man, Zuckerberg really has no self-awareness”) and abject horror (“he really wants to control the future of the internet”). But I cannot let my journalistic powers be weighed down by such concerns. I have a job, nay, a public service to do. And do it I must. So, please join me on an investigation into Mark Zuckerberg’s bookshelves. The smoking gun Around one minute and 45 seconds…
The role of social media has evolved dramatically since the days of MySpace. From connecting with friends to making new ones, and increasing brand awareness to offering rapid customer support, the utility of these platforms is as boundless as our creativity.
Now, a new shift brings social media beyond the realm of brand marketing and into the world of sales. Social media ecommerce, or socialcommerce, is the direct buying and selling of goods or services on a social media platform. Though relatively new, this emerging trend is reshaping how consumers shop (and how brands drive revenue).
In 2020, social commerce sales were already at an estimated $27 billion. Those sales are projected to hit nearly$80 billionby 2025. Clearly, there’s opportunity in selling on social.
For brands interested in extending their ecommerce storefront to social media, much can be learned from companies already using these platforms to drive sales. In this article, we’ll share five genius social commerce examples you can look to for inspiration.
Today’s top social commerce sites
Before we dive into specific examples, it’s helpful to get an idea of the options available to brands interested in social commerce. Nearly every popular social media platform is at least experimenting with social commerce features and tools. As a result, the capabilities vary.
Knowing what each platform offers helps brands narrow down the best approach for their strategy. Let’s familiarize ourselves with some of the big platforms’ offerings:
Facebook Shops:On Facebook, brands can set up free Facebook Shops which are hosted within their Facebook business profile. Facebook Shops include inventory syncing or uploading tools and automatically feature products for users based on their preferences. Users can complete purchases within the app or on the seller’s website, using Facebook Messenger to communicate directly with brands about specific products or orders.
Facebook Live Shopping:Introduced in 2021,Live Shopping Fridayslets Facebook users see products in action, ask questions and make purchases all in real time. The live events allow brands to build relationships, provide fresh content, answer questions and streamline purchases through Facebook Shops.
Instagram shoppable posts:Instagram’s shoppable postsare linked to a Facebook Shop account. Brands with a lot of visual content can make great use of Instagram’s layout and Stories to link to in-app product pages. Sales are completed either in-app or on the brand’s website.
Pinterest product Pins:Pinterest’s product Pins are expected to account for15.7%of all US social buyers by 2023. Unlike typical pins, product Pins provide space for price and availability details and redirect to product landing pages. If your brand uses Shopify, it’s easy to add your Shopify product catalog to your Pinterest business page.
Twitter Shop Module:Also launched in 2021, theTwitter Shop Moduleallows select brands to showcase products at the top of Twitter business profiles. Users can scroll through a carousel of products on a brand’s profile, and tap on individual products to read more and purchase without leaving the platform.
TikTok Shopping:TikTok recently began testingTikTok Shopping, through an expanded partnership with Shopify. The feature will help merchants tap into the platforms’ organic, short-form video content to encourage product discovery and sales.
YouTubeis also exploring social commerce features, including buttons to transform videos into shoppable content. Meanwhile, some brands are building their own independent social commerce apps.
For example, Nike’s upcoming Nothing but Goldapp targets digitally native, Gen Z shoppers. After the success of Nike’s footwear-specific app SNKRS, which provides exclusive offers and new shoe drops, it’ll be interesting to keep an eye out for how Nothing but Gold performs.
5 examples of social commerce in action
Regardless of the platform your brand chooses, successfully executing a social commerce strategy will require creativity and thoughtfulness. To that end, we’ve collected five stand-out social commerce examples from brands that are making it work.
Every company’s approach is unique, of course. Review these posts and videos to identify strategies that align with or could be adapted by your brand.
1. Zimba on Facebook Shops
Teeth-whitening brandZimbadecided to test out Facebook Shops in the summer of 2020. Using bold images and consistent branding, the results were hard to ignore. Over a two-month period, the company saw 1,200 incremental orders from Shops and increased its average order value by6.7%.
Like many sellers, Zimba uses Shopify to power its online store. Thanks to powerful new tools such as Sprout’s social commerceintegrations, it’s easier than ever for brands to link their Shopify catalogs to Facebook to help consumers buy wherever they prefer.
2. Clinique on Facebook Live
With the advent oflivestream shopping, Facebook recently opened its Live Shopping doors to select brands.Cliniquetakes advantage of the feature every Friday at 12 pm PST, withtutorials on skin care, moisturizing and more.
Skin School LIVE: Multitasking FavoritesMaliaka, a Clinique Field Executive, shares her favorite Clinique makeup and skincare multitaskers. Products featured:Moisture Surge 100HEven Better All-Over Concealer + EraserClinique Pop Reds#Clinique #CliniqueSkinSchool #CliniqueConsultant #makeup #skincare #beauty #parabenfree #fragrancefree
Posted by Clinique on Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Live Shopping lets retailers display and link to products alongside the video stream, and even use timestamps to help viewers find where each product is featured in the video. Viewers can also comment in real time during the livestream, increasing engagement.
While Facebook Live Shopping isn’t available for every brand, using video to sell on social isn’t an impossibility. Record your own tutorials, partner with a creator or influencer to showcase your products, or simply link to product pages in the video description to achieve a similar effect.
3. MeUndies on Instagram
Over on Instagram, MeUndiesis making the most of shoppable posts. When viewing a post, the brand’s audience sees strategically placed dots on modeled products. Viewers can tap the dots or the “View Products” button to learn more and purchase.
Though relatively new, shoppable posts are becoming the backbone of social commerce. As a result, it might take time and a bit of experimentation to get them right. Make sure images aren’t too overburdened with product tags, and do your best to get interested viewers to a purchase option in as few steps as possible.
To maximize shoppable posts, use engaging imagery. This can be branded or user-generated, but either way should showcase your product in action. Make sure to include descriptive tags and detailed product pages. That way, when someone clicks through to your Facebook Shop, they’ll have all the information they need to make a purchase.
4. Harlem Candle Company on Pinterest
The Harlem Candle Companyuses product Pins and eye-catching images to snag a prominent spot in the Pinterest Shop collection.
Using Shopify integrations and direct links to product pages, Pinterest users can easily tap from Pin to purchase. Product Pins can be uploaded as Rich Pins, so they include more data than a typical Pin, or pulled from Catalogs, which can be used for paid ads. Use product or catalog Pins if your brand is interested in selling on Pinterest, and be sure to link to a page where audiences can complete their purchase.
5. Best Buy on Twitter
While the results of Twitter’s Shop Module experiment are still pending, brands aren’t waiting around to sell on the platform. Best Buyand others continue to link to well-formatted product pages directly in their Tweets.
Save up to $400 instantly on the new Samsung Galaxy Z Series with qualified activation. Plus, save up to an additional $1,000 with qualified trade-in.
Clear, direct calls-to-action such as “Pick yours up today” encourage interested audiences to click through, learn more and review options for purchase. In this social commerce example, Best Buy also makes the most use possible of a Tweet’s limited text. In just a few words, the brand offers significant savings for a high-quality product then doubles-down with a promotional trade-in offer. Strong imagery is the icing on the cake.
Use these social commerce examples to inspire future sales
There are so many options for integrating social commerce into your brand’s strategy, and each platform does things a little differently. After reviewing these examples, you’ve hopefully found a little clarity and inspiration on what would work best for your brand.
Thanks to social commerce, brands can and should use social media platforms to drive sales. Start with the sites you already have a presence on, and grow your ecommerce offerings from there.
Need help getting started with social commerce? Check out our social commerce strategy guide to help uncover your brand’s priorities and align across your organization (beyond marketing) for a seamless rollout.
Your email subject line matters. 47% of people open emails based on the subject line alone, according to research done by Business2Community.
Because of this, people ask us about email subject lines often. And one of the most common questions we hear is this: What’s the best length for a subject line?
To find out, AWeber’s team of email experts analyzed 1,000 subject lines from 100 of today’s top marketers. Here’s what we discovered.
What is the average length of a subject line?
On average, the experts’ email subject lines were 44 characters long.
How long is 44 characters? For perspective, the below subject line from theSkimm (a popular daily newsletter) is 43 characters in length.
Subject line: Daily Skimm: I’ve got the world on a string
Now that you know the experts write 44-character subject lines, keep yours to 44 characters and you’ve got the perfect subject line, right? Obviously not. There are a few other factors to consider when developing your email marketing subject lines. But don’t worry, we’ll cover them here.
The devices your customers are using
Does most of your audience use an iPhone to read their email? Or are they largely on desktops. The device your customers use to open and view their emails is extremely important when crafting your subject lines.
The average inbox displays about 60 characters on a desktop while the average mobile device displays only 30 characters. Anything else will get cut off.
The email provider your customers are using
Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, or Apple? The platform your subscribers use for email impacts how many characters appear in your subject lines.
Device + email provider
Now let’s do the math: Combining devices and email providers gives you a set of variables.
For example, let’s take a look at the subject lines character limits for Gmail on different devices:
38 characters - Gmail,iPhone 10, Gmail App
46 characters - Gmail, iPhone 10 Mail App
98 characters - Gmail, 15” laptop
So why does this matter? Take a look at this example from PersonalizedMall:
They did a great job creating urgency with the subject line “Sean Your Triple Discount Coupon Expires Today”. But unfortunately I view most of my emails on my Mail App on my iPhone and didn’t see that the offer expired the night I received the email.
What could they have done differently? You’ll find out below when we talk about email subject line length best practices.
Want to know which providers to care most about? A study by Litmus analyzed the most popular email providers, apps, and devices with the top 5 being Apple iPhone, Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail.
Best practices for email subject line length
With so many different combinations, how can anyone write a subject line that will stand out?
Let’s get back to our marketing experts: 71.1% of the 1,000 subject lines we analyzed were between 21 and 60 characters. To stand out from everyone else, instead of focusing on length alone, consider other factors that may affect your open rates.
1. Keep your most important information in the first 30 characters
Over 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices. Most email clients, like Gmail and Yahoo!, stop displaying an email subject line on mobile devices once it reaches between 33 and 43 characters. The exact number varies from one email client to another.
If you have a strong offer, you shouldn’t be forced to limit your email marketing subject line length. To optimize it for mobile readers, put the most important information in the first 30 characters. This way, this message won’t get cut off in the inbox.
2. Use the preheader to enhance your message.
The preheader is the additional text that appears next to or below your subject line in an inbox. Preheaders help compliment your subject line and can be used as that extra piece of text which may otherwise get cut off at the end of a subject line.
3. Don’t be too wordy
Easier said than done. I’m personally someone who rambles on and often uses more words than needed when talking about something.
How do I overcome this when writing subject lines?
I start by writing everything I want to say in my subject line, then I reduce it by eliminating or replacing certain words.
Here’s an exercise:
Subject line idea: Get up to 50% off Athletic Shoes this Saturday only
This example is 51 characters long. How can I modify this to reduce the subject line?
How about: Up to 50% off Athletic Shoes on Saturday
This exercise reduced my subject line characters to 40.
4. Test your subject lines
Every audience is different. Try short and long subject lines with your subscribers to see what works best for your unique audience.
Set up an AB split test, sending 10% - 20% of the audience the test with the winning variation receiving the remaining 80% - 90%. This way you maximize your open rates by ensuring the strongest subject line gets sent to the majority of your audience.
Case Study
You might want to experiment with even shorter subject lines. Brian Dean, founder of SEO company Backlinko and one of the 100 top marketers whose emails we analyzed, used to send emails with longer subject lines. These subject lines told his subscribers exactly what they’d find inside the message. The problem with that? “It gave people no reason to actually open my email,” he said.
Now, he sends subject lines with an average of 15.1 characters.
“After lots of testing, I’ve found that short subject lines get much higher open rates,” Dean said.
He contributes this to 2 factors:
Short subject lines reach the inbox more frequently.
Short subject lines are more mysterious.
Here are a few of Dean’s short email subject lines. All are under 15 characters long:
New Technique
Email Outreach
Blog Posts
Start crafting your subject lines today
As you just read, there is no optimal subject line length. There are too many variables. But if you continue to test and follow the other best practices, you’ll start seeing what types of subject lines work best with your audience.
Here’s some additional information that can inspire you to write amazing subject lines:
Recruiting has changed drastically in the past decade. Businesses must rapidly grow their workforce in an increasingly competitive landscape. In order to attract top talent, social recruiting strategies are pivotal.
The job market is shifting. Not only are companies searching for new skill sets and talents, but the way that businesses find their ideal candidates has turned on its head. In fact, 49% of HR professionals say their organization plans to increase virtual methods of recruitment and candidate engagement.
The question for modern organizations is: how can you make this work to your advantage? As a generation of digital natives enter the workforce and Millennials transition into leadership positions, social media will continue to be an important source for employers sourcing new talent.
Social media recruiting through employee advocacy and referrals could allow companies to tap into brand new spheres of talent. In fact, plenty of businesses have already gotten into the social recruiting game. Nine out of ten brands now use some manner of social media to source, attract and engage their new recruits.
What is social recruiting and does it really work?
Yes, social recruiting works. Social recruiting can serve as a complement to traditional recruiting methods. However, social recruiting is also quickly taking over traditional recruitment as the norm.
Recruiters find that social media allows them to narrow the candidate pool more effectively and quickly find qualified individuals.
When businesses implement social recruiting strategies correctly, they get their brand message across numerous social platforms while showing potential candidates an enticing picture of what their company culture is like. In fact:
96% of job seekers use social media when conducting a job search (CareerArc)
49% of professionals follow companies on social media to stay aware of job opportunities (LinkedIn)
81% of jobseekers want to see job opportunities posted to Facebook (Link Humans)
78% of recruiters expect social media recruiting activities to increase (Jobvite)
46% of companies said social media recruiting investments are a focus in 2020 and beyond (Jobvite)
Instagram recruiting more than doubled between 2017 and 2020 (Jobvite)
Nearly 40 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn each week (LinkedIn)
71% of U.S. hiring decision-makers feel that looking at candidates’ social media profiles is an effective way to screen applicants (Express)
Why traditional recruiting strategies are no longer enough
Traditional recruiting relied on finding prospective employees in a way that was time consuming and expensive, making them less efficient than social recruiting strategies. While a lot of these methods are still in use, they come with significant disadvantages over a well-formed social recruiting strategy—primarily when it comes to cost.
For example, some job sites charge on a cost-per-click basis, such as between $0.25 – $1.50 per click. This may not seem like much, but if your job posting accumulates 2,000 clicks, costs can add up quickly.
The most effective social recruiting strategies
Social recruiting can be done in both a passive and active manner. It is important to formulate a concrete plan before posting job openings on social media. Below are some social recruiting strategies to get you started.
Determine your goals
The path to success always starts by creating a solid foundation. It’s easy for companies to get tangled up in connecting with candidates through a variety of platforms as you work on your recruitment strategy.
If you start dividing your attention between dozens of sites without any clear ambitions, you’ll be setting yourself up for unnecessary struggle. Instead, make a detailed plan that focuses on the best social media platforms for your ideal candidates, and funnel prospects through a single communication channel.
Today, 92% of employers use social media to hire talent. However, the way you use social media to inform your recruitment strategy can involve several different tactics, such as:
Using LinkedIn to learn more about a candidate’s professional experience
Engaging candidates on Twitter to learn more about their interests and what they value—which also helps gauge culture fit
Monitoring Facebook to get a glimpse into how candidates present themselves to strangers, friends and family
Promoting jobs with hashtags on TikTok or Instagram and using these platforms to show audiences what it’s like to work for your company
Creating YouTube videos that showcase your company values and culture
Tap into the right platforms
While LinkedIn or Twitter might seem like the obvious place to start your social media recruiting strategy, it’s important to research your ideal candidate profile and consider where they’re most likely to spend their time on social. For instance, a graphic designer might spend more time on visual channels like Instagram or Pinterest, while video editors likely enjoy YouTube and TikTok.
As a result, recruiters must be agile in where they plant their flag to find the most talented and qualified candidates. Finding high-quality employees means tapping into the right platform for the role you’re trying to fill.
Each platform you consider will require a slightly different approach for candidate sourcing. For example, on Twitter you’ll want to incorporate hashtags to join the right conversations and make it easier for your team to reach out to possible referrals. On Facebook, it may be appropriate to visit careers pages and job groups to seek out potential employees.
Update your approach and make applying easy
In the age of remote work and distributed teams, social recruiting has emerged as a powerful solution for companies not just because it gives them access to a wider range of potential applicants, but also because it could simplify the recruitment process. In order to thrive, businesses need to monitor and update their strategies regularly.
Companies are beginning to recognize that strictly posting on job boards won’t cut it. Eighty-six percent of job seekers use social in their search—a number that will only grow as more hyper-connected digital natives enter the workforce. Especially if your company embraces work-from-anywhere policies, you’ll want to take advantage of recruiting that reaches candidates around the world.
One particularly important factor to keep in mind is that your application process should be as intuitive as possible, with as few steps from the social recruiting post to submission as necessary. This might sound obvious, but you may be surprised by how many companies have slow, buggy application processes, or job portals that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Ensure your online presence reflects your brand
A work environment that’s both desirable and reflective of your employer brand will continue to climb the ranks of your future candidates’ list of requirements. Company culture attracts the top 20% of candidates, meaning a strong reputation and positive online presence carries a lot of weight, particularly with passive job seekers. In fact, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.
To develop a more active and positive social media presence, think about your brand manifesto and how you can highlight your people, values and other differentiators. For most companies, this will be about featuring current employees—after all, if you have a strong brand identity, they’ll be your biggest advocates. By showcasing employee stories, team events and other company culture touchpoints through written, audio or visual content, you give candidates a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what they can look forward to should they join your team.
Involve employee advocates
Social recruiting through employee advocacy automatically increases your recruitment reach. Just by sharing job listings on their social profiles, your workforce exponentially boosts your ability to connect with new and diverse talent.
Employee social media content is shared 25 times more frequently than when the same content is shared by brand channels—that’s a wide reach.
The easier it is for your employees to get involved with your social recruiting strategies, the more likely they are to naturally share content on behalf of your brand. After all, 72% of U.S. adults use at least one social media site, and 40% of professionals use social media for business.
True employee advocates will organically spread the word about your company culture and use their own social networks to help fuel your candidate pipeline. If your employees are posting and Tweeting about how amazing it is to work for you, it will naturally draw a bigger audience to not only your recruitment efforts but also your overall presence online.
Potential candidates want proof that people enjoy working for you. Your employees are the only ones who can do that.
Consistently engage your social audience
When it comes to social recruiting, it’s important not to lose sight of what this approach is at its core—social. This means that your conversations should be a two-way street, and you should always be prepared to both ask and answer questions.
At the same time, make sure that you don’t focus exclusively on job postings. You should always strive to spark conversations that engage different groups of people, share helpful resources and infuse your messaging with your company’s unique tone and values. Talented individuals should engage with your brand even when job roles aren’t available, helping you create a pool of talent to dip into whenever roles open up.
Participating in Facebook or LinkedIn groups helps you get the word out that you’re hiring to a potentially large group of individuals. Be an active participant in groups before making a one-off post about a job opportunity, however, to avoid looking promotional and drawing negative attention.
Engage with the communities you’re a part of and provide value to group members. Once group members get to know you, they will be much more receptive to posts that promote job opportunities.
Use social networks’ advanced features
Your target demographic on each network can vary greatly. Once you understand who is listening, tailor your message to reach the right individuals at the right time. Most of the major social networks have native features to support your hiring efforts—use these to actively target and engage prospective candidates on a one-to-one basis.
Facebook Job Postings
As one of the most popular social platforms, Facebook is an excellent recruiting channel for many brands. Facebook job posts appear on your business page under the jobs bookmark, as well as alongside regular posts. Employees can share job posts to their personal timelines or via Messenger. Job posts can also be boosted for a fee to appear in the news feeds of your target audience based on location, education and work experience.
LinkedIn Advanced People Search
Because of the business-oriented nature of LinkedIn, its advanced search capabilities give recruiters significant advantages over other networks. While about half of its advanced search features are free to use, some require a LinkedIn Premium account. Still, the free portion of their advanced search provides a lot of flexibility and power for finding qualified individuals who may be a good fit for the positions you’re hiring for.
Twitter’s advanced search feature is more limited than Facebook’s and LinkedIn’s, but can be powerful when used correctly. As you probably know, Tweets are limited to 280 characters, so this search is better for finding individuals who are Tweeting using a specific phrase or hashtag. Find what hashtags are used most in your line of work, use them in the advanced search and narrow your results by location if relevant.
TikTok Resumes
Recognizing a rise in career and job-related content, TikTok introduced TikTok Resumes in 2021. The pilot program lets select companies post open positions, while interested candidates can submit short video resumes. Using hashtags like #CareerTok and #TikTokResumes, brands can join in on the conversation and put out calls for video resumes from talented creators on the platform.
Measure your results
As with any strategy, it’s important to establish KPIs to gauge the impact of social recruiting. To measure your social recruiting efforts, focus on the following:
Traffic: How many people landing on your application page were referred from social media? You can dive into this more and see which networks are driving the most traffic so you can focus your efforts on those that perform best.
Conversions: How many applications were filled out and submitted from social referrals? This number will allow you to calculate the ROI from your social recruiting efforts. If this number seems to be significantly lower than expected, revisit your application process to see if you can improve it.
Engagement: This number will allow you to A/B test your posts to see which types of posts are doing well and which are falling flat.
5 companies that have mastered the art of social recruiting
Notably, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the company actively manages its employer brand. This often takes dedicated employees to populate the company career page with entertaining, culture-related content, as well as provide fast, thorough responses to reviews and inquiries. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but these five companies are totally nailing it.
1. NJ Transit
Get up to a $6,000 signing bonus! We are hiring Bus Drivers in Essex County and across the State. Apply online today!…
With over 245,000 followers on their main Twitter account and 14 additional accounts for separate service lines, NJ Transit’s Tweets certainly have reach. In 2020, the public transportation provider leveraged this in its hiring strategy. They also used their social media presence to highlight existing employees and community initiatives. When they started using social media to assist with hiring bus operators, NJ Transit saw a 60% increase in resumes.
2. Verizon
Verizon is one of many companies joining a growing trend on Facebook. Dedicated career pages such as Verizon Careers take advantage of Facebook’s page management tools to post jobs and share information about their company culture. Facebook pages include areas for reviews, photos, videos and more which Verizon makes the most of for its audience of 218,000.
3. Zappos
"Research has shown that even when you create a culture that is strategically aligned and strong (that is, widely shared and intensely valued), it won’t help you over the long run unless you also develop a culture that is adaptive in real time."https://t.co/WynGqC2MbX
Taking a slightly different approach, Zappos turned heads with a strictly social approach to recruiting in 2014. The shoe company launched dedicated accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube under the name “Inside Zappos” with the goal of sharing company culture, information, news, events and open positions with prospective employees.
The move was better suited to some platforms than others. While Inside Zappos is still active on Twitter and Facebook, the YouTube channel eventually migrated back to Zappos’ main YouTube account, and Inside Zappos’ last Instagram post was in 2018.
4. Disney
Making the most of its video content, film giant Disney has perhaps unsurprisingly dedicated an entire YouTube channel to their career opportunities and boasts over 9.5k subscribers. The Disney Careers channel uses video collections to describe positions in technology, engineering, “Imagineering” and more. This is an excellent example of a brand playing to its strengths with recruiting.
For an example of recruiting on TikTok, look no further than the Cactus Club Cafe. A completely recruitment-dedicated account shows behind-the-scenes footage of what it’s like to work at the venue. In between fun dance videos and drink pour reels are widely shared hiring announcements. Cactus Club Cafe has undeniably mastered the use of video to capture and keep its audience’s attention, fostering interest in employment.
Using social recruiting to top up your talent
Companies have discovered that using social media for recruiting isn’t just a useful way to expand the applicant pool—it’s also an excellent way to find great candidates. One survey found that 92% of recruiters use social media to find candidates they consider “high quality.”
For most businesses, social recruiting and employee advocacy are programs that go hand-in-hand. When you focus on building a positive company culture where employees can share their thoughts and feelings about their careers in a focused and productive way, you attract referrals who are more likely to be a perfect fit for your work environment.
Building an effective employee referral program
Brands across the US continue to peg talent recruitment as one of the most difficult business needs to fulfill. In fact, 73% of employers claim they have difficulty attracting employees. As a result, many companies domestically and abroad are rethinking their hiring solutions.
Employee referral programs are one outcome of this new approach to hiring. Companies use them to revitalize their recruitment strategies and enrich their talent acquisition programs as a whole. Not only does the right referral program improve the quality of the applicants you receive, but referred employees come with higher engagement levels and higher retention rates, among other benefits.
We’ll show you the necessary steps for creating an employee referral program that drives measurable value and yields results for both your company culture and your bottom line.
Why you need an employee referral program
Not only is it increasingly difficult to find the right candidates for crucial roles, but it’s also often a challenge to convince those people why your company stands apart from other employers.
The best referral program examples lead to significant results for growing companies. This includes:
A higher quality of applicants: Research shows that referred candidates are of a higher quality than applicants from the general public. After all, your current employees are unlikely to recommend just anyone for an open role. They want recognition for an exceptional hire.
Better employee engagement: Employees referred by a friend stay 70% longer than non-referral hires. Additionally, the effectiveness of referrals is rising. Between 2020 and 2021, the percentage of workers likely to click on a job opportunity posted by someone in their social network rose from 74% to 82%.
Time saved for recruiters: With an employee referral program, your colleagues become an extension of your hiring team. This reduces cost in time and resources usually attributed to talent acquisition.
Participation in referral programs is on the rise. Seventy-one percent of workers were likely to share job openings at their company on social media in 2021 compared to 63% in early 2020, and 38% participated in a referral program compared to just 27% a year before.
So, how can you create a program that works for your business?
Create an environment employees are proud of
Any exceptional referral program begins by designing a work culture that makes employees feel recognized, engaged and inspired. In other words, you need to create an environment that people actually want to refer their friends to.
You need to cultivate a positive environment that encourages strong internal communication and healthy employee engagement. Ensure that your company is worth recommending by communicating with staff, rewarding hard work and providing growth opportunities. Without these elements in place, no amount of effort will prompt workers to refer your brand to others.
Pay attention to little things in daily employee interactions, and identify meaningful ways to recognize key contributions. These actions strengthen relationships with employees, which are the pillars of your employee referral program.
Develop clear messaging for referrals
A disjointed message can be a threat to even the best referral programs. When you’re tapping employees as an extension of your hiring team, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page about company goals, motivations and aspirations.
One way to achieve this is by creating an employee referral program outline (along with referral program examples) to guide the process. Detail how you want employees to describe your company and its culture, as well as more practical details like:
How employees can make referrals (e.g., with links, social media posts, emails, etc.)
What you’re looking for in referrals (who is your ideal candidate, which characteristics do you want to avoid?)
How employees will know when job roles become available
How employees will learn (and even be rewarded) if their referral is hired
It may also be helpful to educate employees on the value of an employee referral program. This will help them understand what they’re giving back to the company and may make them think more carefully about the suggestions they make.
Share statistics, such as how 50% of referrals stay with companies for three years, to show employees the value of their networks and the opportunity they have to make your business a better, more successful place to work.
Celebrate program participation
Just as employee engagement programs are improved with regular rewards and acknowledgment, referral programs can benefit from incentives as well.
Employees are more motivated to refer hires if they know what’s in it for them. Though there isn’t a list of hard-and-fast rules to follow when deciding which incentives to offer or what achievements to recognize, many organizations offer bonuses once a referral is hired or once they’ve stayed on the team for a certain period of time.
You don’t have to instantly hire candidates sourced through an employee referral program, but it’s important to at least offer them an interview and communicate quickly and effectively. Provide referral candidates with a strong hiring experience to reduce the risk of tainting the relationship between you and current employees.
You can also establish a feedback system for referrals to improve employee engagement. This lets employees know that you truly value their suggestions and establishes a benchmark for future referrals.
Set and track the right goals for your referral program
Referral programs can save you thousands of dollars per hire, but it’s equally important to make sure your strategy yields the right results for your company.
When implementing an employee referral program, consider what long and short-term goals you, your team and your leadership want to achieve. This will help identify which metrics to use to measure success. For instance, your goals might include:
Improving the quality of job applicants
Increasing employee retention
Boosting employee satisfaction
Fostering alignment with company culture
There are various ways you can track each outcome, from measuring the costs of referrals against traditional hiring practices to quantifying the amount of time saved by your referral program. You can even look at the productivity and production levels of new employees to determine whether referral candidates yield better outcomes than external applicants.
Building the right employee referral program
The right referral program can do wonders to help a talent acquisition team better source candidates within your existing employees’ networks.
For example, an employee advocacy tool allows you to easily share open roles internally and provide employees with approved messaging to share with their own networks. This streamlines the hiring process and reduces cost-per-hire.
Referral programs increase hiring frequency, provide access to better candidates, produce greater ROI and reduce turnover. That means that these programs work, surfacing better candidates delivered by people who are familiar with the characteristics and skills most essential to your company.
Once you’ve identified new hires from social recruiting and employee referrals, make sure the rest of your onboarding experience is equally streamlined and reflective of your culture.
Successful onboarding leads to improved productivity
Bringing on new talent takes significant time and money. While the true cost of hiring new employees has been long debated, a recent report by the Society of Human Resource Management found the average cost of hiring a new employee was $4,425. Replacing an entry-level employee can cost roughly 30% of the person’s annual salary, and mid- and senior-level roles cost even more.
Clearly, the cost of a new hire can’t be ignored. This is primarily due to the investment that goes into onboarding and training. The onboarding process sets the tone for a new employee’s experience with an organization.
This is especially important in the case of remote workers. In these situations, employers must make sure that their virtual onboarding programs are structured, thorough and accessible (or risk new team members falling through the cracks).
Studies show that burnout and emotional exhaustion can occur if employees go through a poor organizational socialization process. Effective onboarding has a significant impact on job performance, employee engagement, satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Welcome new employees with a comprehensive onboarding strategy to make the most of your hiring investment.
Ease onboarding with Bambu
Not only can Bambu by Sprout support your social recruiting efforts and lower your cost-per-hire, it can also improve your onboarding process.
Bambu makes the onboarding process more efficient and much simpler for everyone involved. When new employees come on board, you can upload materials such as the employee handbook into the platform and direct new hires there. This same technique can be used with corporate guidelines, company policies and benefits and wage information.
Bambu is also a great way to share company culture with new hires and get them engaged with other team members. Its embedded content curation tools allow new hires to read and share their peer’s content on social. This gets new employees engaging directly on the first day, which leads to a happier and more connected team.
How to create an effective onboarding plan
Onboarding plans have many facets. Each one will be different depending on your company, but all onboarding plans need to accomplish a few common goals.
It’s extremely important to create an onboarding plan with purpose. Organizations potentially lose tens of thousands of dollars on ineffective onboarding. Most failed onboarding plans revolve around a sink-or-swim approach where new employees get thrown into work with no context or resources. Others fall back on an excessive hand-holding approach, with new hires monitored without any room for independent growth.
We’ve put together a list of five onboarding best practices to help you avoid the pitfalls of welcoming new employees:
1. Have an organized process
While it may seem like a no-brainer, it’s important to make a plan. You’d be surprised how many businesses don’t put a lot of time and effort into welcoming a new employee on board.
This step includes logistical items like making sure on-site employee workspaces are set up and that they have access to the building and the company intranet. For remote workers, it means ensuring they have access to the tools, software and platforms necessary to communicate with the team and do their job effectively (a little welcome gift doesn’t hurt either.)
It’s a good idea to have some sort of employee welcome packet. This packet should introduce new hires to your company culture, provide information about your onboarding plan and detail what to expect over the coming months. It should also include a point of contact for any questions or issues new hires encounter along the way.
2. Explain your culture and vision
Every new hire needs to be informed about your company vision and goals. This will help them better understand the direction of your organization as a whole, and how their role and work fits into the bigger picture. This will give new employees an immediate sense of your corporate culture and start planting the seeds for engagement early.
Getting new employees in touch with your overarching strategy is important for empowering your team, sharing core values and helping them assimilate into the company. Carve out time for new hires to meet with other departments and leaders to better understand how each facet of your business works toward your company goals.
3. Clearly define expectations
Outline clear goals and expectations with new hires so they know what success looks like at your organization. Set aside time to explain how your team measures its impact, including which KPIs you track and how frequently you report on them. When you’re transparent with your expectations from the start, it’s easier for new hires to stay positive and productive.
4. Introduce and connect peers
Giving new hires a point of contact, peer sponsor or “buddy” gives them a safe space to ask questions. Choose a mentor who interacts with them on an equal level, such as a member of their department, but not a manager.
If your organization onboards multiple new hires at a time, you can also try moving them through the process together in groups or cohorts. This way, new team members won’t feel alone and can ask each other questions as they get familiar with the company. This also makes it easier for new employees to support one another and bond.
5. Build out an extended onboarding schedule
It can take one to two years for a new employee to become fully productive. Having an onboarding plan that lasts 30-90 days will give new hires time to get familiar with the tools, processes and responsibilities associated with their new roles. An extended onboarding process also gives new employees time to lay the fundamental groundwork for success.
Here is what a typical 90-day onboarding process for new employees could look like.
By 30 days: Your new hires will be introduced to the people and tools they’ll work with every day. Set small goals and have them start working on initial projects. One of the most important things for them to do within the first month is to get acclimated to the company culture. At the end of this period, they should have a solid understanding of their responsibilities, their role and expectations.
By 60 days: During this period, employees should take on bigger responsibilities. The bulk of training should be done by now and the focus should be placed on what they do. They should be collaborating with other team members in different departments and contributing to larger projects.
By 90 days: New employees should start to work more independently. They should accomplish bigger tasks and take on more responsibilities. This is the period where they’re able to complete tasks with limited guidance from you or others and become more accountable for their work.
Retention strategies to improve company culture
According to Bankrate, 55% of Americans expect to look for a new job heading into 2022. In a phenomenon dubbed “The Great Resignation,” workers are seeking more flexible employment arrangements, higher pay and job security.
If businesses want to not only hire the best talent for their organization but keep that talent around for the long-term, they need more effective employee retention strategies.
Employee retention is all about holding on to the people that you’ve worked hard to recruit into your network. This might seem like an obvious factor for companies to consider, but 20% of HR departments report that competing priorities prevent them from focusing on their employee retention rate.
Don’t think this will be a temporary battle. Historically, 27% of employees change jobs each year, 46% passively look for new careers and 17% actively job hunt. The key thing to remember is that your employee retention rate isn’t exclusively based on compensation issues. Instead, it often hinges on the ability to keep employees satisfied with tactics for growth, security and appreciation.
Why is your employee retention rate suffering?
To ensure an effective employee retention strategy, businesses need to listen to the needs of their employees and implement strategies for success from onboarding to exit interviews.
Approximately 88% of employees leave their roles for reasons other than pay, but 89% of employers think that employees leave entirely for salary-related reasons—clearly there’s a disconnect.
Common reasons for turnover often include:
Mismatched company culture
Insufficient feedback
Limited growth and advancement opportunities
Lack of recognition or work/life balance
Loss of trust or confidence in senior staff
By developing an employee retention strategy that addresses the root causes of turnover and employee engagement, you can reduce your cost-per-hire significantly. Here are some best practices for your retention strategy.
1. Use metrics to provide feedback and motivation
Many employee retention strategies hinge on feedback. While positive feedback can motivate employees to do their best work, constructive criticism can help rectify issues in the workplace. Both forms of feedback boost engagement, which is key in a world where employee engagement has decreased since 2019.
People have a desire to feel they’re succeeding in their goals, and vague feedback isn’t enough. Find a way to share key metrics like profit and loss, customer engagement, and brand growth with your employees through your business intranet or collaboration platform. This will help to not only engage your employees but establish pride in your company culture.
As engagement increases in your company, you’ll find that productivity starts to grow. Measure the speed at which projects are completed in your company and whether your business becomes more efficient over time. You can also conduct surveys and polls to ask your employees whether they feel they’re getting the right information to measure their performance.
2. Encourage work/life balance
If you want to ensure that your employees continue to stay motivated and work efficiently, you need to be an advocate for work/life balance.
Since today’s workers are more concerned about flexibility, work/life balance solutions such as opportunities for remote working or support for their health and wellbeing make your business more appealing to job candidates. Discuss the idea of work/life balance with people in your company and find out what appeals to them most.
3. Create and emphasize opportunities to grow
Though they are some of the most notorious job-hoppers in the current market, the average Millennial in 2020 planned to work for their current employer for 10 years. Millennials are happy to stay in a job when they know they’ll have access to advanced technology, upward career mobility and annual raises.
Providing opportunities for your employees to grow and evolve in their roles not only helps to improve retention but also significantly reduces cost-per-hire. After all, the more you use in-house training solutions to boost your employee retention rate, the more you develop highly skilled staff members who can naturally advance when new positions open up. By implementing training programs and promoting from within, you create powerful incentives for team members to stick with your company.
4. Empower your team
Today’s employees want to work for a company that understands, trusts and respects them. In fact, 94% of employees say that they would stay at their company longer if it simply invested in helping them learn.
Empowering your team with upskilling and reskilling at work is essential to improving your employee retention rate and minimizing cost-per-hire. By developing your team’s skills, you allow each member of staff to take full ownership of their careers. This means that you’re not micro-managing and you enable your company network to innovate, create and take chances where necessary.
You can also empower your team with other strategies. Offer employees stretch or reach projects that both interest and challenge them. Make a point to create 1:1 face time with your organization’s leadership. Offer employee resource groups where colleagues can connect with people they don’t usually work with and band together to enact positive change in the organization or wider community.
Use social recruiting to retain top talent
From recruiting to retention, ensuring your employees are engaged at every step of their career helps create a productive, rewarding work culture. Social recruiting is a great match for the needs of today’s job seekers, but employers need to follow up with a streamlined recruiting process and meaningful onboarding and retention strategies.
A well-designed strategy that covers recruitment through retention is essential if companies want to build a great team and stay ahead of the competition. It’s hard to implement a new framework for promotion and growth if you’re constantly backfilling roles or fixing the productivity and morale challenges that stem from frequent turnover.
It’s not the salary or bonuses that matter most in your culture, recruiting and retention efforts—it’s the ability to engage your employees in an atmosphere that offers respect, room for growth and empowerment.
It’s time to start your holiday email marketing now! Here’s why:
November to January 2021 is projected to see the highest sales to date, totaling up to $1.3 trillion. With limited supplies and long shipping times from overseas, this is the perfect opportunity for local businesses to make more sales.
And people are shopping early this year. So if you were thinking of getting those holiday emails out in late November, you could miss out on weeks of easy sales.
We’ve got you covered with some top tips to help you prepare and send sales-driven holiday emails.
1. Start your holiday email planning early
There’s a reason you’re seeing toy stores, supermarkets, and other retailers start putting out holiday decorations and flyers before Halloween this year. People get to making wish lists and buying gifts as soon as the first cold snap hits.
Encourage shoppers to pick up a gift from you early, so they don’t wait until the last minute — potentially missing a Christmas or Hanukkah deadline. You also want to make sure they buy from you before their holiday spending budget is gone.
The holiday season should be your busiest time of the year. Set yourself up for success by planning and email marketing early.
2. Create a holiday email calendar
Keeping track of all the holidays — Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year — can quickly become overwhelming. Organize the mayhem with a holiday email editorial calendar. No need to overthink it — you can set up a calendar on a spreadsheet or Canva template like this one:
A calendar can also help you accommodate for the rest of your team’s time, which comes in handy if they’re helping with tasks like design, writing, or scheduling the message.
Make sure your email editorial calendar is up to date with your holiday campaigns. You’ll be sending a lot of emails this time of year, so planning everything out in advance will help you meet your deadlines and create content your subscribers will love.
At the same time, make sure you don’t overmail your audience. If you start to notice more unsubscribes than usual, consider the frequency of your emails.
You may also want to consider adding a “mute” button or link in your emails. This will reduce your unsubscribes during periods of increased sending. Your audience might want to stay on your list and hear from you…just not right now, or not about this particular topic/promotion.
Give your audience the freedom to choose.
Plus, this allows you to send messages to a segment of subscribers that actually WANTS to receive them. You’ll likely see higher conversion rates, higher opens and clicks, and higher revenue generated from this targeted audience.
A "50% off" subject line is going to trigger one of your highest-opened emails — plus, it’ll lead to more sales. With fewer sales running this year, your deal can be closer to 20% or 30% off. But to keep up with the competition, you need to offer some holiday promotion to your audience.
Don’t have a physical product to offer? This is the perfect time to provide discounts on digital gifts like online courses, ebooks, checklists, templates, and more.
4. Check your (email) list and check it twice
Now’s a great time to try to re-engage subscribers who have slowly stopped engaging with your email messages over time. If you can’t, then it may be time to clean your list.
This is your chance to have your brand become top of mind before your holiday promotional emails are delivered. Inside AWeber, you can easily search for subscribers that have not engaged with your emails over a period of time.
Then, send a message to invite them to stay on the list. This might include an incentive to stick around, or some extra useful content.
Here’s an example the AWeber team has sent before:
If they still don’t engage (open or click), it’s in your best interest to unsubscribe these subscribers. Unengaged subscribers can negatively impact your open rates and deliverability, or they may even hit the SPAM button when your content arrives in their inbox.
Your subject line is one of the most important parts of getting your holiday emails opened and read. Make sure you mention special offers and details about your holiday promotions in your subject line to catch your subscribers’ attention.
If you plan on featuring a 50% discount on an online course, make sure you mention the course and the discount in your subject line.
Check out these great subject lines that hint at what subscribers will find if they open a holiday email.
60% Off (Yep!) Holiday Must-Haves
Cue the Cozy With 20% Off! Holiday Shopping Starts Here – the countdown is on!
6. Build a sense of urgency in your holiday emails
The more you can emphasize the urgency or importance of buying now, the more you can influence subscribers to take action.
So how can you get your audience to feel this way?
By referencing news, dates, times, seasons, or limited time offers.
Check out how Talbots offered a limited time discount to customers who purchased before midnight.
7. Get festive with your holiday email design
Consider using a holiday email template or including design elements that convey a festive vibe.
Bring in holiday or winter-themed colors to add a festive flair that accompanies the email content.
Check out how Code School brought in festive images to their seasonal email.
One of the best ways to spice up your holiday emails is with themed images. And you don’t need a graphic designer or a custom photo budget to do so. You can use Canva, a free and easy designer tool with thousands of templates, images, and graphics. Plus, you can create email images using Canva directly inside AWeber.
You can also find free stock photos (images that anyone can use creatively) at unsplash.com and pexels.com.
Once you find the perfect image, think about ways you can customize it to match your brand. If you need some tips, this post has easy ways to brand your images for free.
When looking for images or design inspiration, try brainstorming keywords that make you think of the holiday season, like winter, gift wrap, greenery, hot chocolate, or cookies. This can help you stand out in a sea of red and green while also keep your holiday email “on brand” and recognizable.
You can also include GIFs in your emails to spice up the holiday feel.
There will always be buyers who wait until the last minute to get their holiday shopping done. We love them just as much as the early birds. Make sure you keep these shoppers in mind when planning your holiday emails.
Think about last minute deals, offering gift cards or certifications, or guaranteed shipping and in-store pickup before the big day, to help make these customers’ lives easier.
The holidays can be stressful enough, so if you can do something that helps ease the stress of last minute shopping, your customers will remember your brand favorably in the future.
9. Split test and measure your success
How do you know what product or service offer will yield the most sales during Black Friday or Cyber Monday? How do you know what subject line will stand out in an already crowded inbox?
The truth is…you don’t.
Split testing (or A/B testing) an email to a small percentage of your email list will give you an opportunity to discover what works.
Using AWeber’s split testing feature, you can test two offers: 20% off v. 30% off. Then, send two emails. Each one will go to a small, random segment of the list — say, 10%. Then track the success of the emails to see which offer was most popular and drove more sales.
While you may already have a holiday email campaign in motion, it’s never too late to make tweaks along the way. The more you can make your emails stand out from the rest this time of year, the merrier the season will be for you and your business.
Ready to send your own holiday emails? Get started with a free AWeber account today and plan your holiday email cheer now.
