Do you have a seasonal business? Do you communicate with your contacts year round or do you take off months at a time?
While it might be tempting to put marketing efforts on hiatus for relaxation and cost-savings purposes, keeping a consistent send frequency is vital.
Certainly, if you sell ski gear, you don’t need to email every two weeks in the summertime, but it’s critical to keep a line of connection with contacts - even if you’re emailing every month or two.
Some businesses may disagree and ask why they should give contacts additional opportunities to opt out during the off-season. They may not think it’s worth the investment. I would ask those businesses to reconsider.
Your relationship with your contacts is just like your relationships with friends. If you don’t keep in periodic touch with me, what makes you think I’m going to be willing to come help you move in 8 months? And how do you know that I’m still interested in being your friend? Heck, my phone number (or email address) might not even be the same, so good luck getting in touch with me.
The off-season is the perfect time to nurture relationships - a time where you’re clearly not just asking your contacts to buy, buy, buy.
So what to send (especially if your store doesn’t stay open all year ’round)???
Here are some ideas to get you inspired:
- End of season sales - get rid of all that extra inventory.
- Surveys - here’s your opportunity find out what’s important to your audience and collect data you can segment on later.
- Manage preference campaigns and social media introductions - i.e. “Check out our new Facebook page” with listed benefits of becoming a fan
- Exclusive sneak previews for the following season - get your audience excited for upcoming products!
- Contests - Selling ski gear? Have folks submit their favorite photos wearing your gear or share their most mind-blowing ski story or video…Then you can use this material to create some really engaging emails in-season and foster a sense of community.
- Reminisce… Sending a beautiful image of a snowy ski slope in the dogs days of summer with a “Thinking of you” message might be just want the avid skier wants to see. (Some may argue with me on that.) Maybe you can get people psyched for the coming season. (This is another area where you can tie in photo sharing, videos and stories, and get some dialogue going.)
- Automated birthday messages - redeemable in-season if your store closes for a time.
Ultimately, the idea here is to stay top-of-mind, start a dialogue, share experiences and keep people thinking about the season they love, whether it’s winter, summer or Halloween. You get the idea.
Getting people involved and engaged in the off-season will better strengthen your results when your most important selling period rolls around.
What do you think? What other ideas do you think make sense?
Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
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