Seven Ways to Keep Customers Engaged over the Summer

Summertime can mean big changes to the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. Between vacations, outdoor events, and school being out, customer buying habits change and attention spans shorten. People use mobile devices more to check email in the summer months and are slower to respond to email. Even your own internal resources get stretched as people take time off for vacations.
So how do you keep your customers engaged during the lazy, hazy days of summer?

1. Make sure your email messages are mobile ready. If at all possible, create a mobile version of your email. If you don’t have the resources to do this, at the very least make the font bigger and keep the call to action closer to the top and more centered so emails display well on mobile devices. The same would be true with landing pages.
2. Re-examine the best time to send. A change in season can mean a change in your contacts’ behavior. If you usually send at the same time, try a different time or split-test one time with another and look for a difference in engagement. There is no magical time – it depends on your audience.
3. Cater to short attention spans. Pay special attention to subject lines – make sure they are catchy and give your readers a reason to open. Keep your email messages short and sweet so customers can get the point with a quick glance. Try focusing on just one offer at a time, and keeping the offer simple.
4. Tie your product to summer. Come up with creative ways your products or services can help your customers get the most out of summer. Consider doing a series of tips for using your products or services during summer: Start the series in email and complement it with your social media feed, asking your audience questions about how they like to use your products in the summer. Get creative, and your audience will appreciate the tips.
5. Create a summer series. Set up a calendar now, and create emails and social media posts ahead of time. Schedule these emails and posts in advance – especially if your email manager will be on vacation. Examples of a “summer series” include weekly deals, summer safety tips, summer health tips, etc. Non-profits could consider hosting a “summer challenge” fundraising goal and offering “winners” a prize at the end of the summer.
6. Advertise a summer event or giveaway. Summer is a great time to have informal events, especially if you have a local brick-and-mortar presence. Invite your subscribers to a family BBQ or special “members-only” shopping event. Use email marketing to reach your customers. Don’t have a local presence? Consider offering a special summer giveaway promotion for sharing your emails or social posts.
7. Be patient. In the lazy days of summer, it may take people longer to get to your email. Studies show that it can take two weeks for all of your interested contacts to interact with your email. Make sure your offer is still valid, or at the very least make sure the landing page has an offer of some kind. It may be best to avoid “today only” specials in the summer, unless this is your business model.

Get creative, find reasons to email your customers, keep the conversation going in social media, and you’ll find your audience engaged with you through the summer and into fall.


By Jenni Williams, iContact Senior Product Marketing Manager
http://blog.icontact.com/