Posted on 12.20.10

Build a Better Holiday Email Campaign: Tips from the Experts at Emma

by Stacy Jones Sutton

Email volume is up 43% in the six weeks before Christmas, according to the Email Experience Council. How will yours stand out in the crowd?

Part One in a Series of Four

First of all, email marketing works. According to the Direct Marketing Association “Email is faster and more affordable than traditional print mail and, by some measures, it offers the best return on investment (about $43 per dollar spent) of any marketing channel.”

Plus, email saves on paper, which benefits everyone. Email marketing is a critical component of an overall content strategy. This is covered in detail in Tim Frick’s digital marketing book, Return on Engagement in the chapter on email marketing, where Tim also covers Emma email marketing service as one of the best.

Mightybytes has long been a happy customer of Emma email marketing service. We use it for the Mightymail Quarterly e-news, as well as for holiday messages, fundraising, party invites, and a slew of other functions.
Here’s a bit about the stylish lady…

Emma describes its service as “the Web’s most stylish email marketing service” and is used by more than 30,000 small and midsize businesses, non-profits and agencies for email newsletters, surveys and campaigns. Emma has a remarkably easy-to-use interface and puts a high value on email design, offering custom design brand stationery instead of pre-fab email templates that 80 other brands are using. Their customer service is unique, no doubt because of the team of incredibly talented and friendly folks who support the Emma community with advice, help and entirely unrobotic answers.

Case in point, when we were trying to tweak the code for our email sign up form onto an FBML application tab for our Mightybytes Facebook page, we found Molly Niendorf via Emma support instant chat (yes, actual human help from Emma employees) and she quickly got the code tweaks to us and we had our new Facebook tab up shortly thereafter. This was such a stand-out service experience in our book!

This interaction led us to sit down with Emma staff members: Molly Niendorf, Heather Dixon, and Susan Blue for a real Q&A about email marketing tips and tools from Emma.

Q&A with Emma: Holiday Email Marketing

So, the holidays are right around the corner, in Emma’s “4 Tips for Holiday Emails”, Emma offers these tips for creating emails that stand out in inbox crowd.

• Mind the basics: Use Emma’s checklist
• Find new segments of your audience
• Do the numbers
• Stand out with good design

Here’s a real Emma customer’s fun holiday email. See more email snapshots with format types such as: Gift Guides, Holiday Newsletter, Singular Holiday Offer, and End of Year.


Mightybytes: Emma, any other big Holiday email tips or trends?

Emma: The trend this holiday is to create shorter, more inbox-friendly emails, as Carolyn points out on our blog post, “The Art of the Short Holiday Email.”
Here’s a short excerpt of the blog, definitely worth reading before you finalize your holiday email design.

Holiday Email Tips from Emma:

“...embrace the art of the short, mobile-friendly email…Create a campaign that’s easy to read on-the-go.”
Here’s how:
1. Keep your message simple. One large, obvious call-to-action will do better than multiple, smaller links.
2. Keep your message short — ideally, with no scrolling. It’s a challenge, but it will be far more effective with busy recipients who only pay attention to your email for a few seconds before choosing how to proceed.
3. Keep your message narrow. If you have some flexibility, try keeping your campaigns no wider than 600px.
4. Emma also supports animation and video, so get festive with your greetings.


Emma suggests try short emails that your audience can read on a smart phone.

Emma advises, “consider fitting your campaign within the general mobile phone screen ratios. For example, the iPhone has dimensions of 2:3 width to height, the early Droid is 3:4, and some blackberries are 1:1. What does that mean for you? Don’t make the height of the campaign much longer than the width (if at all), and make the font legible on a small screen.”

If your holiday email features a request for donations, check out the free holiday donation buttons available for download from Emma.

Emma has Holiday Email Marketing Tips and Blog entries all lined up in a row for your reading ease. Or, watch Emma’s Holiday Email tips video to get your holiday email optimized.

Want to get more out of your email marketing?

Check out the next installment of our Email Marketing Campaign Tips series.