In pursuit of new achievements in email marketing, we should not forget about the quality of each letter. The slightest mistake the subscriber will notice very quickly and this will entail negative results of the entire campaign. Every marketer's nightmare - after sending all the letters to discover, typos, errors, or failed personalization. This is especially true of the New Year's mailing, which we do only once a year and which should be perfect. In order to prevent various awkward situations, we suggest using a checklist.

Base addresses of subscribers

• You must always keep the address lists in order . Delete non-existing addresses or those who clicked on spam. In this case, your letters will always be delivered to the addressees and the mail servers of Internet providers will not block your ip for re-sending to non-existent email addresses.
• Make sure that when loading the list of recipients all names are capitalized . The subscriber will never read the letter, where his name is written with a small letter, it is disrespectful of you.

Content

• Check all destination names . Sometimes subscribers enter their nicknames in the "name" field or invented names. You can leave the most acceptable ones, and remove the rest and use an appeal without a name so that there is no such incident:

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• Spelling is a very important part of the letter. Mistakes instantly catch the eye and spoil the impression of the subscriber as a whole about your campaign. Before sending, carefully read the text and check whether all sentences begin with capital letters, correct placement of punctuation marks, typographical errors, paragraphs.
• All emails of your email campaign should have a common goal or idea . Think in advance what should be the content so as not to send everything that occurred at the last moment. A common idea could be a New Year calendar with an everyday discount on a specific product, useful tips for holiday preparations, or gift ideas for all family members.
• Once again, read the content of your message and answer yourself the question: will the subscriber understand how to solve his problem using our content? If you are in doubt, redo it. Everything you send should be accurate, understandable and helpful to customers.

• The last letter of the series can be congratulations on the upcoming holiday and summing up the results for the year. Congratulations should be written from the heart, like writing to your close friend.
• Adhere to the expression “Brevity is the sister of talent” and do not make the text too long . None of the subscribers will spend too much time to read everything. The modern reader spends 8 seconds to “run through” with his eyes on the text and decide whether it is interesting to him or not.
  Use also bulleted lists for a better visual experience.
• Add a call to action . It should be only one so that the subscriber understands exactly what he needs to do. Make the button a contrast and not too small. In the New Year's ezine, the most common are such calls: get a gift, get a discount, buy.

• Give your email recipients the opportunity to respond. Email campaign is a communication tool that is a dialogue, not a monologue. To do this, be sure to include the name of the sender and contact details in each letter.

• Decorate the company logo according to the theme of the holiday . In the New Year's newsletter it can be issued with the help of a Christmas tree, snowman, Santa, snow, or the animal symbol of the New Year according to the eastern calendar.

• Direct advertising has no place in holiday letters! Avoid it during holiday periods, as this can spoil the whole impression of the letter, and subsequent subscribers simply will not open. Send entertaining, educational and simply congratulatory content. The maximum that is suitable for sales in the New Year period is a stock.

Theme

• Make sure that the subject of the letter matches its content. The topic is the first thing the subscriber pays attention to and then decides to open and read the letter or not. It is necessary to make every effort to make it catchy, to interest the recipient and make open the message. But for this you should use the most effective words for the title: the recipient's name, invitation, sale, year, new, gift.

Template design

• First of all, the template should have a pleasant aesthetic appearance . In the New Year, it should create a special holiday atmosphere for subscribers. This will help you themed colors (red, green, blue, white) and attributes (Santa / Santa Claus, Christmas tree, snowman, deer, balls, snow, etc.)

• Pictures. It is not necessary to pile up the template with a large number of images , the subscriber will simply run up his eyes, he will not catch the essence of the content and as a result all the work done will have zero effect. Do not forget to make a description for the uploaded images and prescribe alt.
• Text. To ensure good readability, use such fonts as: Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana.
• Adaptability. 73% of modern users view their mail on mobile devices. On New Year's Eve, this is especially true, since many people leave for resorts a week before the holiday and there is simply no opportunity to open mail on a computer. Develop a universal template and test how it is displayed on various devices .

• Web version of the letter in case of incorrect display. The subscriber will be able to open the HTML version and view the received email as a web page.

For users of the SendPulse service, we have already prepared 8 free New Year patterns that satisfy all the indicated requirements.

Links

• Utm-tags for tracking traffic, its segmentation and to assess the effectiveness of each email campaign.
• At the end, check again that all links work correctly .

Additionally

• Finally, you should check whether all the buttons are working and make sure that all letters will be sent at the right time. It is better to send New Year's letters, starting from mid-December. And for the English-speaking market - from the beginning of November.

If in the end you have marked the fulfillment of all the points, you can confidently send letters to the addressees. Holiday mailing provides many opportunities, which means the results will not take long to wait.

Irina Chugay, SendPulse mailing list marketing