If there’s one time of the year where you really need to capitalise on your contacts list, it’s the holiday season, says regional director APAC of dotmailer, Rohan Lock, in this opinion piece.

The run-up to Christmas is a crucial time for marketers, and it’s imperative to reach the right people, in the right way, at the right time. The more people you have in your mailing list, the more people you have to sell to at such a lucrative time of the year. The days from Black Friday through to Christmas pull in 50-100 per cent more revenue compared to other shopping days throughout the rest of the year.

Email marketing has ranked highest in terms of ROI compared to other marketing strategies, far higher than social media for example. With email marketing, if you do it right, you’re going to get a great return on investment. So every email address you capture is a potential customer to reach out to over the holiday season.

If your contact list is looking a little thin, don’t worry, we’ve got some top tips that will help you to grow your list in time for the holiday season. Q4 presents a big opportunity to convert customers and generate sales, and email marketing should be at the heart of your strategy.

Tip 1: Run a Christmas-themed giveaway

This is a smart tactic which also gives you the chance to get a little creative. With some thought, you can capture lots of email addresses while also running a competition that gets a lot of attention. Any positive brand exposure you can gain during this time is a win.

You can do something as simple as a prize draw where people have to enter their email address to be in with the chance of winning a fantastic prize, or you can focus on user generated content and ask your customers to do something to compete for a prize. If you need to quickly gain a load of extra email addresses, then this is a tactic worth considering.

Tip 2: Offer limited-time holiday season coupons/discount codes

Create urgency by posting limited-time-only holiday season coupons. Customers who want to get the best bargains this Christmas will happily enter their email address in exchange for a decent discount.

Create a data collection popup on your site with a strong call to action and an attractive enough offer to lure people in.

Tip 3: Offer exclusive access to a new product launch in exchange for email addresses

Got a lot of buzz building around one of your new products that’s due to launch? Why not take advantage of this and reveal a ‘sneak peek’ of the product to those who provide their email addresses.

Naturally, there are a lot of new products released in the run-up to the holidays – so the earlier you can provide exclusive information to consumers via email, the more likely they are to come to you over a competitor.

If your website and payments system allows it, you could also enable pre-orders to lock in early orders. Just don’t forget to collect the email address first, as it will offer plenty more opportunities to sell to them before the big day an in the future.

Tip 4: In-store email address collection via shopfloor staff

Email addresses can be captured offline, too. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to snap up some extra email contacts via your stores.

Ask people for their email at the checkout in exchange for a discount or small gift such as a toiletry sample or holiday gift; you’ll be surprised how willing people are to provide their email address. For some brands it can be very successful – for instance, stationery company Paradise Pen Co. actually collects 80 per cent of its customer emails in-store, with just 20 per cent of people signing up online.

If people aren’t interested in the free gift, then maybe a five to 10 per cent off today-only voucher to use in store might sway them. Remember, the people who are in your store are already interested in your product because they have chosen to step inside and browse, making them ideal people to target for email address collection.

They will have already seen your product in store, and it might just take a well written email with an online discount for them to buy something.

Tip 5: Make your social media channels work harder by integrating a newsletter sign-up feature into your brand’s Facebook page

Facebook pages now offer a few different ways for people to get in touch with you, or to leave their details. You’ve probably spent a huge amount of time and effort growing your Facebook fan base, so it’d be a shame not to capture information from your engaged advocates with a simple newsletter sign-up feature.

Get more out of your social media channels by encouraging people to opt in to a newsletter with exclusive deals, offers, product launches and company news.

These top tips should help you to add a substantial amount of new contacts to your email mailing list. Get started now, so that you can capture enough valuable email addresses in time for the festive online shopping extravaganza. Those extra few email addresses you have worked hard to obtain just might help you to achieve your sales goals. What are you waiting for? Get collecting now.