The Holiday Marketing Funnel: Aligning Ads and Emails for Maximum Impact
Blink, and it’ll be Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas! The holiday shopping frenzy is here, and e-commerce brands need to be ready. In Part 2, we showed how to supercharge holiday sales with retargeting and dynamic ads. Now it’s time to take it further—align your ads and emails to keep your messaging consistent, build trust, and guide customers through every step of the buying journey.
The Power of a Full-Funnel Strategy
Everyone has a favorite part of the funnel. Some swear by the top—get that traffic! Others swear by the middle—because it’s all about those qualified leads. And then there are the bottom-of-the-funnel fans, because that’s where everybody makes their money. However, a full-funnel strategy makes sure each stage of the buyer’s journey is covered and focused on. This approach is important for the holiday season because customers will be bombarded with marketing messages from every direction from many different companies trying to win their trust and purchases.
Aligning your ad campaigns (whether it’s Google, Meta, or Amazon) with your email marketing is a huge move. This will allow you to guide potential buyers through a cohesive experience which matures them into actual buyers at every stage of the funnel.
Aligning your ad campaigns (whether it’s Google, Meta, or Amazon) with your email marketing is a huge move. This will allow you to guide potential buyers through a cohesive experience which matures them into actual buyers at every stage of the funnel.
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Aligned Ad and email messaging for each stage of the buyer's journey.
Just don’t take our word for it. According to recent data, consumers engage with brands across an average of 6 different channels/touchpoints before they make a purchase. This would be the hint everyone needs to make sure their ads and emails are working hand-in-hand to build trust and maintain engagement. For example, you can use retargeting ads on Google or Meta to bring back those who may have clicked on your recent holiday promo email but didn’t complete a purchase.
Aligning Ad Messaging with Email Content
Branding is all about consistency. And it’s no different with ads and emails. If your Google and Meta ads are promoting a holiday discount, it would also make sense to make your emails mention the discount and reinforce the same offer. Conflicting messages can confuse customers and cause friction in their decision-making process.
To keep your messaging consistent, start by trying to align your holiday ad copy with your email subject lines.
To keep your messaging consistent, start by trying to align your holiday ad copy with your email subject lines.
Example:
If you’re running a “Black Friday Blowout Sale” campaign across Meta, your email subject line could be “Don’t Miss Our Black Friday Blowout Sale – Exclusive Deals Inside!”
A Quick Tip:
The key to an effective subject line is to make it punchy, making sure it generates urgency and scarcity, it uses consumer data to personalize subject lines, it provides value, and it piques interest amongst all of the other advertising campaigns out there.
While we don’t have hard data on this correlation – yet – we know that aligning ad and email messaging creates a sense of brand recall for buyers and it gives potential customers multiple chances to engage with the same value proposition.
Segment Your Audience to Improve Targeting
One of the advantages to combining your ads and emails is your new found super power to target specific customer segments with tailored messages. E-commerce brands specifically can leverage data from engaged email lists to then create custom audiences on platforms like Google, Meta, and more.
On Meta, you can navigate to “Audiences” and choose “Custom Audience” and build an audience based on customer list which is closest to email engagement
For instance, if you have a segment of customers who typically purchase higher-priced products, you can target them with Google Shopping ads specifically offering or highlighting your higher-end holiday products while also sending them emails pushing the same products.
Create a Seamless Retargeting Experience
When it comes to completing the funnel, we have to think about filling the bottom stages with retargeting efforts. During the holiday season, many shoppers will look around before making a purchase decision, so retargeting the “window shoppers” or those who just abandoned carts will help bring them back to your site.
You can set up retargeting ads on Google, Meta, and Amazon which means you’ll be able to re-engage with people who have recently performed a target action. For example, you send out an email blast discussing your holiday sales, the user clicks through and reads about it, but doesn’t make their purchase just yet. This is when the retargeting ad would come to save the day as we can target them with an ad again. Keep in mind that it's best practice to add reminders of holiday deadlines in your retargeting ad copy such as “Only 3 days left to grab your holiday deals!” Urgency is key when it comes to retargeting.
You can set up retargeting ads on Google, Meta, and Amazon which means you’ll be able to re-engage with people who have recently performed a target action. For example, you send out an email blast discussing your holiday sales, the user clicks through and reads about it, but doesn’t make their purchase just yet. This is when the retargeting ad would come to save the day as we can target them with an ad again. Keep in mind that it's best practice to add reminders of holiday deadlines in your retargeting ad copy such as “Only 3 days left to grab your holiday deals!” Urgency is key when it comes to retargeting.
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Meta Customer Retargeting Journey
Data from Google reports that remarketing campaigns can lead to a 10-30% increase in conversion rates compared to non-remarketing ads. Along with your paid ad retargeting efforts, you can also work to re-engage people who have clicked through on an ad via email too.
Takeaways
The holiday season means it’s time to optimize your ads and email marketing for complete strategic harmony. Why? Because this creates seamless customer engagement and experience across all touchpoints. By aligning your messaging, segmenting audiences effectively, and taking advantage of retargeting as a bottom of funnel strategy, you’ll be sure to drive more conversions and make the most of your marketing budget/resources.
Don’t wait until the last second. As the holiday season quickly approaches, strengthen your funnel. Synchronize your Google, Meta, and Amazon ads with your email marketing campaigns, sit back, and watch beautiful marketing happen.
Don’t wait until the last second. As the holiday season quickly approaches, strengthen your funnel. Synchronize your Google, Meta, and Amazon ads with your email marketing campaigns, sit back, and watch beautiful marketing happen.
