5 Explosive Fourth of July Email Marketing Strategies for Your eCommerce Brand

The fourth of July is just around the corner. For Americans, this holiday is always looked forward to—more so this year as COVID-19 vaccines continue to roll out. For eCommerce businesses, the fourth of July usually means a holiday sale or a special promo. People are ready to spend! With a surefire fourth of July email marketing strategy, you’ll be able to capture the extra holiday revenue. 

Why Should You Invest in Fourth of July Email Marketing Strategies?

Holidays, in general, are always great opportunities for email marketing campaigns. Aside from being timely and relevant, customers have already come to expect that holidays will always have accompanying sales.

The fourth of July holiday, in particular, is a relatively strong holiday in the United States for the following reasons:

• In 2020, 9 in 10 Americans were predicted to celebrate Independence Day, and that was during the surge of the pandemic. This year, with vaccines being rolled out, the celebrations will surely be bigger and grander.
• It’s a fairly easy holiday to piggyback on, especially from a marketing perspective. The fourth of July is a celebration filled with recognizable cues like fireworks, parades, and flags. It’s also associated with summer outings, backyard barbecues, and picnics. In short, it’s easy to hit emotional triggers and nostalgia with marketing campaigns.
• The fourth of July is the eighth biggest holiday in a year in terms of consumer spending. What does this mean? People are ready to spend, and they actually spend!
• Research actually shows that fourth of July marketing emails pull in 32% more revenue compared to the usual marketing emails.
  
• There’s a good amount of space after Fathers’ Day and the Fourth of July is the only major holiday before the massive holidays happening later on. This means that your customers aren’t that saturated yet in terms of spending and holiday promos.

In a few weeks, Americans are going to start firing up their grills and organizing cookouts and getaways. Online shoppers will start stocking up on outfits, road trip supplies, you name it! If you go into the next few weeks with the right mindset and strategy, your fourth of July will definitely be a firecracker.

5 Strategies for Fourth of July Email Marketing Success

Here are some must-have strategies to make your Fourth of July campaigns a smashing success. 

#001: Segmentation is Key: 4th of July isn’t a Holiday Everywhere

As you already know by now, personalization plays a big part when it comes to email marketing success. 

One of the key things you need to do for your fourth of July campaigns is to use geolocation features to segment your contacts who are not in the US. Non-US subscribers may get annoyed receiving fourth of July emails when they’re not even celebrating it.

Segmenting by location is just the beginning. Further segmenting your list will definitely help you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. In fact, advanced segmentation can give you as much as a 55% increase in revenue per recipient.

Here are some examples of segments you can set up:

• Customers who purchased from you around this time last year
• Customers who recently purchased from you in the last two or three months
• Customers who visited your website recently but didn’t purchase anything
• Regular customers who have already spent a specific amount overall in purchasing your products

#002: Be Creative with Your Email Marketing Content

There are a lot of routes you can go with your fourth of July email marketing content. You can go the patriotic direction and focus on a special message about the holiday. You can focus on promoting your special bundles. Here are the different types of email content angles you can explore:

• • The Offer or Sale Email
    If you have products that are just perfect for Fourth of July activities, this will be your best bet. It’s also the easiest way to rake in business during the holiday. Don’t forget your clear CTAs and graphics that exude sparks and energy. Also, if you’re going for this approach, don’t forget to announce your sale beforehand. You can also use a shortened version of our tested and proven holiday sales sequence.
• • The Checklist Email
    Increase your engagement with your customers by providing useful content such as a checklist of what they need for the upcoming celebrations. You can insert your products in a subtle manner as well.
    
• • The Celebratory Email
    Some eCommerce brands simply offer a discount across the board and opt to send an email with a simple celebratory message. This is a hassle-free approach that will still make sure your customers will have you in mind during the holiday.
• • The Patriotic Email
    Get your copywriting creative juices out and write a masterpiece that will make your customers feel nostalgic and patriotic about the deeper meaning of this holiday. Check out this sample email we did for a client:

#003: Make Your Offer Irresistible

Since it’s a big holiday, your customers will be in a celebratory mood. So give them something special like an offer they can’t refuse. Here’s a quick checklist of how to make an offer something that your customers will absolutely love:

• Make the timing perfect. The timing is essential to make sure that your customers understand right from the get-go that this is a fourth of July offer. It shouldn’t come across as just a regular marketing campaign. What does this mean? Start building the hype as early as now. People prepare for this holiday early on, so you want your brand to be in their minds as they start their holiday activity preparations.
• Emphasize that it’s an exclusive offer or a limited offer.  Fear of missing out (FOMO) is the real deal, especially in big celebrations. In fact, even during the biggest eCommerce events of the year, this is a no-fail strategy. Make sure you have email marketing campaigns that focus on how your offer is only available this time of the year and how it’s expiring in a few days. Use urgency cues such as ‘Last Chance’ to get the message across.

• Craft a relevant offer. You don’t have to come up with something new. However, you can combine your best-sellers or most popular products and reposition them into a special “Fourth of July” bundle.

#004: Put User-generated Content Front and Center

When you do decide to push products this fourth of July, don’t forget to include user-generated content (UGC) in your emails. Show your customers what others have to say about these products to encourage them to hit that ‘BUY NOW’ button! Research shows that 79% of consumers say that UGC has a huge impact on their buying decisions.

At the same time, if you haven’t yet—why not add a follow-up email in your automated flows? Ask for a review a few days after a customer receives their order. The secret to executing a flawless flow like this is by having an integrated fulfillment and email marketing system. You can also explore SMS to boost your product reviews. 

#005:  Skip the 4th of July Holiday Sale or Combine it with Other Holidays

This strategy may come as a surprise for you, but it’s important to include it here. Some brands opt to skip out on the fourth of July campaigns due to sales fatigue from Fathers Day and Mothers Day, or if their anniversary sale had just ended. Even if July 4 is a major holiday in the US, there’s no rule that says you have to participate. You can just send a simple greeting and that’s it. It would be a welcome breather in your customers’ inboxes from all the hard-selling emails they’re about to receive.

After all, there are more holidays coming up. You may want to start focusing on AB tests in order to get the most out of your audience when Q3 and Q4 come around. 

Fire Up Your Strategy for the Fourth of July!

Go into this huge event prepared and ready to pull in some serious revenue. These 5 strategies will guide you, but implementation is a whole different beast. You may find The Online Retailer’s Blueprint for eCommerce Email Marketing Success useful, or you can also opt to apply for a free strategy session with an email marketing expert.

—Written by Regina Ongkiko