EricEwe.com

If you have yet to plan your holiday email schedule, you better start ironing it out. Many companies are already counting down the days to Christmas and hoping to get an edge over their competitors in a challenging economy. TigerDirect, an electronics giant based in Miami started counting the weeks until Christmas recently while ShopNBC stated their countdown with 100 days before Christmas.

Seeing that it the economy is still recovering, more and more companies are using emails with different messaging tactics to drive sales besides trying to reach their customers earlier.  KMart is clearly pushing the layaway message, while other companies are going with promoting refurbished products, payment plans, etc.

Here are some companies that planned ahead and started their emails early.

PetsMart, 10/29/09 — Find coupons inside specially-marked Holiday Bonus Bags of dog & cat food!
Ralph Lauren, 11/2 — First Look At Holiday Gifts
Nordstrom, 11/2 — Holiday Free Shipping (Details Inside)
Blue Nile, 11/2 — Shop Early and Save 10% on Holiday Gifts + Free FedEx Shipping

If you have yet to plan out your Holiday Season Email schedule,  grab a pen and take note of these best suggested to avoid by iContact.

Avoid:
1) Sending too Many Emails: Spam is defined as any unwanted message. If you plan to send multiple holiday emails, be certain your recipients will value each of your messages.

2) Relying on Discounts Alone: Discounts alone are not enough. Be sure to communicate key values, elements, and features. What is unique about your product or service? Why do your happiest customers like you?

3) Sending Without Tracking: Many businesses don’t realize that when they send emails “in-house” (without an email marketing service) it’s impossible to know if the emails reach the recipient. The sender can land on just one “spam list,” which will reduce the message delivery rate by up to 50%!

Reaching your potential customers is critical to drive sales and email marketing is one of the lowest cost in any marketing channel. Email marketing is valuable to any business owners as it can be used to trigger sales, send out reminders or just used as a tool to reinforce a sale.

I have been blessed to worked with many email tools from custom programs and BCentral (Microsoft’s first attempt to penetrate the business community with their B2B applications which consisted of an email program) to some newer Email Service Provider (ESP) tools like iContact and Email labs.

Of all the ESP that I have used, I would recommend iContact due to its functionality and ease of use.

Here are five good reasons why iContact is better than some of the other email applications that I have used. Click here to learn more about iContact.

	KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Dashboard You do not to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to use it. The dashboard is easy to understand and getting to the functionality you are looking for is never more than 3 clicks away. It is easy to setup and manage a new email campaign. You can easily segment an email list and see its performance easily without knowing any programming or queries. See screenshot below.
	No hassle management I have managed email systems where we would send out more than a million opt-in emails a month. You can have an award winning HTML email, or you can be giving away a trip to the moon but without a good delivery rate, it is worthless. I can tell you honestly that it can be a big hassle to manage the whitelisting process with ISP but with iContact, they have contracts with major ISPs to whitelist your list and promise a deliverability rates between 98%-99%.
	Emails, Surveys, RSS, social tools and more iContact provides email and other sophisticated features such as surveys, RSS feeds, autoresponders, to social tools and in one easy-to-use all-inclusive product without any additional charges. They often enhance their products often push out new releases without any upgrade cost.
	Tools to help you started If you do not know HTML or don’t want to pay a expensive graphic designers to come up with an email newsletter, iContact provides over 250 free professionally designed email newsletter templates . You can simply pick the design theme that fits your business or message, modify it with your own message and send it through their simple yet reliable system.
	ESP Free Trial If you are just looking to test the water, check them out as they have a free trial. Click here to find out more about iContact.

Easy to use iContact email newsletter application.