Marketers who can look outside the traditional holiday season stand an excellent chance of increasing customer engagement. And the opportunities are nearly infinite. National Dog Day, National Groundhog Day, National Donut Day, National Cookie Day…where there’s a critter or consumable, there’s probably a day named after it!
Email marketing campaigns centered on holidays such as these lead to higher click-to-open (CTO) rates, according to Mobile Marketer, which provides original business journalism and analysis of events for leaders in the mobile marketing industry.
Studies conducted by Mobile Marketer and Yes Marketing found that email campaigns around Groundhog Day, for example, generated five times the average conversion rate of 3.8 percent. National Dog Day prompted a conversion rate of 18,6 percent, more than four times the average.
In addition, Mobile Marketer reported that the CTO rate for mobile email campaigns was 31 percent higher than on desktop computers for the third quarter of last year. Yes Marketing’s study of email campaigns, meanwhile, also emphasized the importance of gearing these campaigns to smartphones and tablets.
To illustrate the study’s findings, Mobile Marketer cited three companies that successfully boosted CTOs around unconventional occasions:
- Nestlé latched onto National Cookie Day on December 4 of last year with a marketing campaign that encouraged participation and engagement on social media;
- Dunkin’ Donuts has leveraged National Donut Day on June 1, as well as National Coffee Day on September 29, for years offering special promotions via email and social media;
- Amazon created a special occasion with its annual one-day-only global Prime Day shopping event for Prime members. Last year, according to CNET Best Products, the company sold 100 million products on Prime Day.
These unconventional holidays aren’t difficult to come by, thinking through which days fit within your marketing plan and how to use them to your advantage can be fun while driving engagement.