#127. Content Ideas for January 2023 | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello. Hello everyone and welcome back to Email Einstein the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host Vira Sadlak and I’m a marketeer at an agency called Flowium. And here at Flowium we are very passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world and we specialize in providing full, premium, full service e commerce email marketing experience to all of our clients. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment. You guys, by the time you will listen to this podcast, you will probably be at that magical Christmas New Year time. You will be watching all of the fun Christmas movie, enjoying your gifts, enjoying all of the good foods and you definitely deserve the break. And take some time to celebrate your success in 2022. Take some time to look back on all of your achievements, on what you’ve done well and what you maybe haven’t done well. Plan the next year. But also this magical end of the year time is the time to put like everything that was in 2022 behind you and look ahead to 2023. So today actually talking about fun content ideas for 2023, specifically for January 2023. So in this podcast we’ll share seven ideas with you, seven emails that you have to send, definitely have to send in the months of January. Some of them you probably already have on your content calendars. If not, definitely look into one of those ideas because they are cool. We’ve done them for a lot of our clients and people do love this type of content. They do respond really well. So the first holiday of the month is obviously the New Year Day. This is like the big one, January 1st. Ring in the new Year to your email list. It’s a good idea to start your year off with a great New Year’s Day campaign. January 1st is the new Year’s Day, which is probably like one of the most iconic day of the year if I can say so, and the starting point for everyone each year. New Year’s Day often symbolizes like new beginnings, change. A lot of people are actually doing their resolutions this year as well, so maybe you can sort of like bring some of those, like, resolutions into your email marketing. And here’s some fun fact. You can actually tap into the resolution of your customers. And here are the most popular resolutions in the U.S. believe it or not, 48% of people in this survey said that they plan to, they plan to exercise more. 48% of everyone who was on the survey, they plan to exercise more, eat healthier. 44%, lose weight. 41%. So if you’re in that, like, wellness slash health and wellness industry, New Year Day is definitely a big day for you. So definitely a time to send some nice email. Some people want to spend more time with family and friends, like be smarter with money. 24%, spend less time on social media. 21%. This is a big one for me. Definitely this will be one of my resolutions for year 2023 for sure. Reduce stress on the job, 21% and quit smoking. So if you guys are in one of those industries, definitely talk about, like New Year, new you resolutions. Maybe run some sweet promotion or something or do something that Frank Body did last year. Instead of doing the New Year new you, they sent this really sweet and adorable campaign called New Year Stay you. They basically took on the cliche of your new you expression both in its email subject line and in the email itself. And while other brands, they kind of like encourage you to start year from like a clean sheet, right. Frank Body tells their customers that they are just like perfect the way they are. And basically all they are saying is that it’s New Year, new you, New Year stay you. It’s a new year, you don’t need to renew yourself. And they give some sort of like, promotion as well. So however you want to approach a new year, it’s definitely a good time to send some sort of a campaign. January 1st, then January 3rd is another big holiday, especially for those of you who are in the wellness or health industry, because January 3rd is the international Mind Body Wellness Day. Right after the new Year, it’s an International Mind Body Wellness Day, which is, I mean, the timing is perfect. It’s right after New Year’s Day as a reminder that you are allowed to take things slow and focus on yourself as a part of your upcoming year. But also it’s a good day to maybe run like a promotion or something, especially again, if you’re in that wellness sort of community or if you have some product recommendations, maybe you’re in that industry where you can do like a gift guide for that holiday or maybe you can do Some like list of recommendations of what needs to be done this year. Or like maybe you don’t want to do the promotion because you don’t want to train your customer to expect some sort of like discounts for you all the time. But maybe you can deliver the value in a different way. Maybe you can give them some sort of like recommendation or list of good habits to try this year. Or maybe some sort of like meditation. Or maybe you can repurpose one of your blocks. Deliver the value on January 3rd. Especially if you are in the Mind Body Wellness Day. But even if you are not, I mean wellness is the topic that is relevant to all of us across all industries. So that can be a good day to reconnect with your customer. Then January 4th, it’s the National Trivia Day. And welcoming the new year also means getting ready to learn new things about the world around you. That’s why I really love this holiday. It’s a fun one too, right? You can do a lot of interesting non traditional things on this day. Content on this day can roam around different fun facts about the industry you are in. Maybe you can do some fun quiz or something. For example, for one of my clients and they are selling supplements, we’re going to do 10 fun fact about theroid you didn’t know on the National Trivia Day. First of all, because obviously it’s a national Trivia day, but also because it’s a thyroid health awareness month. So yeah, so that’s something that I’m going to do for my client. If you are in a different industry, if you’re like in a socks industry or whatever, you’re selling socks, you can do five facts that you didn’t know about socks or history of socks or something like that. Just like provide some kind of value in a fun way. Or even better if you guys have some sort of like quizzing tool in your toolbox, definitely use some fun quizzes on that day more than ever. Brands actually need to forge genuine connection with their customers through the channels that they own. But quizzes are actually a really cool way first of all to engage your customer, to make the customer learn more about themselves. But also for you as a brand, quizzes are amazing tools for you to collect that zero party data right from your customer directly. And actually fun fact, 83% of consumers say that they are willing to share their data with the brand if it leads to some sort of like more personalized experience. So on National Trivia Day, if you have some sort of like quizzing tool in your toolbox that’s a day to use it for sure. January 15th, National Head Day. I know it’s a random one, but I mean, it’s a fun one too. And you don’t want to be all about those like traditional holidays that are like on everyone’s list, right? National Hat Day is celebrated each year on January 15th. If you can talk about types of hats, you can maybe take a picture of your team in funny hats. You can do fun facts about hats or some silly hat pictures. You can encourage your customers to sell to share a picture in their favorite hat. The sky is the limit, you guys. You can be creative, especially if you are selling some accessories or if you’re in the fashion industry and you have some sort of like caps or sun hats or fedoras, I don’t know what you’re selling, but if you’re in that industry, that’s a fun little holiday to put on your calendar as well. So January 15th, for all of you hat lovers out there, do something with this holiday. It’s a fun one. January 16th is kind of like a no brainer to put on your calendar. It’s a big holiday in the States. It’s a civil rights day. Martin Luther Luther King Jr. Day. It goes by several names actually. This, this day in the marketing industry it’s known as MLK Day. Martin Luther King. So mlk, it’s also known as King Day or like Martin Luther King Day. Well, anyways, the third Monday of January, it’s like a federal holiday on which Martin Luther King is commemorated because it’s like his birthday. For those of you who don’t know, he’s the Noble Peace Prize winning civil activist and leader and he’s known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience in the US and that’s a great day to talk about equality. If that’s like the one of your values of your brand, definitely talk about it. And I really liked what Nike did a few years ago in their Martin Luther King Day emails. Nike tied the holiday and their values together. And instead of promoting the products as they normally do on their emails, right, they talked about the value of equality. And in that email they featured different athletes, athletes who represent sort of like different groups of equality. They had the African American NFL athlete, they had the female soccer pro player, they had the LGBTQ athlete, the Muslim American member, all kinds of athletes to promote the value of equality. Because it’s one of the pillars of Nike, right? Anyone can do it, basically. So that’s like one of their pillars. But also on this day, maybe you can do a product promise. Any day is good for promotion. Or maybe you can do some spotlight on, I don’t know, on like a black artist, if you’re working or collaborating with some like artist or something. Discounts as donation incentives are also a good idea. So you can basically say like, like 10% of all of the sales that we will get today, 10% of all of the proceeds will go to ABC organization or something like that. That’s a great day to talk about equality. That’s a great day to do the spotlight on some sort of like products or maybe creators and discounts. Discounts are always a good idea. So the sixth idea that we have for you to try this year is January 19th, the National Popcorn Day, another fun holiday. And there can be no argument that the best combination, the best companion to any movie is that iconic bag of delicious buttery popcorn, right? And on January 19th we celebrate National Popcorn Day. And I mean you can approach this holiday from different angles. The first thing that comes to mind is basically like putting up, putting together the list of like recommended movies somehow like related to your brand or something. That’s just like an obvious one. Or if you’re selling the popcorn, well, in that case it’s a no brainer. You can do some sort of like promotions or something. Or maybe you can do a gift card for popcorn or maybe you can like somehow visually include popcorn in one of your emails. Well anyways, it’s a fun little holiday to have in your calendar. Obviously you don’t have to have it, but that’s a fun one. So consider it. And last but not least, January 22nd is the lunar New Year. A lot of you guys know it as a Chinese New Year, but actually like a lot of Asian countries celebrate this New Year. So I wouldn’t say it’s Chinese per se. We call it like Lunar New Year across the industry. It’s celebrated in many different customs and under like different names depending on the country. But like, still Chinese themes, they do dominate in like a lot of email designs and a lot of marketing. So if you will be launching some sort of like promotions on this day, Red and gold, it’s always a good idea to include them in one of your campaigns because red and gold, they symbolize prosperity, luck. They are very popular colors to use across all of the emails on that day in general, across all of the marketing. And also you can maybe include an animal that represent this year and in 2023. I think it’s a year of rabbit. So maybe you can do like gold and red rabbits across the emails or something like that. Lunar New Year, actually it’s a great opportunity to wish your subscribers prosperity, good health because that’s what traditionally is done on that day. And maybe you can somehow like wave into some promotions into this wishes. It’s also a good idea and the holidays also known to acknowledge that entire Asian culture. Even to those who basically celebrate the Western New Year. What we will be doing with some of our clients, well for one of my clients, they are cosmetic brands. They’re selling different serums and stuff. We will have this email with 10 or something, a little envelopes hidden across the email. So images of envelopes, like red envelopes with gold letters on them. And that letters will be the discount codes. So people will have to actually go into the email, find those little letters and then they’ll have to sort of find the discount code and use it at the checkout. So that’s just like a little fun gamified email. Right? But there are some do’s and don’ts for the Lunar New Year. Some things that you have to be aware, some cultural thing. So here are some yeses do include red and gold. Just like we talked, red symbolizes like luck and gold obviously represents wellness and prosperity. In like a lot of Asian countries do include the zodiac animal. So rabbit is a good addition to your email. Be careful with numbers though. For example, number eight is considered a lucky number in China. It represents fortune. So you can definitely include letter eight. Don’t include number five because it’s like an unlucky number and copy. You don’t have to say Happy New Year, just Happy New Year. You can maybe include like some good wishes for luck and prosperity. These are like the two major themes of Lunar New Year. Right? You can also include lanterns, you can include red envelopes, gold coins because they symbolize prosperity and they are kind of considered like a luck lucky money. So yeah, definitely consider including some of those like symbols of Lunar New Year into your campaigns. But be careful with other elements because some of them are culturally not appropriate. For example, I didn’t realize that. But when you use black or white colors, both of these colors that in like Western culture they are considered just like a basic colors. And we do use them a lot in our email designs. But in, in some of the Asian countries or cultures, they represent death and calamity in many cultures. So maybe like don’t promote the black and white clothing as much during that time. Green actually also symbolizes infidelity. For some reason. So that’s like interesting. But also be careful with like suggesting different gifts because for example scissors or knives in that Chinese culture they actually symbolize harsh words or the end of relationship. And also the word shoe in Mandarin it sounds like bad luck. I mean I found this all on Internet, so if you guys know like more sort of like cultural references that you should or should not include, let us know. But in the Mandarin the word shoe sounds like bad luck. And yeah, so maybe you want to stay away from mentioning that word or that product. Yeah, so there are like some other no’s like clocks or watches. It’s a bad idea to include, include them pears for some reason, umbrellas, cut flowers, they are all like somehow associated with like breakups and funeral. And also anything with four in it. Four is unlucky number. So if you guys want to do 40% off or 14% off, maybe stay away from it, maybe do like 18% instead or something. So yeah, avoid the temptation to fall back on like those stereotypical images yet at the same time time try to stay like relevant to their culture. So yeah, so that’s our suggestions for January 2023, the first month of the year. An exciting month for sure. You might want to be a bit more creative just to overcome that post holiday sales slump. But overall, I know it’s going to be a successful month for you guys. I know it’s going to be a successful year for you if you prepare well for it. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Podcast. Definitely come back next week because next week it will be our last episode of the year and we will have email marketer specialists from Flowium talk about different e commerce brands or different email marketing brands to expect in 2023. Thank you so much for listening and we hope to have you back here next Tuesday. Thank you and take care.