#114. October 2022 Campaign Content Ideas | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello everyone and welcome to Email Einstein podcast by Flowium. I’m your host Vera Sadlak. I’m a marketer at an agency called 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 love what we do. We specialize in providing 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. That’s what we are all about here at Flowium. And today’s episode. I know it’s going to be one of your favorites. Just because every time we post a content calendar or content ideas before the months, you guys love it. We get great feedback. So I hope that October calendar will be just as interesting to you as all of the previous months. I am a big October fan. Just as fall is my favorite season, October is probably my favorite month. It might be because I have birthday in October. It might also be because everyone knows that October is the month of pumpkin spice and everything nice. I love October. Not just because I get to play dress up as an adult AKA Halloween party, but also because I can buy way too much candy and binge watch Gilmore Girls without any judgment. So October, I love you. I can’t wait for you to come. And in this episode I’ll be actually talking about all of the awesome campaign ideas to make your customers fall in love with your brand in October. The pun is actually intended. I’ve got something for everyone. No matter if you’ve just started planning your calendar or you just need to add that little bit of zinc to your campaigns. From sales and fun ideas for Halloween ideas to Cinnamon Roll Day, yes, that’s a thing. So stay tuned. But before we go to all of those exciting and fun holidays, please remember October 2022 is also recognized as a breast cancer awareness month, which is a big deal for any of the brands, but especially for those who focus primarily on women. Target Audience in the US, one in eight women has a chance of developing breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. Given this disease have such a big impact on our lives we see that a lot of brands are actually take up the costs that they create some themed campaigns. They definitely talk about it. They donate on behalf of their customers. If it fits your company, tie in product launches with a cause. Maybe you’re launching a pink line of socks or maybe you have some breast cancer awareness month app redesign or website redesign or something like that. Maybe you are launching a pink design drink or pink T shirts or something, something up that alley, right. By integrating a product launch with a bigger cause, you’re not just like spreading the awareness about the important cause but you’re actually encouraging customers to buy your product and do something good for the world at the same time. And I really, really love what hint did hint. For those of you who don’t know, it’s like a big I guess pop brand, right? They are selling all of those like healthy drinks. I think they do have some sort of like cosmetic as well deodorants. They do all kinds of stuff that they started as a, as a drink brand. So they’ve sent like last year they sent this like beautiful email. Email was basically like a plain text with a pink header. Very simple design wise. And they were basically talking about Octo being the breast cancer awareness months. And to honor those in our hind community, they said to honor those who’ve been impacted, we are donating$5 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation Inc. For every order placed on the site today to help find cure for breast cancer. I think that’s a beautiful, beautiful cause, beautiful thing to do. And this email, for those of you who, who are not their subscribers, usually hand emails are very like, they’re very beautifully designed, very like image heavy, design heavy. This email was literally text based email. So sometimes that’s all you need to communicate your message. And I think in this case it was beautifully done. Athleta, another brand that I love and follow. And if you’re not subscribe to their emails, definitely subscribe to their emails because they are doing really great things with all of the segmentation and automations. So a few years ago they did this promotion where they basically were donating bra to some sort of like charity organization. Every time you buy any Athleta bra within the week of like October 2nd to 15th, there’s like a lot of things you can do. You don’t have to donate on those charity organizations. Maybe you can just like create some awareness. Maybe you can share the stories of your customers. That’s a big one as well. Just like if you are working with women, that’s A great cost to talk about. That’s a great, great cost to support. So maybe put it on your October calendars. October 1st is another important for all of us coffee lovers because October 1st is actually an international coffee day. So on International Coffee Day, October 1, why not celebrate by offering say like a discount on the product if you’re selling coffee. Or maybe you can partner up with some coffee shop or provide gift cards to people who spend a certain amount of money with your store. Maybe you can just share your mutual love, love of coffee with your subscribers. Again, the purpose of a lot of those campaigns is more to engage with your customers, to put a smile on your subscriber face, maybe to engage with them to provide that element of trust and fun. Not every campaign should be promotional, right? Sometimes you can just bring additional pleasant moment to their day. Right? What we’ve done last year with one of my clients, my client is actually in the supplement business. And last year on International Coffee Day, we’ve done email about five ways to supercharge your morning coffee. So basically like five ways to make your morning coffee healthier, better for you coffee. So I remember there was something about like adding good fats. Like, so we were like promoting their MCT oil. Another way to supercharge your coffee was to add some collagen. And my client is also selling the collagen. So that was like a nice campaign, not overly promotional. So we delivered the value. We talked about coffee about the International Coffee Day, but at the same time we also reminded them about all of the amazing products that they can incorporate in their diet. So they October 1st for all of your coffee fans. I know I will be celebrating October 1st. Definitely talk about this day in your email. October 5th is also a nice and sweet holiday. It’s actually World Teacher Day. For the following week we have the World Teacher Day. If you know that you have maybe a customer base that is made up of teachers or students who can show some appreciations to their teachers, or maybe you’re selling some nice and beautiful stuff that can be given to teachers as a gift, something like that. This is a really good opportunity for you to send out a campaign and say, hey, listen, we love you teachers. We see you, we know what you do, we appreciate you, especially for all of the kind of hassle that the last few years have brought. Thank your teacher. It’s always a nice idea to do some something like that. October 10th is kind of big for all of us Canadians because it’s a Canadian Thanksgiving Day. Yes, I know our Thanksgiving is months Earlier. But that just means that we get to celebrate two Thanksgivings, right? One on October 10th and another one at the end of November. I know that it’s a little bit funky for you Americans, but for us it’s a big holiday here in Canada. If you have a big Canadian base customers, you definitely need to mention this because it’s a kind of like a big deal. If you’re a Canadian based brand, great time to just send out that quick blurb. Maybe like Happy Thanksgiving to everybody out in Canada. Even if you’re not even like a Canadian based company, maybe you can do something funky and create like a Canadian themed email and send it to your entire list because celebrating Canada is always a good idea. But yeah, you can of course bless your list with promise like many people do. But another interesting approach is actually not bothering your customers with promise so they can actually spend some time with their families and instead you can do some sort of like a thank you campaign and sending it to your engaged 12 months customers. On Thanksgiving Day we simply usually for all of our clients we send like a Happy Thanksgiving wishes to all of the subscribers. And the go of this email is more to be genuine with your customers and their family by wishing them happy holidays. A good Thanksgiving strategy usually means simply expressing gratitude and thanks to your customers. And instead of trying to funnel some customers to a product or like landing page or sale, it’s always a good idea to share some heartfelt Thanksgiving message. It will help build you brand loyalty which will last longer after the holidays. After the holidays are done, right? So that’s a beautiful occasion to thank your customers. October 10th. Thanksgiving Day in Canada. October 10th is also a world Mental Health Day. That’s an interesting coincidence but I mean World Mental Health Day is also a great topic to discuss discuss in your email newsletter, right? And the target audience is actually can be pretty much like everyone because this topic is like so universally applicable to all of us, right? So the goal of this mental health awareness month is actually very multi phased. In your emails you can educate your public or like raise awareness about the problem. You can combat stigma about mental health. Maybe you can support some mental health policies. Maybe you can provide some sort of support to your listeners. Maybe you can come up with a list of fun and creative ideas on how to celebrate this day with your customers or something like that. Show your support by spotlighting awareness campaign. You follow, share maybe your thoughts. Maybe if you’re comfortable you share your own story or stories of your audience, maybe you can ask them to join the conversation. It could be like a great social media campaign or you can create some sort of like a conversational moment in your newsletter as well. Definitely. World Mental Health Day is something that is, that is affecting all of us. Mental health is something like universally important to all of us. That’s why effectively fits your email marketing campaign. That’s a good, good day to talk about mental health. October 21st is a national Pumpkin Cheesecake Day. I mean I am about the pumpkin spice hype in the fall. I’m like that girl. I’m like basic, basic Starbucks girl, you know. In fact I haven’t had my, my pumpkin spice latte this year yet. But that’s probably how I will start my morning to tomorrow, that’s for sure. So October 21st is National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day. Again this is kind of just like a little fun random holidays, just sending stuff out. Kind of like leading up to the all of the hype of the Halloween, right? It’s October 21st. You can like talk about like different recipes. Maybe you can share your recipe of pumpkin cheesecake. If you’re selling some like pumpkin related products you can also mention them in the campaign. I mean a lot of things you can do for the National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day and one of my clients, they’re actually selling supplements for pets and for them in October we’ll have like a lot of lot of pumpkin themed emails and one of them will be like a recipe of a cute papaccino or like pumpkin spice pumpkin spice latte actually for doggies because they do sell this pumpkin powder because it’s apparently good for, for pets and stuff. And we will be selling, we will be sending this campaign in October which I honestly can’t wait because every time we send the campaign they turned out to be so cute. And this is just shows you that you don’t necessarily need to to promote the product in your email to actually for the email to convert. Sometimes like delivering the value is all it takes. It all comes down to understanding who you’re sending the email to, segmenting it properly and actually delivering the right message to the right person. And of course the biggest holiday of the month is Halloween. I somewhere read this article that Americans like in 2020 and it was like it considered a slow year, right? But in 2020Americans spent$8.8 billion on Halloween last year. And that’s a big holiday and I feel like every year it’s getting bigger and bigger in email marketing industry and like in marketing in e commerce in general. And even if your store doesn’t sell like horror movie memorabilia or even if you don’t sell candy or costumes or punch pumpkin or like witch’s stuff, you can still participate it, you can still celebrate Halloween even if it’s not a necessarily natural fit for your brand, right? So there are a ton of creative ways brands are incorporating those like Halloween theme into their email marketing campaigns. They can do something as simple as putting classic Halloween imagery to to work. So all those like black cats, pumpkins, witches, ghosts, they are like universal recognized symbols of Halloween, right? So why not incorporating them in your Halloween designs? Scary good campaign may require a bit more creativity just because your customers will receive ton of emails like this on October 31st. So you have to do something different to stand out. But orange and black are recognized as the official colors of Halloween. Witches, ghosts, zombies, black cats, all that memorabilia. You know, it’s always a good idea to spice your campaigns up a little bit around the holidays. One fun stuff, that one fun way to celebrate Halloween is also doing a sale. And again, you don’t have to sell horror movie stuff or costumes or candy to participate in this holiday. Maybe you can do something as little as like offering up some playful mystery. That’s actually what we’ve done. Last year with one of my clients, we offered like a mystery discount. So for the customer to learn what the discount code is, they had to actually copy it from, from the email and then go to the checkout, apply it at the checkout and only then they knew what basically the coupon code was or like the discount code was. Just be careful not to engage in any tactics that might be a bit like misleading or scammy. Keep it playful, keep it consistent with trick or treat theme. So you can do something like, you can put like a trick or treat in the header and then say something like, hey, here’s your mystery coupon. Enter on the my cart page to reveal your discount code. Something as simple as that. I mean, it’s a silly little idea, but Halloween is a great time to gamify your emails, right? So if you have some technology, you can also do like a scavenger hunt emails or you can, you can maybe do like a wheel with the discounts, right? But it all requires a bit more coding. If you don’t want to do any like extensive coding or any like fancy technology use, right? You can do something as simple as like literally given a little playful mystery discount. So yeah, this episode was short and sweet. That’s what we have for you guys this month. I know October is getting busier and busier. For all of us in e commerce, especially those of you who’ve started preparing for Black Friday Cyber Monday. And you guys, if you haven’t started planning your Black Friday Cyber Monday yet, definitely check out flowium.com/holiday because basically here we have a free book that you can download to your device. It’s about Black Friday Cyber Monday Holiday email marketing guide. We gathered all of the exciting, tried and true strategies that we’ve tested over the years. We’ve gathered them and we put them in this book. You can also get a paperback version if you want. This is what we’ve done for you guys so you can start preparing preparing for the holidays as soon as you can. And there is no such thing as too soon when it comes to preparing for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Anyways, this episode was short and sweet. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned something new. And yeah, come back next week because we have started this Black Friday Cyber Monday marathon. So next week we will be talking about some of the secrets of successful Black Friday Cyber Monday in 2022. Definitely. You don’t want to miss that. Thank you so much for listening and I hope to see you here next week. Bye.