Broadcast Email Marketing: Amazon's 12 Days of Christmas Deals

This post illustrates how Amazon uses Christmas-themed pre-buzz tent poling to broadcast emails over 12 consecutive days of deals from December 4th to 15th in 2016. On Dec 2, Amazon announced its upcoming 12 days of deals to its associates under the Amazon affiliate program. They use the catchy email tagline 'Get inspired for holiday gift ideas during Amazon's 12 Days of Deals even'.

Inside that email, they allow associates to see the full list of product types and corresponding sale date. This allows Amazon associates to plan their own sales according to their product interests.

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As promised, on the 2nd day after the initial announcement, the broadcast email sequence begins; delivering daily early-morning emails into inboxes of associates. This continues for duration of the 12-day event. The tagline change according to the deals of the day.

Each daily broadcast email offers 1) a list of the day's deals and even 2) the theme of the upcoming 3 days. Below is an example from day 5 on December 8.  

 

When Amazon associates click the landing page link (provided in the email), this is what they see. As highlighted below, Amazon applied the technique of urgency / scarcity by placing a countdown next to each reduced price.

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Anyone clicking on the 'All 12 Days' button (as seen on the top of the landing page) sees the following on day 5. The landing pages for the previous days are not live links.

RELATED CONTENT

• AutoResponse Email Marketing (How to plan an email sequence from start to finish)
• Tent pole Marketing
• Google Product Listing Ads / PLAs
• Craigslist advertising

Send segmented emal broadcasts

Broadcasts are 1-off emails to everyone within a group. Segmenting your entire mailing list adds value to each group of leads or customers because the broadcast emails are more customized.

Segment your leads and customers based on differences that will translate into more meaningful communication from the perspective of your lead or customer. The added value of segmentation increases with the extent of personal appeal a product has. For instance, if you have a department store, you are likely to have greater success by sending email broadcasts about sale on pink dresses to teen girls (than men who enjoy working with tools). The basis of segmentation is worth considering obviously because, if you are niche marketing, you might segment on the basis of sales funnel stages and customer lifetime value (CLV) as below. You might even sell in a niche that allows you to segment even further on multiple bases of segmentation simultaneously. In this case, you will start segmenting based on the most critical basis, as illustrated below.

Group A membership: Your leads with $0 customer lifetime value

The members may be further divided by psychographics. 

• Message:
• See our blog about product X 

Group B membership: Low ticket customers

• Message: We see see you've gotten X, have a look at our other product Y [an upsell]

Group C membership: High ticket customers

• We see you have bought [premium product]. Here is content to help you use the product better. We would love to hear your thoughts. [reviews]

Some bases on which segmentation often occur include the following. Regardless of how you segment your email broadcasts, your message should reflect what adds value to the segment as a whole. 

• B2B vs B2C. 
• Stage in the sales funnel
• customer life time value

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CONTENT RELATED TO SEGMENTED EMAIL BROADCAST

• Broadcast email marketing: an Amazon case study: '12 Days of Deals' before Christmas
• Autoresponse email sequences: a step by step guide