Holiday gift guide emails can be a super useful tool to get your customers attention this time of year. They offer an easy way for subscribers to see different products or services you offer, all in one spot. Plus, if you’re offering any kind of discount or promotion you can make it simple for them to take advantage of.

According to Experian Marketing Services, businesses had a 48% higher transaction rate for gift guide emails when compared to other promotional mailings. Wow! Does the word “guide” make you want to run out of the room? Well, putting together a gift guide email is easier than you think. You don’t have to actually create a physical guide, just group products together in your email using a theme.

You can break down the content of your email any way you like, or any way your customers might respond to best. There are lots of ideas:

• By price – Create groupings of products based on price, like under $25, under $50 and under $100. Since people usually have a price range in mind for gift giving, this makes it easier for your customers to find what they need.
• By gender – Breaking an email guide down by gender is a popular way to group products, again, this makes it easier for your customers to find gifts for certain people on their list.
• By interest – If you offer products that could be used by a wide range of interests, use this to group items in your guide.

And you don’t have to stick with just one option, shake things up by doing a couple in different emails. Here are some of our favorite email examples:

1. Use a color – Tory Burch grouped this email by a color – gold, and then showed products that fall into that color scheme.

2. Use a theme – UncommonGoods created a gift guide email using items that can keep you warm.

3. Make it fun – And if your business is not retail, you can still use this idea, like the American Red Cross did in this example. They offer different options for donating, and each level shows different types of gifts. Fun idea to get people donating for their cause.

To create your own email gift guide in your VerticalResponse account, select a template. We have two examples below:

These examples were found in the New Template and Business Template sections respectively, however we also have holiday themed templates. Then select the products you want to highlight and how you want to group them for the guide. Make sure you have images to help entice your customers to buy, and remember to link the images to your site! A holiday gift guide email can be a boon to your business. Spend a little time thinking about what gift groups your customers would benefit from the most, and then put together an email to invite them to shop.

Have you used an email gift guide before? What worked best for you? Share away in the comments!

© 2013 – 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.