Email Marketing Ideas to Stand Out This March

With the winter holidays behind us and spring in the air, we dare you to refresh your email marketing campaigns. People are getting more emails than ever, according to Statista, so don’t use last years’ emails and don’t do what everyone else is doing. There are plenty of opportunities to communicate with your audience in March and we will give you some ideas and tools to help you stand out. 

How to Create an Efficient Email Marketing Campaign in March

Before we go into campaign ideas, let’s make sure you follow a few steps to send a successful newsletter in 2021:

• audience segmentation according to gender, location, previous behaviors etc.;
• message personalization, depending on the segment;
• professional design, highlighting the products;
• A/B testing and MVT to find out what messages, images and buttons work best;
• results analysis: open rates, CTR, bounce rates and unsubscribes, but also website tracking, especially for eCommerce websites;
• newsletter optimization.

Audience Segmentation and Message Personalization

Studies have shown time and time again that segmentation and personalization are great ways to increase campaign efficiency. For example, Experian has found that personalized emails have open rates 29% higher and clickthrough rates 41% higher than the same newsletter sent to the entire list without personalization. So don’t skip this step. 

Spring Newsletter

Warm weather, birds singing, flowers blooming – all great reasons to love spring. Why not add another one to the list? Like great discounts, free delivery and a beautiful newsletter that brightens people’s day. 

Celebrate spring with an email marketing campaign that combines useful information with tempting offers. Here are three examples of spring newsletter templates that you can find on the email marketing platform NewsMAN:

Are there contacts in your list who have not engaged with your email campaigns in a while? Here’s your chance to try to reactivate them. Send them a gift, such as a voucher, a discount code, a free consultation or free trial, without asking for anything in return. According to the reciprocity principle, people who receive a small favor are likely to respond with a positive action.

Women’s Day Newsletter: Experience Over Product

Flowers, jewelry, skincare products and perfumes are frequently gifted on March 8, when the world celebrates Women’s Day. This year, let’s not talk about products, but about experiences. Experiences create memories and clients will associate your brand with beautiful moments spent with their loved ones. 

Help your clients give their wives, mothers and daughters an unforgettable day. Here is an example of an email sequence, that you can use for your 8th March campaign (but can also replicate for any of the other holidays discussed in this article):

1. Education email. Start by sending them useful information, such as “How to create a unique day, on a budget”, “What flowers to gift on March 8 and what they symbolize”, “How to choose the perfect perfume” etc.

2. Storytelling. Nothing engages audiences like well told stories. Talk to your mother, friends and colleagues and come up with valuable content: “Three women talk about their favorite Mother’s Day gift”, “It was the best Mother’s Day ever!”, “The best Women’s Day gift is free”. You can also ask your subscribers to send you their March 8 stories and share them with their permission.

3. Engagement. Convince people to engage with you and they are more likely to do this again in the future, according to the consistency principle. Ask a question, provide a discount code as motivation, make them curious to click, use a wheel-of-fortune pop up or any other idea you have. Just avoid clickbait. 

4. Inspiration/motivation. Make women feel strong and appreciated with an empowering message. You can send it on March 8 or a few days before. Here are two examples:

If you’d rather send a more traditional Women’s Day/Mother’s Day newsletter, here are a few March 8 newsletter templates that you can easily customize: 

More good news: you can send up to 5000 free emails for a maximum of 1000 subscribers, so you can test the newsletter platform NewsMAN before uploading your entire list. 

5. Offer email. Announce the sale in a newsletter that makes it easy for them to take action. Remember to personalize the message according to the audience segment. If you’re sending an eCommerce newsletter, you can quickly design it using the drag & drop email editor, the predefined blocks, responsive images and all the other automations offered by NewsMAN.

6. Abandoned cart automation. Did you know that, on average, 70% of buyers abandon the shopping cart? (source) That’s a lot of lost opportunities. Fortunately, it’s easy to win some of them back with abandoned cart emails, which you can send automatically. Personalize emails with elements such as “first name” and provide extra motivation by highlighting the benefits and adding discount codes. 

7. Follow up. Ask for feedback and follow up with more interesting information, such as top March 8 sales or with post-sales vouchers. Remember: communication does not end with the offer. 

Now that we’ve covered one of the most popular spring holidays worldwide, let’s dig into more opportunities to send awesome email marketing campaigns. 

International Writers’ Day

Since 1986, on March 3 the world celebrates International Writers’ Day, a great time for online libraries or educational websites to communicate with subscribers. Here are some ideas:

• educational newsletter about the importance of reading;
• a resource list for those interested in improving their writing skills;
• a special discount for your subscribers’ favorite authors; 
• a general discount or free delivery. 

Your newsletter could look like one of the below, selected from over 900 email templates available on NewsMAN. 

Mardi Gras Newsletter: Party at Home

Mardi Gras or “Fat Tuesday” is celebrated on March 5, but this year people won’t be able to go to parties and parades as usual, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So why not help them celebrate at home? Here are some newsletter ideas:

• delicious recipes to prepare a feast at home;
• impress the neighbours: decoration ideas for the home and garden;
• a parade of discounts;
• free delivery for takeout food;
• education about fasting and its health benefits/risks. 

Jewel Day Newsletter

Jewel Day is celebrated on March 13 and is an excellent occasion to buy something special for a loved one. 

If you own a jewelry and accessories store, send an elegant email to remind people of why women (and men, why not?) love jewels and make them feel precious. Give them gift ideas and include a discount code. 

St. Patrick’s Day 

Celebrated on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day is one of crazy parties all over the world – or it used to be, before Covid-19. That doesn’t mean you can’t send a great newsletter. Give them ideas on how to celebrate at home and offer discounts to cheer them up. 

Here are a few St. Patrick’s Day newsletter ideas and designs:

• educational: cocktail recipes, decorations, history of St. Patrick;
• discounts: on all green clothes, on party outfits, on fresh green juices;
• it’s your lucky day: general sale, sale on items added to the favorites list, free delivery etc.

World Sleep Day Newsletter

Furniture store, wellness center or alternative therapies? These are just a few of the businesses that can send a newsletter on World Sleep Day, on March 19. 

Talk about the importance of a good nights’ sleep, about the science of sleep, sleep in different age categories and other useful information, depending on your products and services. Use the official World Sleep Day website for inspiration. 

Here are a few newsletter examples to get you going: 

International Happiness Day Newsletter

Just the name of this holiday brings a smile, doesn’t it? Celebrated on March 20, International Happiness Day is a good time to talk to your subscribers about their smile, for example, if you’re a dentist, or about how jogging releases endorphins, if you have a sport shop. Make it easy for them to shop with an eCommerce newsletter, as described in the 8 March section above. 

Whatever celebration you choose, free your creativity and don’t forget to add some interactive elements in the mix, such as gifs and countdown clocks.

Other March Email Marketing Campaigns

Want more ideas? Here are other holidays that might fit your business:

• March 10 – International Awesomeness Day (also Chuck Norris’ birthday)
• March 12 – Alfred Hitchcock Day
• March 14 – Pi Day
• March 15 – World Consumer Rights Day;
• March 20
  • International Astrology Day; 
  • World’s Storytelling Day;
  • French Language Day;
• March 21 – International Poetry Day
• March 22 – World Water Day
• March 26 – “Invent Your Own Holiday” Day

Why not challenge subscribers to invent their own holiday? Share the best ideas in your campaign and on social media. 

Create an email marketing calendar for March and plan your newsletters. If you run multiple campaigns, make sure you don’t send emails too often to the same audience segments. Think of a flow that makes sense from a brand and communication perspective. Also, don’t forget to alternate promotions with educational content. 

Even if email marketing campaigns are seasonal, communication should be planned and continually optimized, especially that clients will be waiting for offers for the more popular March holidays. They are expecting personalized, relevant messages, that both inform and surprise them. 

We hope you found plenty of ideas to create successful newsletters in March. If you need an email marketing solution that helps you in every step of your way with intuitive features, eCommerce optimizations and detailed reports, give NewsMAN.com a try. Start for free and see for yourself how easy it is to design beautiful newsletters.