Last year, 61.7 percent of Canadians celebrated Easter, spending an average of almost $60/person. Sixty percent of Canadian consumers spent their Easter budget on food, candy, and eating out, while 19 percent bought toys.
Easter can be tricky for online retailers because most people shop within a week of the holiday. That said, online shopping overall is massive in Canada and there are still plenty of opportunities to add some eggs to your basket.
“On a seasonally adjusted basis, retail e-commerce sales were up 3.5% to $3.8 billion in January, accounting for 5.7% of total retail trade, compared with 5.5% in December,” according to Statistics Canada.
An effective online marketing strategy is the key to inspiring consumers to order earlier. In my experience, nothing generates more Easter sales than a well-crafted email marketing campaign.
Make it a friendly, helpful reminder to visit your website for a great deal and you’ll have the best chance of increasing sales. Additionally, you can include marketing promotions in your regular newsletter, and/or send out email blasts promoting Easter sales alone.
If you’re an affiliate marketer or blogger, you can feature Easter sales and coupons from your favourite merchant partners.
TIP: As you begin to receive Easter emails from brands, open them up and analyze them. Create an “Examples” folder in your email account. When you find outstanding examples that made you want to click on their links, save them for future reference. I still do this, even after 25 years of online marketing. There is always something to learn in the digital world because it’s in a perpetual state of evolution. If nothing else, it’s a fantastic source of inspiration.
Easter Email Topics
Easter topics can revolve around the most popular activities and purchases for the holiday.
- Easter dinner & baked goods
- Short trips
- Easter parties/events for both adults and children
- Easter décor
- Easter gifts for kids and hosts
- Spring
- Renewal
- Family & tradition
- Saving money on related products or activities
If you’re comfortable with it, any holiday is a great time to get a little personal. Share your own Easter memories, traditions, favourite family recipes, or a story of personal renewal.
Easter Email Themes
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You’ll find Easter templates on the better email platforms, such as this one from Brevo:
You can also get themes and images from your favourite photo sources, but make sure they include the rights required for use in advertising. We use DepositPhotos for inexpensive Easter photos and clipart with clear licensing conditions. Images should be optimized to keep the email file size small, but don’t reduce them so much that they look bad.
If you don’t want to go all-in on the graphic illustrations, simply use pastel colours for a subtle hint of Easter and Spring.
Keep email subject lines direct, so subscribers instantly realize there is an Easter deal or other content they need to see right away. Use an Easter emoji in your subject line to make the holiday content clear at a glance, such as a rabbit head.
Easter Words That Hop
We analyzed 150 email subject lines to select the ‘words that sell’ in the Easter category, and provided a few examples to jumpstart your creativity.
- Easter
- Bunny (Every-bunny, any-bunny)
- Eggs (Egg-static, egg-celent, egg-stra, egg-cite, eggs-plosive, egg-cetera)
- Hop/Hoppy (Hop to our website)
- Sweet (Sweet deals)
- Ears (Grab these deals by the ears)
- Spring
- Hunt (Deal hunt)
- Hatch
- Hide/Hidden (Click here to find the Easter egg deals on our site)
- Basket (This one is especially good for abandoned cart / ‘Easter basket’ emails)
- Carrot (Follow this carrot to get 25% off)
The Email Offer
Easter Deals
Deals are the top reason consumers subscribe to email newsletters or follow brands on social media. Limited time offers can include a countdown timer to encourage immediate action.
Coupons are still wildly popular! They can be created for digital and/or print. Make it a big enough discount to drive them to your website.
The Top 5 Types of Email Coupons for Website Traffic & Sales are:
- Standard coupon
- Subscription coupon
- BOGO (Buy One, Get One Free) Coupon
- Free gift with purchase coupon
- Free shipping coupon
TIP: Don’t forget the expiry date! Not only does it allow you to retain control of when coupons are used, but it also creates a sense of urgency for the recipient to use it.
Strategic discounting can make “crazy deals” profitable, such as loss leaders, discounting stale or slow-moving inventory, and so on.
Easter Giveaways, Contests & Games
Nothing brings website traffic like a giveaway! Whether it’s a contest, draw, or game prize, a chance to win is a powerful motivator to take action (complete with urgency to enter before the deadline). Make sure the prize appeals to your ideal customer so the traffic turns into additional sales.
You can also use giveaways to promote your regular newsletter on social media to increase subscriptions.
Before launching your contest, get everything you’ll need to launch and market it in place. That should include graphics, ad copy, landing page copy, and rules with terms and conditions.
Ensure legal compliance with The Canadian Competition Act. Quebec has it’s own legal requirements for contest administrators, which is why many exclude Quebec.
Free Gift or Shipping
Promote any offers of a free gift with purchase in your emails. It doesn’t have to be an expensive freebie or add to the cost of shipping, people just love getting something free. An Easter treat, consumables like batteries (if the purchased item needs them), or company swag like branded pens or magnets, can do the trick.
Time-limited free shipping can bring in sales too. Shipping can make or break a sale, and the urgency created by a time-limited offer of free shipping makes it even more effective.
TIP: If your target market is Canada, don’t forget to remind shoppers that you’re Canadian in your emails! Many Canadians prefer to buy from Canadian businesses.
Administration
Create special Easter landing pages and digital sales funnels. It’s easy if you use marketing automation tools that lead you through the process, step-by-step. Thrive Themes Funnels offers lots of funnel functionality for small businesses on a tight budget.
Familiarize yourself with CASL to ensure you’re in full compliance with Canada’s anti-spam laws. Use ‘double opt-in’ to protect yourself and consumers (subscriber must confirm subscription via email).
Invest in professional email marketing and newsletter tools. Ours are usually sent through Brevo.
Start Sending!
Whether you sell online as an ecommerce merchant, a blogger, or an affiliate marketer, email is still the most effective marketing tool overall. Bring the best of the above Easter marketing ideas into your email campaigns and it could become one of your most profitable holidays.
Have you ever had a wildly successful Easter email promotion? Please share your experience or questions in the comments below, or join us in the Online Business Canada Facebook group.
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Melody McKinnon is an internet entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in a wide range of online business models, backed by a formal business/marketing education and enhanced by training and mentorship. She has owned or managed both educational and ecommerce websites. Her book, 7 Recession Proof Online Businesses to Start From Home, is available from all major ebook retailers.
Melody has worked with many businesses in a multitude of capacities. She can often be found on CanadianDigitalMedia.com, CanadiansInternet.com, CanadianFamily.net, and AllNaturalPetCare.com, as well as other quality digital publications. Her content has earned reference links from highly-respected websites, magazines and university textbooks.
I’ve never got many Easter sales online and I’m eggcited to give them a try!! Most of my own ideas got some sales but nothing like I hoped. I’m too late for this year really but I’ll be ready for next Easter!!
I’ve been hopping on these Easter marketing ideas all week……plus a few more. Easter sales are eggcellent so far. THANKS!