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Automated marketing for the holidays

In the past, most SMBs would shut down over the holiday period without issue. But these days, many customers expect businesses to be available at any time of the day or night. As a small business owner, how do you take a well-earned break over Christmas and New Year’s while still meeting your customers’ expectations?

This is where automated marketing can help. In a nutshell, automated marketing (or marketing automation as it’s sometimes called) means using tools to engage and connect with customers on your behalf – so you can sit back, relax and let technology do the hard work for you. Try these tips to prepare for the holidays with some help from automated marketing software.

Schedule your social media posts

If you manage social media accounts for your business, you’ll know that posting content and engaging with followers takes time and effort. But the good news is there are lots of great tools available that enable you to easily automate your social media activities.

Recommended automated marketing tools

White Pages Connect – includes a social media scheduler so you can plan and prepare your posts ahead of time.
Hootsuite – a social media scheduling tool (link to scheduling post) that allows you to stay on top of multiple social platforms via a single dashboard.

Regardless of which tool you use, it’s a good idea to schedule posts ahead of time, so you don’t have to worry about them over the holiday period.

Automate your marketing emails

Like social media scheduling tools, most email marketing platforms enable you to prepare and schedule emails to be sent at a later date or when a subscriber takes a specific action, such as putting an item in their cart. For the holiday period, consider planning out your customer emails ahead of time.

These might include:

Seasonal sales and deals
Discount code offers
Post-sign up welcome emails
Appointment reminders

Recommended automated marketing tools

Campaign Monitor – drag-and-drop email marketing software with scheduling and automation functionality.
Mailchimp – an easy‑to‑use email builder with automated marketing and personalised transactional email features.

Update your customer service messaging & business details

Although you might be offline, it doesn’t mean your customers are as well. With this in mind, you want to make sure your customer service messaging and business details are accurate for anyone searching for your business or visiting your website over the holidays.

This includes:

Your holiday opening hours
How customers can contact you
When you’ll be back to business as usual

Recommended automated marketing tools

White Pages Connect – a simple, streamlined point of contact to keep all your business details and messaging up to date across the web.

As with almost any digital tool, automated marketing software can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. If you’re a small business owner looking for a quick and easy way to update your details across the major search engines, apps and maps ahead of the holidays, check out White Pages Connect.