 We're talking about how to prepare your email subscriber list for the holiday season here on The Journey. Isn't it hard to believe that the holiday season is upon us again? It feels like just a few weeks ago we were digging out our sandals just for the summer. Well, it's time to start pulling out the winter gear and now it's time to repair your holiday email subscriber list. But before you gear up to send out your Black Friday messages, let's get your email list and email strategy ready for holiday sales with these five tips. Same with clean up your email subscriber list. The first thing to do to get your email list ready for the holiday promotions is to clean up and remove any inactive subscribers. Think of it like doing a deep clean before you start putting up the holiday decorations and start by segmenting your list into people who haven't opened in more than 90 days and if you haven't emailed in more than 90 days, well then you'll need to start with people who haven't opened in the 90 days before that. It could even be up to a year since they last opened. Next, you'll send that group of subscribers a special series of emails to ask if they still want to hear from you. Send at least three re-engagement messages to the segment of the list, removing anyone who did click to stay on the list from that segment. And after sending those three emails, they've never clicked to stay on the list, remove them. This might be painful if you're focused on the list size, but a smaller sized list actually helps with your engagement and deliverability. You're paying to send these emails that are ending up in the spams folder in trash bins, all while hurting your deliverability to the people who really want to see your messages. Time to let them go. That's right Nealey, and it's time to update and fine tune your automations. Set aside some time to review all of your running automations and transactional messages to ensure that they're up to date and they're helping to drive improved conversion rates. A good example of an automation or funnel is your welcome series or an upsell series of emails after someone buys a smaller product. And when you're reviewing these, just make sure that they've got relevant dates and offers that align with your upcoming holiday promotions. Oh, and don't forget to check your links. Exactly. And while you're doing that, rethink your call to actions within your transactional emails. Transactional messages are emails that are sent based on someone's activity. The difference is that they are related to their specific shopping and purchasing activities. Transactional emails include order confirmation messages, shipping confirmations, and delivery confirmations. It can also include abandon cart emails. And in these messages, you can include cross-sells, so like other products that customers who have purchased this have also bought this that gets me every time, and upsells including accessories and services related to their new product purchases. And speaking of dates, another thing you'll need to do to get your email marketing strategy ready for the holiday season is to mark important dates on your calendar. Including anything you need to do for those dates like update messages in your automations and transactional messages. As an example, in your abandoned cart email, you may add some text or graphic with your shipping deadlines for holiday delivery, simple as a gentle nudge to remind someone that they don't have a lot of time if they're planning on gift giving. After that initial deadline is passed, you'll want to update that text and graphics to promote expedited shipping. And if all the shipping deadlines have passed, then you may want to promote a gift card instead. And when the holidays are over, don't forget to take all of those mentions back out of your automated emails and transactional messages. And then you really want to make a plan for the holiday season. So speaking of using a calendar, also be marking important dates on your calendar for your business operations too. You'll be less stressed about meeting your deadlines and your list will get well put together emails with plenty of time to make their shopping deadlines. One of the most important things to anticipate this time of year are your last minute shoppers, i.e. me. You'll need a factor in processing and production and shipping time for all your shipping methods. Alright, you can use these tips for any holiday that resonates with your business from Valentine's Day to Mother's Day and beyond. Happy holidays indeed! Today, your journey doesn't end here, we have over 200 videos for you to keep on watching and learning. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for watching. This is The Journey.