For retailers, the holiday season is omnipresent. You’re either neck deep in it or you’re preparing for it.

This presentation—which includes supplemental links to research reports, articles, and real-world examples—discusses the 6 things retailers need to work on to get their email programs ready for the upcoming holiday season:

1. Reassessing program goals, because the last thing you want is to achieve all of your goals and discover that you have not achieved success.
2. Getting mobile-friendly, because consumers are way out ahead of retailers on using mobile and it’s time to do some serious catch-up.
3. Optimizing snippet text, because marketers recognize the critical nature of sender names and subject lines, but have neglected this third “sometimes” component of envelope content.
4. Increasing targeting and personalization, because consumers want brands to prove they’re paying attention by delivering content that’s tailored to their individual interests.
5. Building out triggered emails, because the new litmus test for email marketing greatness is: Does the majority of your email marketing revenue and engagement come from triggered emails?
6. Keeping inactivity in check, because while cutting inactives is painful, losing the ability to reach your active subscribers is devastating.

Making progress on each of these priorities between now and October will get your email program in excellent shape for the upcoming holiday season.

6 Retail Email Marketing Priorities for 2015 from Salesforce Marketing Cloud