It seems like every holiday season we see companies explore new and creative ways to make their email campaigns stand out from the competition.

This year is proving to be no different. Recently Neiman Marcus Group has made its presence known in inboxes around the world by using large animated GIFs to capture user attention and generate response.

While this marks a new development for Neiman, who have traditionally featured static imagery in their emails, animated GIFs themselves have been around pretty much since the creation of World Wide Web.

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The holidays are a time of goodwill, cheer, and full email inboxes. During this time of year, many email marketers struggle to find the correct balance between sending too many emails during the holidays (and therefore experiencing high unsubscribe and abuse complaints) and not sending enough emails (and seeing stagnant sales as a result). I recently saw a Zappos.com campaign that does a great job at helping to solve this issue – they notified their email subscribers about what they can expect to see in their inbox from Zappos.com this holiday season.

This fresh yet simple email explains when Zappos.com will begin their increased holiday email schedule. It also explains on which days the subscriber should expect to receive emails, and then reminds the subscriber to keep Zappos.com in mind for their gift purchasing needs.

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According to the latest report from Experian Simmons, two-thirds of American households use coupons, and a vast majority of them (87 percent) use them to save money. Although 70 percent of coupon-using households still obtain their coupons from newspapers, the Internet is a growing coupon source. Over the last three years, the number of households that get their coupons online has increased by 46 percent.

Taking Simmons’ findings into account, it should come as no surprise that customers are much more likely to make a purchase when offered a coupon via email. This finding and several others were confirmed in Experian Cheetahmail’s recent white paper, The coupon report: Benchmark data and analysis for email marketers, which examined the performance of emails with coupons redeemable online and those with coupons to be printed and redeemed in-store. The businesses that participated in Experian CheetahMail’s study had a 64 percent average increase in revenue per email, as well as increases in all other transaction metrics. In addition, average order values and transaction rates increased by six percent and 48 percent respectively.

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With the winter holiday season heading our way, candy consumption will surely rise. Experian Simmons reviewed data from its Spring 2009 Kids Study: Full Year and its National Consumer Study to gain insight on Americans who are most likely to consume candy, as well as what types of candy they prefer. Key findings from the analysis include:

• Seventy-five percent of all U.S. Adults say they eat chocolate or hard candy.
• Ninety-six percent of American children ages 6 to 11 say they eat chocolate or hard candy with little difference across age groups. Older kids, though, indulge more frequently than their younger friends.
• Specifically, kids ages 10 and 11 are 16 percent more likely than the average kid to say that they eat 6 or more servings of candy per month. Young children ages 6 and 7 who are most reliant on their parents for their candy supply are the least likely to have 6 or more servings a month.

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To date, more than 21 million users have the ability to check their email on Apple’s iPhone, but how do these emails render? Here are some iPhone specific guidelines to consider the next time you’re designing an email with a mobile slant.

With a comparatively larger screen than most other mobile devices, the viewable area is still only 480 x 320 pixels in size. Compare this to a normal monitor, which measures at least 1280 x 1024, and suddenly your design has a lot less room to present itself. Since most emails are designed at a width of 700 pixels, the iPhone will automatically shrink the email down by 200% to display the content. This means that your hard-earned email creative has now been reduced to tiny colored dots. Of course, through a choreographed two-finger gesture all of your design can be seen up close, but do you really want your users to take that extra step?

When designing for the iPhone consider the following:

• Set the width of the email to anywhere between 320 and 510 pixels wide. This will ensure your content is clear enough to still be viewed without having to zoom in. If the campaign is geared specifically for iPhone users (e.g. where a new app is available for download), keep the width closer to 320 pixels.
• The above-the-fold area is the part of the email the user will see before having to scroll. On the iPhone, this space is measured at 240 pixels in height. As always, keep the messaging simple and direct with a clear call-to-action.
• Because the iPhone is a wireless device, the download time may vary. More often than not, the user will be inclined to scroll impatiently to the bottom of a current email only to realize it has yet to fully download. To ensure your email will be received in it’s entirety, without delay, consider keeping the graphics to a minimum and use HTML text when possible.

It’s that time of the year again, so without further adieu, let’s talk about everyone’s favorite unofficial holiday, Cyber Monday!

Contrary to popular belief, the term “Cyber Monday” was not coined by an army of scotch drinking Japanese robots from the 1980′s, but rather by Shop.org, the prominent digital retail group who sought to create a sister holiday for Black Friday that focused solely on online commerce. Cyber Monday falls on the first Monday after Thanksgiving and has become more and more recognized over recent years.

While we at Email Responsibly have touched on the topic of Cyber Monday in the past, today it’s time to look forward to see what is in store for Cyber Monday this year.

• In general, we expect to see an overall increase in the number of Cyber Monday and Black Friday mentions (by name) in email campaigns this year. This development comes on the heels of last year’s holiday season in which we witnessed firsthand the increasing usage of the actual term “Cyber Monday” in email campaigns. Furthermore, we expect to see these terms being used earlier, more prevalently and together in the same email – certainly more-so than in prior years.

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