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Similar to the 2010 holiday season, 78% of holiday email campaigns are being sent between midnight and noon (compared to 77% in 2010).  Is this the best time to send? A recent Experian CheetahMail analysis indicates that it is probably not.

Lunchtime and afternoon hours present good opportunities to remind customers of deadlines and key offers.  Looking at the performance of mailings with ‘urgency’ in their subject lines (including the words ‘limited’, ‘last’, ‘ends’, final’, ‘hours’, ‘left’, ‘today only’, ‘hurry’, or ‘urgent’), a recent Experian CheetahMail analysis finds that that campaigns sent between noon and 4:00pm make up 11% of the volume, but generate 15% of the revenue.  A similar result is seen for campaigns sent between 4:00 and 8:00pm, which have 6% of the volume and 9% of the revenue.

What time are you sending? 

What time are you sending?  Consider running time-of-day testing, it’s not too late!  Who knows what new revenue opportunity you may be able to find.

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 Holiday Season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.

As the push for last minute sales drove volumes higher, email volume surged 34 percent from Dec 21 to Dec 31 last year. Looking at trends for 2011 thus far, Experian CheetahMail is predicting this increase to be even higher.

As featured in a new white paper: The Happy Holiday Inbox: Last minute tips for spreading the cheer with email this year, the biggest trends include:

• Mobile and social galore: Links to social networks and mobile viewing are amplifying email marketing promotions. Fifteen percent of email openers read emails on a mobile phone, and that number is growing.   Additionally, forty percent of online consumers who use social networking sites plan to use Facebook for feedback from family/friends to help make a decision about a product, according to a survey by PriceGrabber.com.

• Touting and shouting shipping deadlines: Including deadlines to provide urgency, and directions that encourage customers to act fast, is more prevalent than ever.  An analysis of last season’s campaigns confirms that on average, shipping deadlines improve email transaction performance by 22 percent.

• Creativity shines: The 2011 holiday season is showcasing some of the trendiest and most appealing looks email has ever sported.   And it’s no wonder – compared to email campaigns without animated gifs, ninety percent have significantly higher transaction rates (60 percent) and 118 percent more revenue per email than the campaigns without the animation.

To learn more, download the white paper today.

Through week 7 of this holiday season, the percentage of campaigns offering 10% and 20% have decreased, while those offering 30% and 50% off are on the rise in comparison to 2010, according to the latest analysis by Experian CheetahMail.

Interestingly, ‘Buy One Get One’ (BOGO) offers are generating lower transaction rates and revenue per email  than 25% or 50% off campaigns. Are consumers more drawn to 25% and 50% off offers –which essentially are the same thing as BOGO half-off (25%) and BOGO free (50%)?  It sure seems that way!

If you are an email marketing considering a BOGO offer this holiday season, I’d recommend testing both types of offers in your subject lines to see what works best for you.

Happy mailing!

Not just yet. Experian CheetahMail’s latest holiday analysis indicates that consumers are browsing, but not yet purchasing for holiday 2011. As of this past weekend (November 5-6), open rates are higher than last holiday season, but clicks and transaction rates remain low – indicating that consumers are still browsing. If you are anxious to ring those conversions in well before Peak Week, here are a few tactics to consider:

• Flash Sales – Overall, Flash Sales generate a 35 percent lift in transaction rates over regular promotional mailings. This is noteworthy given the fact that all mailings with offers in subject lines have an average lift in transaction rates of 16 percent — less than half of the increase Flash Sale emails provide.
• Free shipping promotions – a tried and true holiday tactic that works. Made sure to advertise free shipping in the subject line, as well as prominently in the body of the email.
• Social sharing – Amplify any new product or promotion via social networks by enabling sharing anywhere and everywhere you can. In your emails – of course, but what about including sharing links in your online catalogs, or banner ad landing pages?

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 Holiday Season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.

While many of us find McLovin’s attempt to skirt the local liquor store attendant with a fake ID in Superbad humorous, a ruse of your brand via email is absolutely no laughing matter. In a phishing attack, a Sender attempts to trick a recipient into divulging confidential information under the pretense of a trustworthy brand entity. When such an attack happens, the impression generated by consumers can spell tragedy for the actual brand.

One of best ways to prevent phishing is to be proactive by employing domain name authentication. Authentication serves to protect your brand by providing a valid identity on a sending domain. Once authenticated, receivers then use it as a foundation for applying reputation and accreditation as well as a tool for more accurate filtering. CheetahMail is happy to announce that we have rolled out DKIM authentication behalf of all our clients. Top global webmail providers such as AOL, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail & Yahoo are now incorporating DKIM into their filtering algorithm as a way to establish domain-based reputations for senders.

DKIM is an update from the next previously implemented Domain Keys authentication which was introduced by Yahoo in 2004. To employ DKIM, the Sender must insert coding containing two keys into the header section of the message, so that each message is authenticated. The coding contains a private key, which is undisclosed and exclusive to the sending domain, and as well as a public key, which is broadly accessible via the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is a human-friendly system of associating domain names with IP addresses and is used by Receivers as validation of the Sender. To complete the process, the Receiver recovers the signer’s public key using the DNS and then verifies the DKIM signature via the private key.

While in the past, reputation was for the most part limited to IPs, DKIM now sets the stage for domain-based reputation. This is an important step in the fight against phishing as spammers are no longer able to use disposable and transient IPs and hide behind a made-up domain.

It’s important to note that IP-based reputation is not going away, it just means that domain-based reputation should be considered an enhancement to reputation establishment. Of course, continuing to utilize best practices such as mailing to a clean, engaged subscriber base will allow for both positive IP and domain reputation as well as good deliverability.  For more information on the advantages and challenges domain reputation brings about, please see Domain-based Reputation Explained.

At Experian CheetahMail, we recently conducted an analysis on Flash Sale email campaigns, and found out some pretty compelling stuff! 

The study indicates that Flash Sale emails have more than 2x the increase in transaction rates compared to other offers. They are not ‘just another promotion,’ they perform better.

Email is a key traffic driver for advertising Flash Sales. It represents 18 percent of the referrals to Flash Sales websites — higher than social (13 percent) and search (11 percent). Some of the other discoveries include:

• A couple hours is all you really need: Three hour Flash Sales have the best transaction-to-click rates, which are 59 percent higher, as well as the highest transaction rates (.14%).
• Flash Sales tend to perform better in the evening: Transaction rates are 23% higher for evening Flash Sales compared to Lunchtime sales, and revenue per email is 30% higher in the evening.
• There are tried and true best practices: If you can’t test sending a Flash Sale later in the day, test sending a reminder to those that opened and clicked but did not convert.

 What I found most interesting was how well evening Flash Sales perform. Maybe people are working more and shopping online less during the day than some friends of mine…

 Click here to learn more.

The winter holidays are all about friends, family and spreading the cheer. For email marketers, this timely connotation translates into opportunity for deeper customer engagement, increased response and higher return on investment through the use of the viral and ever-popular “friends and family” campaign.

According to Experian Marketing Services’ new white paper, Spreading the word through friends-and-family emails, there are a few things that email marketers should keep in mind when deploying their friends and family programs this year, including:

• Friends-and-family campaigns are a good choice all year long.
  Friends-and-family emails should become part of your overall promotional playbook. They connect with subscribers and generate more revenue directly, while also providing referrals to potential new email subscribers and customers. These campaigns perform all year long — even during the fiercely competitive and discount-heavy holiday season.
• The words “friends and family” are important.
  Using the words “Friends and Family” will enhance the performance of email campaigns deployed by the same brand offering identical discount values. Ensure that the three words “Friends and Family” appear in the subject line and that the messaging is clearly promoted in the body of the email.
• Enable sharing.
  To increase the potential of reaching new and existing customers who might not have received the initial email campaign, maintain sharing features in their usual location (i.e., forward to a friend, share) while also adding larger call-outs that enable sharing within the body of the email, near the offer. Consumers are very accustomed to sharing friends-and-family offers, so it’s important to make it easy for them to do so.

Keep these tips in mind and spread the word this holiday season – the payoff can translate into a very happy New Year!

To read the new white paper Spreading the word through friends-and-family emails, click here.