Viewing all posts categorized as 'Industry Trends'

It is refreshing to see how many companies and email marketers have forgone their normal creative and rigorous mailing schedules to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti. Some organization simply added a link or image asking for help, while others dedicated entire emails and product lines to help Haitians in need. Over the past few weeks there have been a variety of help Haiti emails. Organizations such as Omaha Steaks, Coldwater Creek, Buy.com, Ralph Lauren, Sport Chalet, Overstock.com plus many more have shown their support.

Here are some creative and subject line examples:

Coldwater Creek
Subject Line: Join us in Haiti’s recovery effort.

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The numbers are in, and it seems that this year’s Cyber Monday frenzy consisted mostly of the same old song and dance that we’ve seen in the past. (This, of course, is in addition to the trends we commented on earlier regarding Black Friday email spikes) Based on the analysis of 170 clients across all industries between 2006 – 2009 for the time period of the Sunday before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, email marketers sent Cyber Monday promotions (surprise!) earlier and more often than ever before.

Ok, so maybe the headlines are not such a shock to the system. But looking at the overall data in the context of Thanksgiving week and Black Friday, we do see some nuanced trends worth noting alongside the larger stories that we’re all familiar with by now. These trends include:

• Overall volume growth. There was a 28 percent increase in email volume from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the end of Cyber Monday. This has been a consistent theme throughout past Cyber Mondays.
• Early-bird catches the worm. The lifts in volume on the days just before Cyber Monday were even higher than those before Black Friday, further solidifying the trend of earlier promotional mentions and previews of shopping specials before the actual promotions begin.
• Rise and shine. Similar to Black Friday, over 50 percent of emails were sent prior to 8am EST. In related news, how much longer can Folgers brand coffee rightfully claim to be “the best part of waking up?”

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The dust has settled from Black Friday, and the results are as interesting as you’d expect at this time of year. The big holiday push kicked into high gear over the course of last week, and all of the retail hoopla translated into more marketing mania than ever before.

Based on the analysis of 170 clients across all industries between 2006 – 2009, Experian CheetahMail has made the following determinations about the week of Black Friday:

• Email volumes increased by 24 percent for the week of Thanksgiving 2009  as compared to the same week in 2008.
• The trend of emailing more leading up to Black Friday continued in 2009 just as it had in 2008. However, the volume totals for several of these days — the Sunday, Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, along with Thanksgiving Day — were much higher in 2009 than last year.
• 50 percent of emails were sent prior to 8 am each day. Of the dates examined during this time period, Black Friday had the most even distribution of send time between midnight and noon.
• Black Friday itself saw almost identical email volumes as last year, dropping roughly 1% from 2008.

Meanwhile at Experian Hitwise, our source for consumer and competitive insight, we’ve seen how specialty websites focusing solely on Black Friday sales have played a significant role in driving traffic to retail sites. Comparing the week before Thanksgiving in 2009 vs. 2008, Hitwise saw the following:

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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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Newsletters and standard promotional messages are by definition more broad in their overall appeal, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t add extra value in the form of relevant informational content.

Looking at three recent messages in my inbox, it’s clear to me that retailers and media companies are not afraid to go the extra mile for their email subscribers. In each of the four examples below, we see how companies are enhancing standard promotions and newsletters by providing further insight and expertise that goes beyond just product display and calls-to-action.

CHEFS Catalog adds a neat little bonus feature to their promotional emails in the form of a related dinner recipe that makes use of the products featured in the email.

By including the “On The Menu” recipe link above-the-fold, CHEFS boldly invites customers to see how their products add value (in the form of delicious food, no less!) to their customers’ kitchens in a practical manner. It’s a great way to explain how a technical cooking product works without getting technical at all – you just show them what they can make with it and tell them how they can do it easily themselves!

Extra kudos to the CHEFS team for making the recipe landing pages insightful as well; once a clicker lands on the recipe page, the landing page links to related cooking products needed to make that particular recipe.

Brooks Brothers takes a similar approach, offering a promotion on their neckties and then coupling that offer with a tutorial on “How to Tie a Tie.”

It’s a simple trick that allows Brooks Brothers to play the role of a friend or informational resource rather than just a vendor of goods. This is a classic “value add” message that goes a long way towards improving customer relationships. I’d also be willing to bet that their knot-tying tutorial micro-site is a great way for Brooks Brothers to introduce their brand to younger potential customers who are looking for a last-minute guide to tying a necktie before the prom.

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Crate & Barrel certainly seems to have the bases covered when it comes to implementing product ratings and reviews into their customer lifecycle program – both online and offline. Not only do they send post-purchase emails encouraging the customer to submit user reviews of their products, but they also close the loop by accompanying their shipped products with printed reminders to go online and post a review.

The emails are particularly well-done and incoporate a number of ratings and reviews best practices. First and foremost, the emails are dynamically populated with images and links to each individual product page. This attention to detail makes for a seamless transition between email and eCommerce sites. It also helps the user save time by not having to search the Crate & Barrel site for products that they’ve already bought, or spend time racking their brain to remember every item they purchased.

Equally impressive, Crate’s sister brand, CB2, drives traffic to ratings and reviews using offline methods of communication. As you can see from the accompanying photo, each order from CB2 comes with a little printed postcard informing customers where and how they can review their new products online. It’s a simple, clear and friendly way of driving customer response across channels.
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Share-with-your-network (SWYN) is a relatively new phenomenon in the email marketing space. SWYN includes links to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg etc. Some email pundits believe that SWYN is slowly but surely putting an end to forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) functionality in email. I personally don’t believe this is the case. What is clear so far is that forward-to-a-friend remains a fixture among most email marketing campaigns.

The email marketing agency Smith-Harmon found the following in their report FTAF vs. SWYN – The State of Email Sharing:

“There’s been some murmuring in the industry about the death of forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) lately because of the emergence of share-with-your-network (SWYN) functionality. Unlike FTAF, which is generally one-to-one sharing, SWYN allows subscribers to share an email’s content with all their friends on a social network. Shown to be considerably more viral than FTAF, SWYN also avoids entanglements with CAN-SPAM rules. Despite all those advantages, FTAF enjoys a four-to-one adoption rate over SWYN among the top online retailers. While only 12% of retailers use SWYN, 48% use FTAF—and FTAF adoption is up from 44% in 2006.”

Among retailers using individual SWYN links, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular. MySpace and Digg were the third and fourth most popular, with Delicious, ThisNext and StyleHive seeing minimal usage.

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