Studies show that I am not alone.

A new white paper from Experian Cheetahmail, The birthday and anniversary report: Benchmark data and analysis for email marketers, illustrates the impact that birthday and anniversary emails can have on your email program.

There are a number of key findings within the report, including the following:

• Total open rates for birthday and anniversary campaigns are 3 times higher than those of mass promotion mailings.
• Transaction rates are five times higher for birthday and anniversary emails than they are for bulk campaigns.
• Birthday mailings sent to all subscribers with known birthdays pull much higher transaction rates and revenue per email than those sent only to select or loyalty members.

I don’t know about you, but on my birthday, I want to be a bit extravagant and spend some money on myself, on decorating my home, or on a good time with some friends!

Here are a few examples of birthday/anniversary emails that have really caught my interest:

This email from Art.com offered me the chance to save some cash on a birthday purchase. In the study, emails that included discounts had the highest transaction rates and revenue per email of all the birthday mailings measured.

When it’s my birthday, I can’t afford forgetting to pamper myself. Aveda celebrated my birthday week by offering free gifts as a sign of their appreciation. According to the study, birthday campaigns such as these — mailed weekly or daily — had 40% higher transaction rates than those mailed monthly.

It’s always best to spend birthdays celebrating with friends. Sands Casino-Resort got my attention and really captured the birthday spirit with photo of a cake and the promise of good time. Our report doesn’t have data on the impact of cake imagery on email performance, but if I had to guess, I would say it helps!

Have fun with birthday and anniversary emails. Use these special occasions to connect with your customers, enhance their engagement with your brand, and increase your sales.

Taking a look at the data from the report, there are a number of relevant tidbits that merit a quick shout-out:

• Email’s “eco-friendly” reputation may not hold as much sway with environmentally-conscious customers as you thought, so don’t cancel the print catalogs just yet.
  “Surprising to many, Behavioral Greens, which are the group of consumers that are most green aware according to Experian Simmons, account for nearly half of all catalog purchases.”
• Shorter really is sweeter when it comes to email subject lines during the holidays.
  “All industries with the exception of consumer products and services experienced the highest open rates when using subject lines of 25 characters or less last year.”

• Email and search still drive the most traffic to retail sites, but keep an eye on additional traffic from social networks.
  “Last December, search engines and email were the top referral sources for retailers, but social networking referred nearly five percent of traffic, a rate higher than portal front pages.”
• The economy will continue to be a factor in online marketing strategies this holiday season.
  “In 2008, searches for the term ‘layaway’ jumped as consumer awareness increased. Layaway programs effectively drove early purchases with the peak for search-term variations that included ‘layaway’ taking place last year during the five weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.”

Have a closer look at these findings and many more by downloading the report in full from the Experian Marketing Services’ website. Now start digging out those old tree ornaments, break out the egg nog and get marketing!

Let’s see if you can guess the result of one of the questions asked in the survey regarding email marketing.

And the answer is…

44.7%!

Nearly half of the email marketers surveyed do not capture subsribers’ preferences during the registration process. This is a clear sign that some marketers are still not leveraging the channel’s rapid technological advancements to their full potential. The good news is that 52.6% of email marketers would like to improve customer profiling and analytics this year, more than any other category. There are good reasons to do so, as was recently proven by outdoor specialty retailer, Eastern Mountain Sports. The company experienced a $13,711  increase in revenue directly attributable to their preference launch within 30 days of deployment. In addition, almost ten thousand unique subscribers updated their email profiles within the same time period. To read more about the implementation and results of this program, click here. And for more trends and tips covering the digital media landscape, download our newly released 2009 Digital marketer: Benchmark and trend report.