As “Peak Week” approaches and retailers gear up for their most critical holiday shopping period – which Experian Marketing Services has identified as the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday – smart marketers are refining their email strategies in real time. Daniel Schotland, VP of Client Services at Experian CheetahMail, and his team have been analyzing year-over-year trends as well as daily data and have important advice that’s sure to create good cheer with retail marketers. For example, flash sales, friends and family focused emails and other viral marketing programs, are garnering twice the response rates of other types of messages this season.

Daniel recently sat down with DM News to discuss holiday email marketing and share tips and trends to help marketers succeed during this pivotal time. You can view Daniel’s Q&A here: http://www.dmnews.com/qa-daniel-schotland-vp-client-services-at-experian-cheetahmail/article/216860/

Just in time for the holidays, our friends at Experian Marketing Services have produced a valuable new research report packed with useful tips and insight for maximizing holiday marketing strategies this year. So what do we expect to see this holiday season in respect to the email marketing industry’s performance? The 2009 holiday marketer: Benchmark and trend report has some interesting points well worth your consideration, especially for all of you email marketers out there looking to gain an edge on the competition this winter.

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.”

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