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.
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.
Projections for this holiday season called for a 15%-20% increase in email overall volume, according to my last post. I’m happy to report that – so far, those projections are right on the money! Experian CheetahMail client data indicates that this first week, September 30 – October 6, hit that mark exactly with a 17.5% increase in all industry email volume.
Also worth noting…the words “Christmas” and “Black Friday” were used in subject lines in the first week of the 2011 Holiday Season, just as they were in 2010.
Well, you can say you heard it here first: Cyber Monday is barely a few hours into full swing and yet we’re already seeing email volumes increase by roughly the same percentage as last year in the run up to today’s mailing frenzy.
Last year, we saw an increase in ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’ mentions the week before Turkey Day. This year, we saw even earlier and more frequent mentions of the two retail holidays in the run up to Thanksgiving.
According to our data, in the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year (2010), email marketing volumes are up 23% overall.
Holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions began before the week prior to Thanksgiving. Companies such as Sears led the charge by advertising black Fridays as early as October:
Keyword
First Date Seen in Subject Line
Black Friday
1-Oct-2010
Cyber Monday
11-Nov-2010
Christmas
5-Oct-2010
Holiday
5-Oct-2010
Of course, we had a feeling this might be the case all along. Our predictions from the 2o1o Holiday Marketer said as much:
Overall email volume from Nov. 22 until Dec. 31 was up 15 percent year over year, spiking on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is interesting to note that in 2009, those high volume–prone days actually turned into longer spikes encompassing several days. The same pattern is likely to occur in 2010, with high volume periods of several days prior to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and each Echo Monday (the Mondays between Cyber Monday and Christmas).
We will keep you posted with more data about Cyber Monday as it becomes available. In the meantime, you can read other prophetic predictions for this holiday season in our recent report, The 2010 Holiday Marketer.
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!
It’s already September, and while the rest of us are taking one last summer vacation, diligent online marketers are coordinating budgets, hammering out timelines, and enlisting production resources for the looming holiday season. It’s also time to start asking some serious production questions of your email creative. Questions like, “How easily can I update my template?” and “Can my production staff handle an increased holiday workload?” need to be answered immediately in order to stay competitive this holiday season.
If you’re unsure how to gauge your creative’s holiday health, here are some criteria to measure against:
Speed is key
If your template isn’t easy to update and turn around, you may be missing out on some opportunities. Here are some turbo-boosting tips to speed things up:
Use existing product image sizes, HTML text, and HEX colors in your email design. This will allow production artists to revise the template quicker, or make easier, on-the-fly updates.
Coding the template effectively will allow your designers to concentrate more on new creative, rather than fixing rendering problems on existing campaigns.
Design the template to allow account management resources to make last minute updates to creative without needing a creative resource.
I mean that literally, of course. Take one look at this report, and you’ll understand what this holiday season is really all about: marketing like a rock star.
Want to know how to win over your adoring fans and go double platinum? Let me to take you on a cinematic, guided tour of the data from the report to find out what it takes to be an email marketing rock star this holiday season.
This year, email volumes will “go to 11″
Every year, email volumes peak during the holiday season, managing to surpass the previous maximum output of the year before. But how is it even possible to exceed what was previously considered the maximum?
By taking your email program “to 11.”
Experian CheetahMail estimates an overall email volume increase of 15 percent to 20 percent for the 2010 holiday season in comparison to Holiday 2009.
This means that email marketers, just like Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, have figured out a way to ratchet up their volumes “to 11.”
Volumes just keep going up, so email marketers had better be prepared for the barrage of messages coming from their competition and act accordingly.
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/
Not just yet. 
