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Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season: Executive Summary

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Long before retailers hang any wreaths or tinsel in their stores, they send out emails promoting their Christmas deals to their subscribers—lots of emails! Last year the Email Experience Council tracked more than 3,300 emails from more than 100 top online retailers during the fourth quarter and released daily reports on strategies, tactics and trends via the Retail Email Blog. Based on that monitoring, the eec has produced this helpful roadmap to the email holiday season so retailers and other B2C companies can better formulate their campaigns this year.

This guide includes benchmarks and advice on when to begin your campaign, how much to increase your email volume, which days to send on, and how to stand out in the inbox during the holidays. For instance, last year 88% of major online retailers increased their email volume during the holiday season, with retailers boosting their send volumes by 45% on average.

It also discusses and provides examples of the “16 Phases of Christmas,” the 16 strategies that retailers use at different points in the holiday season. Those strategies include promoting e-gift cards and “buy online, pick up in store” services.

“As marketers, it is important that we learn from past behavior—both our own and that of our peers,” says Andrew Osterday, Director of eMarketing at Premiere Global Services, the Guide’s sponsor. “Looking at your successes and failures over the course of previous holiday seasons will help you to avoid the pitfalls and repeat the windfalls. Further, examining the trends among peers’ campaigns can help you benchmark yours and inspire you to try new strategies and tactics.”

Other key findings from the guide include:

● Seventeen of the top 20 biggest retail email days of 2007 came in the weeks before Christmas. Those days included Cyber Monday (Nov. 26) and three of the four “Echo Mondays” (Dec. 3, 10 and 17)—the Mondays that follow Cyber Monday. Unlike in 2006 when the day after Christmas was the most popular day of the year to send retail email, last year Cyber Monday was the most popular, with 68% of retailers sending at least one email on that day.

● During the five days before Christmas (Dec. 20-24), 32% of top online retailers mentioned e-gift cards in their emails at least once last year.

● From Nov. 1 until Christmas Day, 19% of major online retailers used animated gifs in at least one email last year.

● Just as some online and multichannel retailers promote Thanksgiving Day sales to get a leg up on offline competitors whose stores are closed on that day, some will also begin their post-holiday sales on Christmas Day and promote them in their email campaigns.

Get the Full Report
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full 43-page guide, which is free for eec platinum members, available at a discount to eec gold and silver members, and available for $219 for non-members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

Posted on August 26, 2008 10:28 AM | Permalink

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeleris the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.