You can learn a lot from watching your peers, especially during the critical holiday season period. During the fourth quarter of last year, I tracked more than 3,300 promotional emails from the top online retailers through the Retail Email Blog. Based on that monitoring, the Email Experience Council has produced the “Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season” to serve as a helpful roadmap to the email holiday season. Here are four tips from that Guide that will set you on the right track:



1. Don't wait until Black Friday to start your holiday email campaigns. If you're waiting that long, then you've abdicating at least half of the holiday email season to your competitors. Last year, retailers began their holiday campaigns 58 days before Christmas on average--on Oct. 28. I repeat, “on average.” Because of the economic troubles, this year retailers are starting their holiday campaigns even earlier. As of Oct. 8, I'd already seen at least one email referencing the holidays from 30% of the retailers that I track. So while offline Black Friday is often touted as the beginning of the holiday season, online that's definitely not the case by a long shot.

2. Be careful of dramatic frequency increases. With consumers in a buying mood and actively looking for ideas, major online retailers ratchet up their send volume significantly during the holiday season. In fact, during the 2007 holiday season, retailers increased their send volumes by 45%, which was 3 percentage points higher than the increase during the 2006 holiday season. However, the peak in weekly email volume was even more pronounced, rising 73% above the pre-holiday norm, compared to a peak increase of only 66% during the 2006 holiday season. (We defined the holiday email season as the six-week period running from Nov. 10 to Dec. 21, and compared that to the 12-week period that preceded it, Aug. 18 to Nov. 9.) Overall, 88% of retailers increased their email frequency during the holidays.

The question to be asked at the end of this is: Was it worth it? Did the increase in sales from higher frequencies outweigh all the potential downsides, such as…

● the cost of replacing subscribers lost to higher list churn;

● the opportunity cost of lost sales due to lower deliverability caused by increased spam complaints; and

● the opportunity cost of lost sales due to higher “ignore rates” as subscribers tune you out because you were oversending.

In other words, did we squander significant lifetime value in exchange for a smaller short-term boost in sales? Pay particular attention to how your best customers react to higher send volumes, and dial it back if too many of them start to bail.

One way to limit the downside of higher email frequencies during the holiday season is to offer subscribers the opportunity to opt into additional email streams, such as a holiday deal-a-day program or a “12 Days of Christmas” campaign. You'll have a smaller percentage of your base opt in, but those subscribers should be much more likely to convert and you will have avoided stressing the rest of your list with as many extra emails.

3. Craft better subject lines. Because consumers are receiving so much more email in their inboxes, subject lines become even more important during the holiday season as. According to Return Path's Fourth Annual Holiday Survey, 45.2% of consumers open an email because of the subject line.

Consider these tactics during the holidays:

● Write your subject line at the same time that you are developing your content--not right before you're hitting the “send” button.

● Be sure to regularly--if not always--A/B test your subject lines.

● Repeat or tweak successful subject lines from your campaigns last year.

● Pay attention to the searches run on your website and the organic searches that bring you traffic from major search engines. Consider using words from the most popular searches in your subject lines.

● Increase recognition in the inbox by using your brand name in the subject line.

● Consider using longer subject lines to better convey what your emails are about. Alchemy Worx' “Subject Lines: Length Is Everything” report found that subject lines of 70+ characters generate higher click-to-open rates and clickthrough rates than shorter subject lines (which produce higher open rates but fewer clicks).

● Mine the subject lines of your closest competitors for ideas for words and phrasings. The Subjectivity Scanner at the end of the Retail Email Blog's AM Inbox posts is a source of noteworthy subject lines to dissect.

● Tout free shipping more often in subject lines. Web shoppers love free shipping and retailers know it. According to research done by the Email Experience Council last year, retailers include the words “free shipping” (or the equivalent) in their email subject lines about 42% more often during the holiday season.

4. In the days after Christmas, go after your gift card dollars. Gift card sales have become huge--with consumers buying an estimated $26.3 billion worth last holiday season alone, according to the National Retail Federation. Retailers do a great job of promoting gift cards in their emails, including e-gift cards in the days right before Christmas. However, they've not generally done a great job of going after those gift card dollars post-Christmas.

You have to go after redemptions because gift card dollars aren't counted as sales until they're redeemed--until then you're just swapping currency. You want the sale, so go after your subscribers for gift card redemptions. Why target subscribers? Because they're your biggest fans and are therefore the most likely to have asked their friends and family for a gift card from you.

Last year, 23% of major online retailers sent at least one email encouraging subscribers to redeem their gift cards, with 48% of those sending more than one email that included that messaging. That's up significantly from the 2006 holiday season. There's even an emerging trend of creating incentives to accelerate redemptions further. For example, Bass Pro Shops, Foot Locker and Sports Authority each included incentives such as shipping discounts and percent-off discounts on orders that were purchased with gift cards.

I hope these tips help you have a very merry email Christmas.