• You should sign up for competitors’ email programs. It is important to see how they are messaging their Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers in advance of the big day. Closely monitor their emails throughout the sales period to see if their promotions are becoming more aggressive. Here is a valid suggestion – when reviewing the email marketing blasts of competitors try to open and not click, click and not purchase, and even purchase from the emails to see if the mailing frequency or promotions change.
• Know where to get your results. You should monitor your results on the day you send. Do a trial run for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday mailing to make sure you understand the immediate trends for your mailings.
• Make sure your team understands the importance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to your business. Discuss the expectations for availability over the Thanksgiving weekend and rest of holiday season.
• Make sure you have a back-up plan. Select additional products and price points you can offer and prepare your ecommerce platform with secondary coupon codes or discounts. This could save you hours.
• Valuable time and revenue can be lost if you need to make creative revisions during peak hours. Marketers can make quick adjustments to segments and deploy a mailing, but making creative changes can take hours to turnaround. You do not want to find yourself in a creative bottleneck, so prepare email creative alternatives in advance.
• Have a re-mailing strategy included in your plan. Customers will have a significant spike in the amount of email in their inbox so make sure you have a calculated approach to your re-mailing.  This will help decrease abuse complaints and unsubscribes which in turn could help avoid some blocking issues.  One method is to build segments based on engagement.
• Sending a creative variation, changes in your call-to-action, etc. is great for subscribers who have shown they are engaged but did not see anything in the email that made them interested enough to click through.
• Target your clickers who have not purchased –this is your most engaged subscriber. They were not only interested enough to open your email but also clicked. Something happened before checkout that made them abandon the purchase. This audience will be the one to go after.  Make sure you use a subject line and creative that drives to purchase. In addition to featuring your promotion, reference customer service information, your return policy, and shipping options and deadlines.

A record number of online retailers sent promotional email on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year. However, research shows three new trends:

1. The emergence of Cyber Sunday– In an effort to get a jump on Cyber Monday, when inboxes are extremely crowded, a growing number of retailers began sending their campaigns on November 29th last year – Cyber Sunday — particularly after 5 p.m. EST.

Interestingly, the Sunday before Cyber Monday saw an increase in email, as 45% of retailers sent at least one promotional email last year versus 36% the previous year. That made last November 29th the biggest Sunday ever for retail email marketing.

2. Growing comfort with the term “Cyber Monday.” While the percentage of retailers sending email on Cyber Monday crept up only slightly, the number of retail emails referring to Cyber Monday by name increased 54 percent last year compared to the previous. Retailers are becoming more comfortable with the term and confident consumers recognize the term, thanks to media coverage.

3. More of a buildup to Black Friday. In addition to the large increase in the number of retailers sending promotional emails on the actual Black Friday, retailers promoted Black Friday in their emails more vigorously and much earlier. During the four weeks leading up to November 27th last year, the number of retail emails referencing Black Friday rose 96 percent last year compared to 2008.

The volume of email marketing messages sent on Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit an all-time high last year. However, according to email vendors, message deliverability was an issue for marketers.

According to the Retail Email Blog, which is run by Smith-Harmon, 71% of major online retailers sent at least one promotional email on Cyber Monday, up 1% from the previous year. On Black Friday, 69% of major online retailers sent at least one promo message, which was up from 59% in 2008.

The large volume of email challenged deliverability. Almost one in four email marketing messages were not delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday, meaning that 76% of retail emails made it to the inbox.

Deliverability was at its lowest on Cyber Monday from 8 to 9 am and noon to 1 pm, when the largest volumes of mail were slowing down ISPs.

Another factor in the drop in delivery rate comes from mailing to inactive names, or recipients who have not opened an email in more than six months.

ComScore reported that consumers spent $887 million online on November 30th (Cyber Monday last year), up 5% from 2008′s Cyber Monday and matching the heaviest online spending day on record.

So, consumers are readying themselves for the biggest online shopping day of the year and gaining insight into the latest and greatest deals being offered online.

Here were some 2009 trends of the busiest online shopping day of the year:

1.  More retailers were offering exclusive deals last Cyber Monday than in years past. According to research, 87.1 percent of retailers had a special promotion for Cyber Monday.

2.  Mobile Commerce was predicted to have a major impact on Cyber Monday sales due to the increasing popularity of the smart phones. Mobile Commerce likely influenced consumer decisions since it gave users the ability to comparison shop, place orders, and guaranteed in-store pick-up.

3.  Exclusive online discounts were deeper than years past. Retailers such as offered as much as 50 percent off select merchandise.

4.  Retailers were offering free shipping as an incentive for customer to buy online.

The 2010 Holiday Season is upon us and there is an abundance of predictions based on activity, from previous years.  Here are some for 2010:

1. Social and rich-media campaigns will not get much traction after mid-November.

2. Discount codes will become more prominent in pre-header messages and subject lines.

3. “Share with your network” functionality will be used more strategically.

4. Designing mobile-friendly email is more important than ever.

5. At least 50% of retailers will send an email on Thanksgiving Day and at least 70% will on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Signup for Emercury today and begin benefitting from email marketing today. Refer a retail business before Black Friday and earn double the referral fee.

*Did You Know – Sales tracking firms (who represent 500 major retailers) reported that online sales were up 14% above Cyber Monday 2008.

The summer is over!  The kids are back in school!  Football season is here!  What does this mean?  Now is the time to plan your email marketing campaigns for the upcoming holiday season.

Before businesses decorate their stores and websites they send out emails promoting their holiday deals to their subscribers.  They send lots out of emails.  Research shows last year more than 4,700 emails from more than 100 top online businesses were sent during the fourth quarter, and companies released daily reports on strategies, tactics and trends via email. Based on this information, Emercury.net wants to produce a roadmap to the email holiday season, so companies can better formulate their campaigns this year.

Emercury.net can assist you with flyer, newsletter, and banner creation; 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. Last year nearly 90% of major online businesses increased their email volume during the holiday season, with retailers boosting their send frequency by 43% on average compared to the pre-holiday period.

Standing out in the inbox during the holiday season is tough.  Formulating the right subject lines during the holidays is critical.  Emercury.net can offer you numerous examples of subject lines to employ during the various phases of the holiday season, and help you devise your subject lines for the crucial November and December months.

Remember, 2009 has flown by so far, and sooner than you know it, the holiday season will be here.  So gain an advantage on your competitors by starting your holiday email campaign planning now.  Here are some steps to help get you started:

1. Ask your team to start brainstorming creative ideas for email campaigns now. Involving your whole team in the brainstorming process will help you to develop the best, most effective campaign.  You may choose to do just one holiday campaign, or a series of emails leading up to the holiday season.  This will depend on your call to action and audience.  And do not forget what expectations you have set with your subscribers.  If they are used to only receiving a monthly newsletter from your company, do not overwhelm them with daily/weekly holiday promotional emails.  It is important to stay consistent with what your subscribers already receive, but with a holiday flair.
2. Develop your schedule. If you are doing a series of emails, when should they start?  How often should they be sent?  What is the last day you want to send an email before the holidays?  Once you have the launch date in mind, work backwards.  To meet that launch date, when does creative need to be finalized and approved?  When should email campaign testing begin to leave enough time for internal review and edits?  What date should your subscriber database be pulled and uploaded into your email platform?
3. Plan the email creative and subject line. The subject line is often a last-minute decision, but it should not be!  Planning and strategy should go into the subject line, as this is the main influencer of whether your subscribers open your email or not.  Make sure your subject line is eye-catching enough to make your email stand out.  During the holiday season, people’s email inboxes are cluttered, so it is important that your email is noticed.  The subject line should be enticing and make your recipient want to read more.
4. Work with your email service provider to ensure your sending reputation is in good standing. You can have the best subject line, creative, and timing, but if your IP reputation is poor, nobody will see your impressively crafted email.  Take time before the holidays to test your email deliverability and work on any issues that arise.  Your ESP should be more than happy to work on this in detail with you.  After all, your success during the holiday season (and throughout the year) is your ESP’s success!

*Did You Know — Last year Cyber Monday was the most popular day of the year to send retail emails, with 70% of retailers sending at least one email on that day.