Week-End Trends: Holiday email references double
Email activity and promotional trends during the past week:
The Retail Email Index rose less than 1% to a new year-to-date high of 236 during the week ending Nov. 7, 2008, and is up 5% from where it was four weeks ago. The Index score indicates that the top 100 online retailers sent nearly 2.4 promotional emails each on average last week.
Last week I said I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a sharp rise in retail email volume this week because of pressure to pull holiday sales forward. If that inflection point had occurred last week it would have been a week earlier than last year. What I failed to account for was that Thanksgiving is a week later this year, which has likely delayed the hard push on holiday sales by a week. Given that, I now expect the Retail Email Index to rise significantly this upcoming week.
The Retail Email Participation Rate: Thursday was the most popular day to send retail emails last week.
The Retail Email Seasonality Meter: Last week the proportion of holiday reference essentially doubled, signaling the start of the holiday season in earnest. Last week we also saw the first reference to Veterans Day, which is this Tuesday, Nov. 11. Also, Buy.com and TigerDirect have both been running “early Black Friday” campaigns, which they didn’t run a year ago. That may be a sign that we’ll see more Black Friday email activity this year.
Other things referenced by retailers: Elections, coats, boots, winter, holiday meals and get-togethers, holiday parties
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The Retail Email Index rose less than 1% to a new year-to-date high of 236 during the week ending Nov. 7, 2008, and is up 5% from where it was four weeks ago. The Index score indicates that the top 100 online retailers sent nearly 2.4 promotional emails each on average last week.
Last week I said I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a sharp rise in retail email volume this week because of pressure to pull holiday sales forward. If that inflection point had occurred last week it would have been a week earlier than last year. What I failed to account for was that Thanksgiving is a week later this year, which has likely delayed the hard push on holiday sales by a week. Given that, I now expect the Retail Email Index to rise significantly this upcoming week.
The Retail Email Participation Rate: Thursday was the most popular day to send retail emails last week.
The Retail Email Seasonality Meter: Last week the proportion of holiday reference essentially doubled, signaling the start of the holiday season in earnest. Last week we also saw the first reference to Veterans Day, which is this Tuesday, Nov. 11. Also, Buy.com and TigerDirect have both been running “early Black Friday” campaigns, which they didn’t run a year ago. That may be a sign that we’ll see more Black Friday email activity this year.
Other things referenced by retailers: Elections, coats, boots, winter, holiday meals and get-togethers, holiday parties
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SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
Labels: Black Friday, Christmas, Halloween, New Year's, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, Week-End Trends
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posted at 12:05 PM by Chad White
I love Smith-Harmon's enthusiasm. It's so great to have a connection with people who really "get" and get excited by email marketing. (Truly, there are not that many of us out there!) I count myself very lucky to have found such accomplished enthusiasts to collaborate with on the REI program. They are helping to bring amazing opportunities to fruition with panache.
2 Comments:
Chad, I love this analysis. If I may ask, how do you collect the data?
Khalid, it's based on my own proprietary tracking, which I've been doing since 2006.
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