Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Depending on your niche holiday sales be have been a little up or a little down down but for the most part it looks like numbers online were fairly flat which isn’t half bad compared to some of the initial forecasts. However no matter where your sales fell out it’s very clear that the big winner here was the customer. Great promotions, discount codes galore, free shipping offer followed by free shipping offer and after holiday liquidations filled the inboxes of just about every online shopper day in and day out. With so much given away in the last 2 months it will be fascinating to see how companies incentivize shoppers during the slowest part of the season but that’s for another day.

Here’s a recap of the emails and sites that made my top list (and that just sent me the most volume) for the 2008 holiday season.

Depending on your niche holiday sales be have been a little up or a little down down but for the most part it looks like numbers online were fairly flat which isn’t half bad compared to some of the initial forecasts. However no matter where your sales fell out it’s very clear that the big winner here was the customer. Great promotions, discount codes galore, free shipping offer followed by free shipping offer and after holiday liquidations filled the inboxes of just about every online shopper day in and day out. With so much given away in the last 2 months it will be fascinating to see how companies incentivize shoppers during the slowest part of the season but that’s for another day.

Here’s a recap of the emails and sites that made my top list (and that just sent me the most volume) for the 2008 holiday season.

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Favorite site promotion: Undecided

What I liked: There were a lot of good sites but no one stuck out as amazing. Some had great creative, others strong offers while a few really bombed on aesthetics or deals but made it easy to get to the gifts. Target and Amazon had long pages but lots of ideas, the Flower Companies had the ultimate last minute solution and everyone had a gift certificate. So rather than pick one site myself I think the other half dozen or so listed here are all winners, well, that is if they hit their sales numbers.

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Favorite email promotions: Eddie Bauer

What I liked: This year there was no doubt for me about whose emails rang in the clearest. Eddie Bauer had excellent frequency starting with just an email or two a week and ratcheting up to daily sends by the end of the shipping window. While product imagery was often limited, offers were clear, shipping options were bold and the entire email was almost always devoted to the subject line making it very obvious what they were saying. This was all followed up by a similar style of messaging on their website which reinforced the offer

What I disliked: Most promotions required a coupon code even if it was a general offer given to all visitors. This left the shopping cart saying one thing while the header said another.

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Favorite Gift Guide: NFL Shop

What I liked: For years I’ve been preaching the importance of a solid gift guide that went beyond Moms, Dads, and Brothers and this year the NFLShop came closest to delivering. Their system used behavioral and demographic categories to match up products with people allowing for much more relevant results. Easy sidebar searching also helped make refining possible during the process.

What I disliked: While searching was easy there wasn’t as much gradation as I would have liked and product descriptions remained generic without any emphasis on gift relevancy. Reviews could also have played a bigger role in the system and product results.

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Best looking promotions: Apple, Victoria’s Secret, Pottery Barn

What I liked: While there were a lot of great emails it’s really no surprise that the brands with the sharpest imagery delivered the best looking promotions. Apple, Victoria’s Secret and Pottery Barn all stuck out as delivering simply delightful emails with site that (for the most part) matched. There were a few other great looking campaigns this season but all of these companies delivered email after email.

What I didn’t like: In some cases emails were great at showing a visual but left a lot to be desired in call to action and purchasing information. The same was true for webpages which also had issues with length and next steps.

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Clearest offline-to-online promotion: Circuit City

What I liked: While their nearest retail store just closed down in my area, Circuit City did a bang up job of giving me offline options for every online email and webpage when possible. 24-minute pickup guarantees, in-stock messaging and a host of other tools made it simple to get away from shipping fees and they never stopped the multi-channel push until the store doors closed on Christmas Eve.

What I disliked: Lots of clutter on product pages especially when trying to find availability. Simplifying things to price, buying options, rating and then a description below would make it even easier to find out what’s available. There’s a lot more offered by the company but most of the information was upsell which got in the way of just finding out if they could sell it to me first… cart, horse, you know the saying.

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Black Friday here we come: Home Depot, NewEgg

What I liked: These may be two very different companies with different business models and even different promotions but both did a great job of representing their offers online. Home Depot delivered a crystal clear promotions page front-and-center on their website pushing people exactly where they needed to go (to the store) while NewEgg blasted a slew of ramp up sale emails hyping and pushing products daily all followed up by a huge sale.

What I disliked: Both could have learned a bit from the other here. NewEgg offered a tremendous number of deals but the page went on forever and didn’t get the “simplify” memo clearly. Home Depot was clean and easy to follow but more email excitement would have helped me know this was happening before I happened across their site.

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Biggest email senders: Macys, Zales

What I liked: There was a ton of email this November and December and while I didn’t save them all I did manage to snag more than 30 messages from each of these companies in just 26 days making them the top senders. Most major brands sent me between 15 and 20 emails with some sticking to the single digits although the average was likely closer to 17. For the most part these messages pushed different offers but stuck to a standard format making it easy to identify their brand. They also included strong and changing deals which didn’t let up and gave a range of shopping types options from early shoppers to last minute overnight shippers.

What I disliked: While not necessarily an issue with just these companies most of the vendors sending more than 20 messages tended to duplicate creative too closesly often just changing a subject line and perhaps a matching word in the message body. This may have seemed like a good tactic to drive home key issues like the last day of free shipping but it also felt like a waste of opportunity in not delivering other product options to incite clicks and orders from those who opened the initial message as well. Frequency capping would also have been ideal to avoid this for people who already saw the email.

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Text email diehards: REI, ProFlowers Brands

What I liked: There aren’t many retailers still sending text for the bulk of these emails but REI, Cherry’s Berries and a few other ProFlowers Brands stuck to their guns (and hopefully their test results) and kept pushing out text messages. Although sometimes actually rich text with formatting these emails opened great on my PDA (which I often checked while shopping) and made it much easier to get to the point. No issues with rendering either.

What I disliked: Text is great but companies are staying visual despite the challenges for a reason. A balance between the two options seems appropriate… visual emails to drive in benefits to those who support it or open it paired with some text emails for mobile adoption, quicker viewing and to each people who just don’t see “the big pictures”.

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Transactional email believers: Eddie Bauer, ProFlowers Brands, NFLShop

What I liked: its funny how many times the same names keep coming up but if you’re hot you’re hot. During the holidays I received emails from no less than 30 companies and visited at least that many sites to experience their version of the season. Throughout all these visits I received follow up emails from only 3 companies (not every visit got my email address but most companies did at least once). These emails all got me to click back (and in once case I actually ordered rather than just capturing the screenshots).

What I disliked: That more companies didn’t do this.

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It’s never too late: Just about everyone (VS, Bath & Body Works, Tiffanys, Harry & David, and on and on).

What I liked: This year everyone wanted sales down to the last minute and did what they should have been doing for years – they discounted shipping up to the last minute in a way that was logical. No $15.99 specials, no spent $250 for free, it was 2-day for 5 bucks, 2 day for free with $100 order, even 2 day for free with any order. I’m sure margins got hit but people got their orders and they made more sales that would have otherwise gone to the mall or the next website doing it. Great idea and played out great especially with the nasty weather so much of the country faced.

What I disliked: Not everyone got the memo here and some companies wanted an arm and a leg for shipping. Of those that did some forgot to make it clear enough to get the message across. Whoops.

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Phew that’s an awfully long post but only a small sample of the hundreds of emails and sites I went through this holiday season. Now that we’re past that fun look for Valentine’s tips and reviews coming… really soon. Back to blogging!