Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for our recent webinar "Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the 2011 Holiday Season." I know... quite a mouthful but it basically answers the... More

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for our recent webinar "Digital Channel Analysis: How top retailers used email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during the 2011 Holiday Season." I know... quite a mouthful but it basically answers the question "What did the best Digital Marketers do this Season?" We know they did a LOT of things right and that was directly proven by all the ecommerce records that were broken (we share those too...).

Anyway, if you didn't get a chance to attend, here's a quick rundown and links to watch or download the presentation. Would love to hear what you think!

Our analysis was unique in that we were able to track and analyze marketing activity across multiple digital channels. Here's a quick look into the agenda -

• 2011 Holiday Season Industry Recap
• Analysis Approach (Yesmail's own Market Intelligence Tool)
• Findings & Insights of Overall Holiday Email and Social Marketing Trends
• Marketing Themes of Key Holiday Spending Periods
  • Holiday Kickoff  Nov 1 - Nov 17
  • Black Friday/Cyber Monday Nov 18 - Dec 2
  • Last Minute & Free Shipping Day Dec 3 - Dec 20
  • 2011 Holiday Wrap-up  Nov 1 - Jan 6
• Predictions for 2012 Holiday Season

A few exciting tidbits (just a few of many, many, and many) we included:

1. Average marketing deployments per channel (email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube per day) over the holiday season. Notice the high spikes on key spending periods and low valleys on the weekends.
   
   
2. Average number of emails, tweets and Facebook postings each retailer sent/posted
   • Retailers on average sent out 2.7 Facebook posts for every 1 email
   • Retailers on average sent out 6.5 Tweets for every 1 email
   • Facebook fan bases over Holiday period grew at an average of 7%
3. Most popular promotions by channel. And in case you had ANY doubt at all, check out the following word cloud that represents a word count in subject lines (across our 100 top retailers) and visually shows the big ones. "Free" and "Shipping" were by FAR the most popular words in email subject lines during the season. Not so much in social channels...
   
   
4. On the social side of things (facebook, twitter, youtube), we share:
   1. Who the big players are per channel == (Target is exceptional...)
   2. Who is growing the fastest == (wide ranges here as channels still new and growing)
   3. Who is deploying the most == (Walmart was way busy as was Amazon)
   4. AND who is getting the most engagement == (seems Disney has a formula here)

There is more... so if you have some time, be sure to check it out here and let me know how 2011's holiday trends will fit into your 2012 strategy!

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Yesmail Interactive's field research indicates that marketers are struggling with the following question: 'Which Facebook Campaign-Type (aka Post) will generate maximum user engagement for my business?' More

Yesmail Interactive's field research indicates that marketers are struggling with the following question:  'Which Facebook Campaign-Type (aka Post) will generate maximum user engagement for my business?'   To bring everyone up to speed, we've defined the 6 popular Facebook campaign-types below:

1.     Link - A campaign (post) that contains an URL.

2.     Music - A campaign (post) that contains a streamable song.

3.     Photo - A campaign (post) that contains a photo / image.

4.     Status Update - A campaign (post) that contains basic text with no interactive media.

5.     Flash Object / SWF - Contain an interactive survey or application.

6.     Video - Contains a full motion video.

 

We decided to put our new Market Intelligence (MI) solution to the test and obtain deeper insight into this question.   Our Market Intelligence solution uncovered the following facts after analyzing 19,223 Facebook campaigns posted from the Top 100 marketers:

1.     'Link' campaigns are the most popular deployment type amongst Marketers.

2.     'Photo' campaigns generate the most 'Likes'.

3.     'Status Update' campaigns generate the most 'Comments'.

The same Market Intelligence solution also uncovered the top Facebook campaign based on Comment count from the marketers in our tracking network.  Walgreens currently holds the top campaign spot with over 33,790 comments after being posted on December 13, 2011.

Closing Comment:  Comments are 'King' with Facebook.  Deploying more Status Update campaigns will generate more comments and potentially more leads for your business!

 

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Macy's Facebook Campaign " 'Like' this if you believe in Santa!" is currently leading ALL Facebook campaigns from the top 100 marketers with 68,834 'Likes' and is in the 12th place overall from the top 1000 Marketers worldwide! More

Yesmail Interactive - Marketing Intelligence Quick Fact:

Macy's Facebook Campaign " 'Like' this if you believe in Santa!" is currently leading ALL Facebook campaigns from the top 100 marketers with 68,834 'Likes' and is in the 12th place overall from the top 1000 Marketers worldwide!

Below is a snapshot of the top 3 Facebook campaigns from the 100 top retailers we are tracking. 

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Have you ever wondered how other Marketers are utilizing ALL digital channels (Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube)? Or how many campaigns other Marketers are sending out across each channel per day this holiday season? The Yesmail Interactive laboratory has been hard at work these past 12 months developing a new revolutionary solution to help answer these questions! More

Have you ever wondered how other Marketers are utilizing ALL digital channels (Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube)? Or how many campaigns other Marketers are sending out across each channel per day this holiday season?  The Yesmail Interactive laboratory has been hard at work these past 12 months developing a new revolutionary solution to help answer these questions!

We have randomly chosen 100 of the top 500 online internet retailers from (internetretailer.com/top500) and plugged them into our new Competitive Intelligence solution.   This solution (which will be formally launched in Q1 2012) is the FIRST solution on the PLANET that captures ALL digital marketing campaigns from ALL marketers on Email, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and SMS.  Much like on Facebook how you would add a Friend to your Social Network, in our solution you add a Marketer to your Marketing Network! 

Throughout this holiday season Yesmail Strategic Services will be providing marketing analysis & insights with data from the Top 100 Marketers utilized in this study.  Basically we are following the best in class retailers and sharing their holiday marketing efforts over four key spending periods.

Snapshot 1: Nov 1 to 17: Holiday Kick-off  

Snapshot 2: Nov 18 to Dec 2: Black Friday / Cyber Monday Performance

Snapshot 3: Dec 3 to Dec 20: Green Monday / Free Shipping

Snapshot 4: Dec 21 to Jan 16: Holiday Wrap-up

 

We are excited to invite you to our late January webinar where Kristin Kleweno (Sr. Strategist from Yesmail Strategic Services) and myself (Jason Warnock) will be presenting key trends, patterns, and findings this holiday season after analyzing it under the microscope. Stay tuned for specifics on date and time.

 

In the mean time, here is a quick glimpse of our findings from the 2 Holiday snapshots. As you know, so far it's been an exciting time out there with ecommerce records being broken - Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion in online spending this year, rising 22% from 2010 and representing the heaviest online spending day in history, and just the second day on record to surpass the billion-dollar threshold (comScore). We see marketing deployments at all time high as well.  

 

1.     Average number of deployments per Marketer, per channel, per day.  These averages showcase how Marketers are utilizing each digital channel this holiday season.  How does your program size-up?

Snapshot 1 Holiday Kick-off (Nov 1 - 17):

a.     Email campaigns per day: 0.43 (average 3 per week)

b.    Twitter campaigns per day:  3.1

c.     Facebook campaigns per day: 1.4

d.    YouTube campaigns per day:  0.6

Snapshot 2 Black Friday / Cyber Monday (Nov 18 - Dec 2):

a.     Email campaigns per day: 0.6 (ave of 4 per week)

b.    Twitter campaigns per day: 4.1 

c.     Facebook campaigns per day: 1.5

d.    YouTube campaigns per day:  0.5

 

2.     What was the busiest day for marketing campaign deployments during these snapshots across all marketers?

Snapshot 1 (Nov 1 - 17):

·         Thursday November 17 with 719 total marketing campaigns from all 100 tracked Marketers.  

Snapshot 2 (Nov 18 - Dec 2):

·         Cyber Monday November 28 with 892 total marketing campaigns from all 100 tracked Marketers.  

Can you confirm if these were your busiest digital campaign days during these 2 periods?

3.     Which Major Marketer is NOT using Facebook this holiday season?

 

Apple.  It's truly fascinating that Apple has not endorsed Facebook for Marketing.    Apple is rapidly accelerating on YouTube holding the top Campaign spot with their sensational commercial 'Apple - Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S' which gained 6,233,564 views since being posted Oct 4, 2011.  Macy's 'Guys Scream for Justin Bieber in Macy's Black Friday Commercial' is currently the top YouTube campaign in our holiday research study with over 2,761,899 views since being posted November 16.

 

Stay tuned for our next snapshot and our January webinar! It will be a complete Holiday analysis which includes trends, key themes, promos and examples of multi-channel campaigns.

Interested in learning more about Yesmail Market Intelligence and want to be a part of our exciting beta? Email sales@yesmail.com or contact us directly at 1-877-YESMAIL. 

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As a follow up to our webinar in October on Last Minute Holiday Tactics for Email Marketers (if you missed it, feel free to check it out here), we thought we should take a gander at how the holiday shopping... More

As a follow up to our webinar in October on Last Minute Holiday Tactics for Email Marketers (if you missed it, feel free to check it out here), we thought we should take a gander at how the holiday shopping season is playing out this year.  We're just past Black Friday & Cyber Monday - what do we know so far?  
 
Early birds got the worms and 40% off cashmere sweaters
 
The online holiday shopping season began even earlier this year. Thanksgiving Day, dubbed "Cyber Kickoff Day," officially kicked off the frenzy. The Kenshoo 2010 Online Holiday Report shows more than 1 billion ad impressions, 30 million clicks, and more than 1 million online sales transactions between Nov. 4 and 29 - an all time high for this period.
 
It's a little early to tell but it looks as if online spending will exceed growth predictions.  comScore recorded a record $1.028 billion in online spending on Cyber Monday 2010, up 16% compared with a year ago. It represents the heaviest online spending day in history, and the first to surpass the billion-dollar threshold. The research firm estimates for the holiday season, retail e-commerce spending for the first 29 days in the November and December 2010 holiday season online rose 13% to $13.55 billion from the same days in the prior year.
 
Email volume has increased with some great TARGETED campaigns
 
This ecommerce growth is exciting and certainly in line with what we are seeing here at Yesmail with the email channel.  So far, our clients are sending more messages to a more targeted base. Relevancy is key and clients are using customer information to segment and deliver the right message to the right audience.  So far from November 24 - December 5, we've seen a 33% increase of email messages sent from the same period last year and on Nov 28th and 29th we saw over *twice* the number of messages sent.  We expect this growth to continue as marketers ramp up for the final online shopping days. The creativeness of marketers this years is super exciting - particularly in how they are applying free shipping (a necessity this year; we all know consumers expect it) and the multi-message "12 Days" Strategy. Here are a couple good examples.  

Free shipping eases the sting
 
Online spending is sure a lot easier for folks to swallow when retailers throw in free shipping.  The Gap took it one step further - free shipping, everyday. Oh yes they did.  Take a look:


Holiday Themed Multi-Message Strategy is in Full Swing
 
Deal of the day or week, or special holiday themed multi-message campaigns are all the rage.  Take a look at a great example - the 12 Days of Gifts program by HP:


The gist of it all
 
So this is what we know so far... The online channel is really performing with increased consumer online activity and spending. Email marketers have stepped up with smart strategies to continue the growth throughout the season. Big props to savvy email marketers who understand how to tap into their consumer base and deliver some really awesome email strategies and targeted campaigns!
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And here is the conclusion of our series...Idea #5: Multi-Messages Campaigns with Status BarFirst tell the user "over the next several days we'll be giving you..."Add a "you are here" status bar at the bottom of the email Sets people's... More

And here is the conclusion of our series...

Idea #5: Multi-Messages Campaigns with Status Bar

• First tell the user "over the next several days we'll be giving you..."
• Add a "you are here" status bar at the bottom of the email
• Sets people's expectations and allows them to link back

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Idea #4: The message is the navigationNavigation (top & bottom) are proven to work well in emailConsider navigation as the body of the email "one big nav body"Quick and easy to createCheck back on Monday for the suspenseful conclusion of... More

Idea #4: The message is the navigation

• Navigation (top & bottom) are proven to work well in email
• Consider navigation as the body of the email "one big nav body"
• Quick and easy to create
  
  

Check back on Monday for the suspenseful conclusion of Five Easy Ideas for Holiday Creative. What a great way to kick off the week!

Catch up on Idea #1 | Idea #2 | Idea #3
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Earlier this week we introduced Idea #1 and Idea #2.  Keep checking back each day for ideas 4 and 5.Idea #3: Just Say "thanks"Show the human side of your company and simply say "thanks, from all of us"Perhaps couple that... More

Earlier this week we introduced Idea #1 and Idea #2.  Keep checking back each day for ideas 4 and 5.

Idea #3: Just Say "thanks"

• Show the human side of your company and simply say "thanks, from all of us"
• Perhaps couple that with an understated coupon
• A true holiday card

Continue to Idea #4 | Idea #5
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Yesterday we introduced Idea #1.  Keep checking back each day for the next three days for ideas 3-5.Idea #2: Holiday Gift Guide - Gifts for People / Gifts by PriceMake it easy, create an email that is essentially one big... More

Yesterday we introduced Idea #1.  Keep checking back each day for the next three days for ideas 3-5.

Idea #2: Holiday Gift Guide - Gifts for People / Gifts by Price

• Make it easy, create an email that is essentially one big navigation
• Gifts for Mom, Dad, kids, friends, etc.
• Gifts organized by price point - Gifts for $15, $30, $100

Continue to Idea #3 | Idea #4 | Idea #5
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As you can see, this snapshot from COMSCORE shows why marketers fire up email in the last 2 months of the year.  Well-designed emails inspire consumers to shop, and smart marketers rolling out campaigns in a manner that gets them... More

As you can see, this snapshot from COMSCORE shows why marketers fire up email in the last 2 months of the year.  Well-designed emails inspire consumers to shop, and smart marketers rolling out campaigns in a manner that gets them noticed in the tightly-packed inbox.

I thought I'd share five easy ideas for holiday creative...
- however,  I know you are all busy so to keep it brief, check back each day for the next four days for ideas 2-5.
 
Idea #1: Add simple holiday themes to your templates
Replace existing headers with holiday headers and design motifs.

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