Cutting through the glut marketing messaging during the holiday can seem daunting. Consumers’ inboxes are likely flooded with hundred of emails offering special discounts, notifications of relevant products deals, and just generally reminding consumers to buy something.
That can leave online marketers markets wondering if emailing their list more frequently is worth it. But a new study by Adobe claims that email is not only effective during the holiday, it could produce as much as $20 billion in online sales this holiday season. Last year, email accounted for more than 18% of online sales by the end of November.
Overall, Adobe predicts that online sales holiday will increase 13.8% year-over-year to $107.4 billion, with Cyber Monday becoming the largest online shopping day in history with $6.6 billion in sales. Cyber Monday sales will grow 16.5% year-over-year, according to Adobe, with Thanksgiving sales increasing 15% year-over-year to $2.8 billion.
Email is Far From Dead
Because there is a lot of revenue at stake during the holiday season, most online retailers actually double down on email campaigns. On average, retailers increase their email frequency to their subscribers by roughly 50% during November and December, compared to non-holiday months, according to Constant Contact.
Sending more emails boosts your chances of conversion. According to Soundest, a series of emails (versus a one-off email) will get you:
- 69% more orders on your cart recovery
- 90% more orders on your customer reactivation
- 93% more orders on your welcome campaigns
Additionally, personalized emails that use the customer’s name get opened 17.6% of the time, compared to 11.4% for non-personalized emails, according to HubSpot.
Over the holidays, many brands see an increase in email subscribers before they become purchasers. This is a chance to close that gap and more formally introduce a brand to a new customer. That makes it a must to have a welcome email for new customers or anytime someone completes an action (such as signing up for a newsletter or downloading a coupon). Not sending a welcome or thank you email leaves customers feeling disengaged. It can also create doubt as to whether the action they took was successful.
According to an Experian report: welcome emails experience 4 times the open rates of bulk emails, and 5 times the click-through rate of bulk emails, according to WordStream.
Here are some other stats that reinforce the effectiveness of emails – especially during the holiday season:
- About one-third of US retail email list subscribers have purchased from the retailer whose email they subscribed to. (Listrak)
- 80% of small and medium sized retailers in the US indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of both customer acquisition and retention. The next closest channel, social media, comes in at just 44%. (eMarketer)
- 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that personalize content to them. (Accenture)
- Personalized emails have 29% higher open rates and 41% percent higher click rates than non-personalized. (Experian)
- Email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. (McKinsey)
- 87% of total clicks will occur when readers first open an email. (Campaign Monitor)
- About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices. (Campaign Monitor)
- According to Social Media Today, 50% of marketers who use video in email see increased click rates, sharing, and forwarding. (Emma)
- 33% of email recipients open commercial emails based solely on the subject line. (Search Engine People)
- According to 80 percent of professionals, email marketing drives customer acquisition and retention. (eMarketer)
- 54% of consumers would share their email address in exchange for lower prices. (DMA)
- The average email open rate for the ecommerce industry is 16.75 percent. (Smart Insights)
- Mobile phones have 58% of the email market share, compared to desktop (32%) and webmail (20%). (Smart Insights)
- 56% of brands using an emoji in their email subject lines had a higher unique open rate. (Campaign Monitor)
- Including a call to action button instead of a text link can increase conversion rates by as much as two percent. (Campaign Monitor)
- A message is five times more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. (Radicati Group)
The bottom line is that email remains an effective method of communicating with customers and increasing conversions. And even though, consumers inboxes will be bombarded with holiday email, it’s worth the effort to deploy holiday email campaigns.