A Short Guide To Holiday Email Marketing Messages: Part 2

Recently, the folks at Return Path, an email analytics company, released their latest quarterly summary (Q4), and it shares some pretty awesome insights into the world of email marketing. In fact, last week we wrote an article using findings in their data — what’s in the consumer inbox these days. Though, this time around, we will be focusing on another theme altogether: the consumers? desire for shopping emails, and their newly recognized lack of impatience and intolerance towards them. Now let’s assess the stats?!Complaints per 10.000 MessagesDuring the holidays, consumers complained a lot less about emails related to shopping. Per every 10,000 messages about shopping, they objected only a total of 63 times through spam complaints. To give this context, every other vertical had more complaints per 10,000 messages, like entertainment and business, which each had 109 spam complaints for every 10,000 messages sent. Despite the fact consumers received more emails during the holidays, the volume didn?t seem to phase them, as they were engaged with 22.4% of daily messages, compared to the quarterly average of 22.8%.Return Path President George Bilbrey echoed the data in his company’s report, ?The data consistently refutes that view (that people don?t like email). When brands craft responsible, consumer-friendly email programs that comply with established best marketing practices, people read it, engage with it, and most importantly, actually like it.?Bilbrey is exactly right, Return Path’s report summary claims that, ?Consumers saw a relatively modest increase in marketing email volume during the holidays, but they appeared to welcome it. They read more of what they received and when they did lodge spam complaints, the offending messages were rarely about shopping. This examination of consumer behavior suggests that people simply like email marketing.? One thing is for sure, email is not (and might not ever be), on a deathbed.For more insight on holiday email marketing, check out Part 1 of our guide to holiday email marketing, and also our report on stats you need to know to advertise correctly for the holidays.To see Return Path’s full report, click here.