2013 analysis Email trends during the 2013 holiday season

An Experian Marketing Services White Paper | May 2014

About this study..........................................................................................................................................1

CONTENTS

Volume..........................................................................................................................................................2 Email volume peaked leading up to Black Friday..................................................................................................................2 Open, click and transaction-to-click rates all peaked at different times throughout the season.................................3

Frequency.....................................................................................................................................................4 Retailers sent 24 percent more emails per week in 2013.....................................................................................................4 Most emails received from department store and home categories................................................................................5

Themes.........................................................................................................................................................6 Gifting theme dominated in November...................................................................................................................................6 October gift emails get the open..............................................................................................................................................7

Time of day and day of week......................................................................................................................8 Majority of emails sent in the morning....................................................................................................................................8 Time shift: More brands were sending between 4 p.m. and midnight in 2013 ...............................................................9 Late evening sends get the highest revenue per email........................................................................................................9 Monday, the most popular day...............................................................................................................................................10 Day of the week performance.................................................................................................................................................10

Subject lines.............................................................................................................................................. 11 Short subject lines were common.........................................................................................................................................11 Percent-off appeared most frequently in subject lines......................................................................................................12

Offers.......................................................................................................................................................... 13 What kinds of offers were presented in email.....................................................................................................................13 Popularity of percent-off emails.............................................................................................................................................13 Success of percent-off emails.................................................................................................................................................14 Free shipping..............................................................................................................................................................................15

Recommendations for the 2014 holiday season.....................................................................................16 Three things to test now...........................................................................................................................................................16 Three reminders for the holiday season................................................................................................................................17

Tip: Click the table of contents icon ( ) to return to this page while reading.

 

About this study Every year brands approach shoppers with different and varying marketing tactics to maximize revenue and engage consumers during the holiday season. Marketers seeking to improve their holiday communication plan can be aided by understanding how these tactics perform during this time frame. The purpose of this analysis is to help marketers understand the changes that occur in email marketing programs during the holidays and the trends that emerge as a result. From Sept. 29, 2013, through Jan. 4, 2014 (14 weeks), we monitored emails received from 55 multichannel retailers. Performance metrics for open, click and transaction rates (via email to Website) were collected for 29 of the 55 brands studied. Where applicable, this data also is compared to data from a similar analysis of 40 brands studied during the 2012 holiday season. An email categorized as a holiday message is defined as an email with holiday-specific mentions or wording, such as Christmas, Cyber Monday, gifts, stockings, Santa, etc., or imagery, such as wreaths, candy canes or wrapped gifts. Standard marketing emails in this study are defined as any other marketing email received that did not have holiday wording or imagery.

The data collected for each email in the study are as follows: BRAND

DAY OF WEEK RECEIVED

DATE RECEIVED

HOUR RECEIVED

MESSAGE TYPE*

SUBJECT LINE

SPECIFIC HOLIDAY MENTIONS

MAIN THEME

SECONDARY THEME

MAIN OFFER

FREE SHIPPING

SPECIAL HOLIDAY TOP NAVIGATION

*Holiday main message, holiday sub-messaging or standard marketing

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 1

Volume Email volume peaked leading up to Black Friday Total email volume peaked during the week of Nov. 24, which included Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Average volume per brand through the holiday season

Total holiday email volume and performance metrics

200

15%

150 10% 100 5%

50 0

9/ 29 /1 3 10 /6 /1 10 3 /1 3/ 1 10 3 /2 0/ 1 10 3 /2 7/ 13 11 /3 /1 11 3 /1 0/ 1 11 3 /1 7/ 1 11 3 /2 4/ 13 12 /1 /1 3 12 /8 /1 12 3 /1 5/ 1 12 3 /2 2/ 13

0%

Mailings

Open rate

Click-to-open

Transaction-to-click

8%

8

7%

7

6%

6

5%

5

4%

4

3%

3

2%

2

1%

1

0%

0

9/ 29 /1 10 3 /6 / 10 13 /1 3/ 10 13 /2 0/ 10 13 /2 7/ 1 11 3 /3 / 11 13 /1 0/ 11 13 /1 7/ 11 13 /2 4/ 1 12 3 /1 /1 12 3 /8 / 12 13 /1 5/ 12 13 /2 2/ 12 13 /2 9/ 13

250

20%

Total

Standard marketing

Holiday marketing

Holiday messages appeared as early as the week beginning Sept. 29, and their volume peaked during the week of Dec. 15. Holiday-themed emails outnumbered nonholiday emails from the week of Nov. 10 until the week of Dec. 22. Dec. 20 had the highest percentage of messages with a main holiday theme, with 84.4 percent of all messages including a main holiday message and 95.3 percent of all messages including some form of holiday messaging. Dec. 9 had the highest percentage of holiday messaging, with 95.5 percent of all messages including some type of holiday message (76.1 percent main messaging and 19.4 percent with submessaging).

Looking specifically at holiday messaging, our results show that the percentage of email received with a holiday theme continued to ramp up in volume until the week before Christmas, with a slight, but not significant, decline for the week following Cyber Week.

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 2

Open, click and transaction-to-click rates all peaked at different times throughout the season Throughout the season, the average open, click and transaction-to-click rates were 14.8 percent, 12.0 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively. However, peak times for each rate varied. Open rates peaked at 15.4 percent during Cyber Week. The following week, transactionto-click rates peaked at 4.6 percent, and click-to-open rates peaked at 13.2 percent that same week (the week of Dec. 8).

Percentage of email received with a holiday theme 9/29/13

2.4%

10/6/13

2.8%

10/13/13

While it’s tempting to infer that increased volume would lead to lower open rates, the mailings studied show an upward trend for open rates based on increased volume, where total email circulation explained nearly 60 percent of the variance in open rates. This trend could potentially be attributed to changing consumer behavior — a growing number of subscribers now receive email on their phone, where the barrier to opening is miniscule in our always-on, tuned-in culture. Peak open rates also were seen during the Thanksgiving/Black Friday week as consumers were on the lookout for great deals. Transaction-to-click rates peaked the week of Dec. 1, just as retailers reached their peak volume for discount offers in emails (87 percent of all emails sent that week included incentivizing offers that most likely were displayed on landing pages). It’s important to note that since Cyber Monday is included in this week, great deals were to be expected. The click-to-open peak seen during the week of Dec. 8 most likely can be attributed to retailers sending their greatest percentage of gift and 12 days of Christmas/daily deals emails (38 percent of total for the week). Curious consumers were greeted with ample creative incentives that prompted them to click and get a head start on the gift-giving season.

Peak open rates

Peak click-to-open rates

Peak transactionto-click rates

Cyber Week

Week of December 8

Week December 8

15.4%

13.2%

4.6%

10/20/13

5.5% 10.5% 18.4%

10/27/13

37.3%

11/3/13

50.5%

11/10/13

67.1%

11/17/13

82.4%

11/24/13

79.6%

12/1/13

89.8%

12/8/13

91.5%

12/15/13 58.2%

12/22/13 12/29/13 0%

7.3% 20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 3

Frequency Retailers sent 24 percent more emails per week in 2013 In October 2012, brands sent an average of four emails a week, whereas brands averaged more than five emails per week during the same month in 2013. In 2012, brands sent the most emails during Black Friday week, and despite the shift in when Black Friday occurred in 2013 (one week later), email frequency was matched in 2013. Cyber Monday was the big week for brands in 2013 in terms of number of emails sent, as there was an average of eight emails sent per brand that week.

Average emails per week per brand 8%

Average frequency per brand by message type, year-over-year 30%

25.1% change

25%

7%

20% 6%

15% 10%

5%

5% 10 /6 / 10 13 /1 3/ 10 13 /2 0/ 10 13 /2 7/ 1 11 3 /3 / 11 13 /1 0/ 11 13 /1 7/ 11 13 /2 4/ 1 12 3 /1 /1 12 3 /8 / 12 13 /1 5/ 12 13 /2 2/ 12 13 /2 9/ 13 1/ 5/ 14

4%

2012

0%

Standard marketing

Holiday marketing

Total messaging

2013

On average, retailers sent 24 percent more email messages per week in 2013 than in 2012. The brand that sent the most emails sent a total of 203 total messages throughout the study (14.5 emails per week).

The big change in mailing frequency year over year came from standard marketing messages, indicating that brands are sending more emails in general and not just for the holiday season. Specifically, 25.1 percent of the increase in messaging was from standard marketing emails, while 21.2 percent was from holiday-themed emails.

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 4

Most emails received from department store and home categories Brands in certain categories sent more emails over the holiday season than those in other categories. The average brand in the department store category sent almost 109 total messages from Sept. 29 through Dec. 28 (7.77 messages per week). However, only 45.5 percent of total department store mailings explicitly dealt with holiday messaging. In addition, brands in other categories sent more holiday-themed emails as an overall percentage of emails sent. Brands in the pets, jewelry and sporting goods categories were among the bottom five in terms of mailings per brand but were in the top five in terms of percentage of holiday emails in comparison to their total sends.

Category view — average number of mailings per brand over holiday

Percentage of holiday mailings compared to all emails 100% 93.3%

Pets Accessories

80%

Shoes Jewelry Sporting goods

60%

Office supplies

71.4% 60.8% 59.1%

53.3% 45.5% 44.1% 42.6% 42.5%

Home improvement Apparel

40%

Beauty/Fragrance/Makeup

35.3% 32.9%

Home

20%

Department store 20

40

Standard marketing

60

80

100

Holiday marketing

120

0%

Pe ts Be Sp Jew au or el ty ry /F tin ra g gr an goo d ce /M s ak eu p De H pa rtm om e en ts to re Ap O pa ffi re ce l su pp li A H om cce es s e im sori es pr ov em en t Sh oe s

0

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 5

Themes Gifting theme dominated in November Gifting was the dominant theme among holiday-themed emails received in November, followed by flash sales and friends-and-family emails. In December, shipping deadlines and daily deals emails appeared at the expense of gifting emails. Friends-and-family emails and flash-sale emails remained minor themes throughout November and December.

When comparing themes of emails received in 2013 to 2012, a slight decline is seen in gifting themed emails and the biggest increases are seen in daily deals and shipping deadline emails (up 118.2 percent and 97 percent, respectively).

Themes shift from 2012 to 2013

Themes found in holiday emails November

8%

December

7%

4% 5% 8% 9% 2% 2%

6%

23% 74%

4%

0% 1%

8%

5% 33%

74%

4% 3%

29%

0% 1%

2% 5%

1% 0%

Daily deals

Flash sale

Friends and family

Gifts

Gift card

Shipping deadline

Stocking stuffers

Wishlist

Daily deals/ 12 days of Christmas

Flash sale

Friends and family

2012

Gifts

Gift card

Shipping deadline

Year-end sale

2013

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 6

October gift emails get the open Open rates for gifting themed emails were 25.5 percent higher than the average open rate in October. In addition, although click-to-open and transaction-to-click rates peaked in November, the numbers were still slightly below the monthly averages of 12.4 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

Engagement rates for gift themed emails by month 20%

18.7%

15%

8%

15.0%

14.3% 12.3%

10%

5%

0%

74%

9.2%

9.0%

3.4%

2.6%

October gifts Open rate

November gifts Click-to-open

2.6%

December gifts Transaction-to-click rate

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 7

Time of day and day of week Majority of emails sent in the morning As seen in the distribution below, the majority of emails in this analysis were received during the 8 a.m. hour (all times in Eastern time).

During November and December, there was a slight increase in emails received between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. This likely is due to an increase of sending frequency by brands in this time period during which they are more likely to send more than one email per customer per day, thus sending the first email earlier than normal.

Mailings received by time

Time of emails received by month

800

Label 1 1%

700

20%

51%

20%

7%

2%

7%

3%

8%

600

74%

500 400

Label 2 2%

30%

37%

20%

Label 3 2%

20%

40%

15%

300 200

11%

3%

11 p.m.

9 p.m.

10 p.m.

8 p.m.

7 p.m.

6 p.m.

5 p.m.

4 p.m.

3 p.m.

2 p.m.

1 p.m.

11 a.m.

12 p.m.

9 a.m.

10 a.m.

8 a.m.

7 a.m.

6 a.m.

4 a.m.

5 a.m.

3 a.m.

2 a.m.

1 a.m.

0

12 a.m.

100

0%

20%

40%

60%

12 a.m. – 4 a.m.

4 a.m. – 8 a.m.

8 a.m. – 12 p.m.

12 p.m. – 4 p.m.

4 p.m. – 8 p.m.

8 p.m. – 12 a.m.

45%

26%

17%

8 a.m. – noon

4 a.m. – 8 a.m.

Noon – 4 p.m.

of emails received were between

of emails received were between

80%

100%

of emails received were between

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 8

Time shift: More brands are sending between 4 p.m. and midnight in 2013

Late evening sends get the highest revenue per email

Though only 8 percent of all emails were received between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., this is a 41 percent change from 2012. The next big time change for 2013 is 8 p.m. to midnight, with a 29 percent increase in volume. As with the monthly distribution, this shift could be due to higher frequency per customer in 2013.

Though the majority of emails still were sent between 8 a.m. and noon during the 2013 holiday season, this is the time slot with the lowest revenue per email ($0.074). The time slot with the highest revenue per email was 8 p.m. to midnight ($0.153). Two possible explanations for this include less competition in the inbox and the higher likelihood of finalhours reminder emails.

Percentage of total mailings sent by time

What times were most effective? 1,154

$0.20

$.153

$.139

$0.15

$.126

30%

$0.10 20%

129

Revenue per email

200 0

8

p. m .– 12

a. m .

p. m .

p. m . 12

p. m .– 4

p. m .

$0.00

a. m .

8 p.m.– 12 a.m.

a. m .– 12

2013

4 p.m.– 8 p.m.

8

2012

12 p.m.– 4 p.m.

a. m .– 8

8 a.m.– 12 p.m.

4

4 a.m.– 8 a.m.

a. m .

12 a.m. – 4 a.m.

188

30

a. m .– 4

0%

+29%

12

10%

400

401

$0.05

+41%

600

$.086

$.076

$.074

579 -74%

1000 800

p. m .– 8

40%

1200

4

50%

Messages

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 9

Monday, the most popular day

Total mailings by day of week

Overall, Monday was the most popular day to send email, with more than 54 email messages sent per week, or about 16 percent of total mailings. However, these metrics are skewed slightly due to Cyber Monday. The brands studied sent an average of 1.78 mailings on Cyber Monday, up 104.1 percent from the average mailings per day across the study and up 106.6 percent from the other Mondays in the study. When Cyber Monday is removed from the sample and the average mailings per week per day are compared, Mondays fall into a close third behind Fridays and Thursdays.

14.2% 11.6%

15.1%

Thursdays stood out over the holiday season as the best day for engagement and transactions. Thursday saw open rates that were 3.2 percent higher than the rest of the week and click-to-open rates that were 9.2 percent higher. Not only were more people opening, but once inside the mailings, consumers were inspired to continue towards the path of conversion. While transaction-to-click rates weren’t quite as high on Thursdays, a higher volume of traffic was sent to Websites. Overall, Thursdays generated the second highest revenue per email, trailing only Monday’s skewed metric due to Cyber Monday.

Open and click-to-open rates by day of week 5%

3.4%

$0.095

3.3%

3%

10%

3.4%

3.2%

3.1%

14.2%

14.7%

13.9%

$0.078

$0.078

14.8%

3.0%

$0.083

2%

12.0%

Standard mailings by day of week

$0.08

8% 6%

17.4%

13.9%

4.1%

4%

12%

13.5%

$0.10 $0.096

14%

14.1%

Holiday themed mailings by day of week

15.0%

Transaction-to-click rates and revenue per email by day of week

16%

11.2%

13.5%

15.2%

$0.078

14.3% 16.3%

4%

1%

$0.070

2% 0%

13.8%

15.1%

Day of the week performance

18%

16.0%

0%

Sun. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Open rate

Fri.

Click-to-open rate

Sat.

Sun. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Transaction-to-click rate

Fri.

Sat.

$0.06

Revenue per email

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 10

Subject lines

Words in subject lines – number of subject lines 3000

Short subject lines were common Subject lines between five and 10 words were the most popular over the course of the study, totaling 59.3 percent of all mailings sent. With such a distortion of subject line length, it’s not surprising that mailings of this length had an average open rate flat to the study baseline. Retailers may want to note that subject lines shorter than five words (17.1 percent of all seen in the study) had the best average open rates (15.93 percent, or 7.6 percent better than the baseline). Not surprisingly, as words were added to subject lines, average open rates began to decline, bottoming out with the small number of mailings with 25+ words (11.57 percent, or 21.9 percent worse than the baseline). As expected, the number of characters in subject lines followed a similar pattern to the number of words. More than 78 percent of subject lines contained between 20 and 60 characters, and the average open rates followed a similar pattern to the number of words. It’s also interesting to note that as the study moved into December, the average words per subject line increased. Throughout the study, the average word contained 5.5 characters.

60%

59.3%

2500

50%

2000

40% 30%

1500 1000

18.6%

17.1%

20%

500 0

3.9%

0–5

5–10

15–10

1.0% 20–25

15–20

0.02% 25+

10% 0%

Words in subject lines – open rate 20% 15.93%

15%

14.93%

13.45%

12.94%

12.02%

15–10

15–20

20–25

11.57%

10% 5% 0%

0–5

5–10

25+

Characters in subject lines — number of characters 571

2000

1691

1500

Average words per subject line 10 8.5

7.9

8

8.4

8.4

8.2

8.4

8.4

9.0

9.0

8.4

1000 500

9.2

9.0

8.8

8.5

0

48 185

0–20

162

20–40

40–60

60–80

80–100

48

100–120

18 120+

Characters in subject lines — open rate

6 15%

4

14.74%

14.65%

14.10%

13.30%

12%

2

12.71%

11.35%

10.68%

9% 6%

13

3%

9/

13

/2

2/ /2

12

12

13

3

5/

12

/1

/1

3

/8

13

/1

12

/1

12

4/

13

/2

7/

11

13

11

/1

3 /1

13

0/ /1

11

/3

11

7/

13

/2

0/

10

13 10

/2

3 /1

3/ /1

10

/6 10

9/

29

/1

3

0

0%

0–20

20–40

40–60

60–80

80–100

100–120

120+

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 11

Percent-off appeared most frequently in subject lines Retailers made sure that consumers knew discounts were waiting within their mailings, as the phrase percent-off appeared most often in subject lines (18.6 percent of all mailings included the phrase, which is 91.6 percent more than mailings including the next most common word). While percent-off subject lines did not inspire a material difference in open rates from the study baselines, those mailings did see significantly better engagement, leading to a 53.5 percent increase in revenue per email. Specific mailings with open rates in the top 25 percent (limited by circulations greater than one million) also were examined. These mailings were disproportionately effective, with an average open rate of 19.5 percent (33 percent, or 2.4 standard deviations, better than the overall baseline for the study). Interestingly, these mailings had subject lines that had 15 percent fewer characters and 15.1 percent fewer words than the average subject line in our study.

Percent change for “percent-off” subject lines over total study 60%

53.5%

50% 40% 30%

21.6%

22.2%

20%

12.1%

10% 0%

Click-to-delivered rate

Click-to-open rate

Transaction-to-click rate

Revenue per email

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 12

Offers Holiday offers

What kind of offers were presented in email?

Popularity of percent-off emails The percent-off email was the most popular offer tracked during the holiday analysis; 30.8 percent of all mailings had a percent-off discount during the holiday analysis. The percentage is slightly higher when looking only at emails with a holiday theme (32.7 percent). Percent-off discounts reached their peak the week of Dec. 1 when 10.9 percent of all percent-off discount messages were sent (55.2 percent of all messages for that week), but every week studied had more than 27 percent of all messages include a percentoff discount. Within the sample, the 20-percent-off discount was the most popular, appearing in 23.2 percent of all percent-off mailings and making up 7.2 percent of all mailings throughout the study. Twenty-percent-off mailings reached their peak the week of Nov. 3, accounting for 39.3 percent of all percent-off mailings that week. This type was the most popular discount-off email in nine of the 14 studied weeks.

While percent-off discounts remained the most popular throughout the study, discounts of 30 percent to 40 percent and 50 percent to 60 percent grew in popularity during December.

25% 22.0% 21.8%

20% Percent off total

The holiday shopping season is the time of the year when deals are everywhere. Brands in this study offered a wide variety of incentives to get customers to purchase — percent-off, dollar-off and free gift emails were only a few of the major offers in email. Not every email came ready with special pricing or free shipping incentives; 21.8 percent of all mailings analyzed contained only editorial content with no offer present at all.

15% 10% 4.7%

5% 0% Discount No

pricing Offer

4.5%

3.5%

3.3%

3.1%

2.5%

1.9%

1.1%

0.7%

Gift Multiple BOGO Dollar Tiered Free Mystery Cash Rewards with offers off shipping back points purchase

Percent of total emails with “percent-off discount” 15% 12% 9% 6% 3% 0%

October

November

December

10%–20%

20%–30%

30%–40%

50%–60%

60%–70%

+70%

40%–50%

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 13

Success of percent-off emails Of the brands whose performance were tracked, 50 percent-off was the most popular percent-off discount over the course of the study (21.6 percent of all percent-off mailings), but despite its frequency and richness, it was not an overwhelming success. Messages offering 50 percent-off had 6.5 percent higher revenue per email than the baseline of the study. The next most popular offer in the subset was 30 percent-off, as it performed similarly to 50 percent-off (5.7 percent better than baseline). It appears that the 10-percent-off discount was the most successful (10 tracked mailings performed 251 percent better than baseline), but the sample was skewed significantly by a single mailing from a high-priced retailer that typically doesn’t provide discounted offers. When this brand is removed from the sample, 10 percent-off averaged only $0.078 per email, or 6.2 percent worse than the study baseline.

How did “percent-off discounts” perform? (Outlier removed)

Percent of total emails with “percent-off discount” $0.30

$0.30

$0.25

$0.25

$0.20

$0.20

$0.15

$0.15

$0.10

$0.10

$0.05 $0.00

$0.05 10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Revenue per email

50%

60%

70% Other percentoff

$0.00

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Revenue per email

50%

60%

70% Other percentoff

Twenty-five-percent-off discounts seemed to hit the sweet spot with consumers, as the average revenue per email generated was 33.7 percent better than the baseline.

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 14

Free shipping Of the 2,481 emails received throughout the analysis, 37.3 percent of them offered completely free shipping and 40 percent of them offered free shipping with some sort of qualifier (most often a minimum purchase amount).

What is surprising is how free shipping offers impact revenue per email; consumers are spending the most money from email campaigns with free shipping offered, even when a minimum spend is not required.

It’s not surprising that conversion (transactions over unique clicks) from email is higher when free shipping is offered. Although the true impact on conversions is seen with completely free shipping versus shipping with a qualifier.

The impact of free shipping — revenue per email

35.8%

Yes

The impact of free shipping — transaction-to-click rate 72% better

5%

Conversion rate

53.3%

With qualifier

4% 3%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Percent greater than paid shipping

2% 1% 0%

No

With qualifier

Yes

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 15

Recommendations for the 2014 holiday season Three things to test now Before the 2014 holiday season arrives, there are key areas you should test now in order to maximize the effectiveness of your holiday marketing program. Based on this study, three things to test now include:

Late-day sends

The time slot with the highest revenue per email was 8 p.m. to midnight ($0.153). We recommend that you test sending emails during this time period to see if there is a lift in revenue per email for your brand.

Include percent-off in subject lines While percent-off subject lines inspired no material difference in open rates from the study baselines, those mailings saw significantly better engagement, leading to a 53.5 percent increase in revenue per email. While we don’t recommend overdoing this language in your subject lines, the data does show that it is effective. We recommend that you test percent-off wording in subject lines for your best offers.

Promotion of free shipping

Overall, we found that consumers are spending the most money from email campaigns when there is free shipping offered, even when a minimum spend is not required. We recommend that you test calling out free shipping within your email campaigns, whether in the main feature of the email or somewhere within the header/navigation.

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 16

Three reminders for the holiday season Though no two holiday seasons are the same, we believe these three insights will be helpful to keep in mind as you plan your holiday 2014 campaigns.

The 2014 holiday calendar is very similar to 2013

Because Thanksgiving comes relatively late again in 2014 as it did in 2013, we expect many of the trends in the upcoming season to follow closely to those we observed last year. We also expect email volume to rise again in 2014, so keeping subscribers engaged now and finding ways to stand out in the inbox (such as the three recommendations above) will continue to be more and more important.

Engagement is best on Thursday Thursdays stood out over the holiday season as the best day for engagement and transactions. Thursday achieved 3.2 percent and 9.2 percent increases in open rates and click-to-open rates, respectively. Not only were more consumers opening, but once inside the mailings, they were inspired to continue down the path of conversion. While transaction-to-click rates weren’t quite as high on Thursdays, a much higher volume of traffic was being sent to Websites. Overall, Thursdays generated the second highest revenue per email, only trailing Monday’s skewed metric due to Cyber Monday.

Send gift-guide emails early

Open rates for gifting-themed emails were 25.5 percent higher than the average open rate in October. November and December did not see significant lifts for gift-guide emails, likely due to an abundance of these emails in the inbox at this time. As giftguide emails become more popular (and email volume grows during the holidays), it may be best to send these emails earlier in the season.

If you are looking for strategic or tactical guidance to create more intelligent interactions with your customers through integrated email tactics, contact your Experian Marketing Services account team, call 1 866 626 6479 or visit us online at www.experian.com/marketingservices.

2013 holiday analysis: Email trends during the 2013 holiday season | 17

Experian Marketing Services 29 Broadway, New York, NY 10006 experian.com/marketingservices

Intelligent interactions. Every time. © 2014 Experian Information Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. Experian and the Experian marks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Experian Information Solutions, Inc.Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. May 2014