Email Experience Council Releases Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season; Benchmarks, Advice for '16 Phases of Christmas'

August 26, 2008 — The Email Experience Council (eec), the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), today announced the release of the Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season.

“This 43-page guide is a blueprint to planning your holiday email campaigns,” said Jeanniey Mullen, eec founder and chief marketing officer of Zinio and VIVMag. “Its benchmarks, advice, and observations should be extremely valuable to retailers, service companies, and other companies that are looking for new ideas for their email programs this upcoming holiday season.”

Commenting on the eec holiday guide, DMA Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Lakshmi-Ratan, Ph.D., said, “The fourth quarter is critical to all B-to-C marketers. Any one of the tips in this guide could lead to meaningful incremental improvements and give retailers a competitive edge.”

“As marketers, it is important that we learn from past behavior,” said Andrew Osterday, director of eMarketing at Premiere Global Services, Inc., the guide’s sponsor. “Looking at the successes and failures over the course of previous holiday seasons will help retailers to avoid the pitfalls and to repeat the windfalls.”

“Last year the eec tracked more than 3,300 emails from more than 100 top online retailers during the fourth quarter and released daily reports on strategies, tactics, and trends via the Retail Email Blog," said Chad White, the guide’s author, eec director of retail insights, editor-at-large, and founder of the Retail Email Blog. "Based on that monitoring, the eec has produced this helpful roadmap to the email holiday season so retailers and other B-to-C marketers can better formulate their campaigns this year.”

The new guide, which is available in the eec’s Whitepaper Room, includes benchmarks and advice on when to begin holiday campaigns, how much to increase email volume, which days to send on, and how to stand out in the inbox during the holidays. For instance, last year 88 percent of major online retailers increased their email volume during the holiday season, with retailers boosting their send frequency by 45 percent on average.

This guide also discusses and provides examples of the “16 Phases of Christmas” — the 16 strategies that retailers use at different points in the holiday season, including promoting e-gift cards and “buy online, pick up in store” services.

Other topics covered in the eec guide include:

· Cyber Monday may not be “the biggest online shopping day of the year” as billed, but last year it was the most popular day of the year to send retail emails, with 68 percent of retailers sending at least one email on that day. Helping email marketers make scheduling decisions, the guide also details the other days that were among the 20 most popular days to send retail email last year.

· Standing out in the inbox during the holiday season is tough. The guide offers tactics such as using animated gifs, which were used by 19 percent of major online retailers in at least one email between November 1 and Christmas Day last year.

· The guide discusses several strategies to employ during the final days before Christmas, including promoting e-gift cards, which 32 percent of top online retailers did at least once during the five days before Christmas last year.

· Formulating the right subject lines during the holidays is critical. The guide includes numerous examples of subject lines used last year during the various phases of the holiday season to help you devise your subject lines for the crucial November and December months.

The new eec guide can be purchased for $219 from the eec’s Whitepaper Room by visiting www.emailexperience.org/Login-Whitepaper-Room. Members of the eec may obtain the report at a discounted rate or for free.

About the Email Experience Council (eec)

The Email Experience Council (eec) (www.emailexperience.org), the Direct Marketing Association’s vertical working group that is focused on the email marketing industry, is a global professional organization striving to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and advocating its importance in business, and its ROI value. The eec is committed to regularly conducting a broad series of email initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle, and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through Member Roundtables. The eec members are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients, and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices.

About Premiere Global Services, Inc.

Premiere Global Services, Inc. is a global provider of on-demand communication technologies-based business process improvement solutions. Our Premiere Global Communications Operating System supports business applications within the following solution sets: Conferencing & Collaboration, Desktop Document Solutions, Enterprise Document Solutions, Notifications & Reminders, and eMarketing. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and with presence in 23 countries worldwide, Premiere Global delivers solutions to an established customer base of over 50,000 companies, including nearly 95% of the Fortune 500. Additional information can be found at PremiereGlobal.com.

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