How Will You Use Email in the Coming Year?

With the New Year rapidly approaching, Datran Media is interested in learning how you will approach email marketing in 2007. This year was a very big year for email as many companies began integrating the cost-effective medium as part of a multi-channel marketing mix.

So exactly how much time and energy do you plan on giving email in 2007?  Take the survey, share your own experience and insight, and we will publish results in the next issue of The Outperformance Marketing Review.

Take the survey and win! It will take only 3 minutes to complete. We will pick one lucky responder at random to send a $50 iTunes gift card.  The survey will be open until December 15th.  Thank you for your time!

...And Email's Impact on Holiday Shopping

Shopping Online to Avoid Waiting on Line

I hate shopping. Don’t get me wrong, I love buying things. I just hate the hassle of going to a store and dealing with overworked and overzealous sales people while fighting the throng of holiday crowds. And I hate waiting on long lines – sale or no sale. Needless to say, I avoided Black Friday like the plague. I did drive buy a shopping center the day after Thanksgiving and noticed hundreds of people waiting on line in the freezing cold just to get inside the store. Unless Victoria’s Secret models were giving away free merchandise, I personally can’t see the desire to wait on a long line on a day off from work. Apparently these people have not heard about Cyber Monday.

As online marketers, I’m sure you are all familiar with the term Cyber Monday. It is said to be the biggest shopping day of the year for online retailers. In fact, Shop.org launched a web site, Cyber Monday, promoting specials from nearly 400 merchants that began on Cyber Monday with some running through December. It is only fair that online retailers have their own dedicated day in the black, just like brick and mortar stores have on the now infamous Black Friday.  Despite the hype surrounding the day, many analysts wondered just how influential this new shopping day would be. According to Ispos and Mastercard, December 5th was the busiest shopping day online last season.

Cyber Monday: Fact or Fiction?

As Flava Flav once eloquently put it, “Don’t believe the hype!” That was the general consensus from most analysts right after Cyber Monday. Despite the fact that many online retailers promoted special deals and the fact that even I made an impulse purchase because of said deals, the Monday after Thanksgiving is historically just the 12th-biggest online shopping day of the year. Would this year be different?  For most online retailers, the biggest shopping day of the season up until Cyber Monday was back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday. What's more, most e-tailers claimed the season's top spending day comes much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.

Nevertheless, online retailers reported strong year-over-year growth in Cyber Monday sales according to a report by Internet Retailer.   As it turns out, they were in for some huge numbers.  According to comScore Networks, this year’s Cyber Monday sales beat Black Friday, earning $608 million on Nov. 27 compared with $434 million last Friday. Sales also rose 26 percent from last year, making Cyber Monday the biggest online spending day on record, with consumers buying bigger ticketed items like jewelry and consumer electronics (I’m glad my purchase of a big-screen plasma television could help the online economy.) CyberMonday.com, the shopping site hosted by Shop.org dedicated to the big holiday shopping day attracted 300,000 U.S. visitors on Monday. And that’s just the beginning according to comScore; they expect to see the highest sales the week of December 12.

The Email Effect

As someone who likes to get my shopping done at the click of the mouse, I was certainly interested in the promise of Cyber Monday. I figured I would encounter big sales and deep discounts from many online retailers playing up to the hype of the big day. But faced with so many choices and so many different sites to choose from, where was I going to begin? Believe it or not, I actually had to do work and I simply did not have the time or patience to go from site to site looking for bargains. Shopping portals like Buy.com are certainly helpful in narrowing down the search for the perfect holiday gift, but even that takes some effort and I was still sporting a turkey hangover. Fortunately, email made my life that much easier. I actually received an email playing on the Cyber Monday theme that offered a great deal on a flat-screen plasma television. To be fair, I had signed up on this retailer’s site a while back for a newsletter, and how happy I was that I did. The email informed me that the incredible price on this television would be good for one day only. That was enough for me to click on the link and go to the site and complete the purchase.

Could I have found this same deal by searching in Google or browsing shopping engines? Possibly. However, email made my purchase that much easier; and in today’s fast food society where we want things right away, email is the perfect marketing method. I like to think of email as a commercial. Just like a television commercial would lure me to a store many years ago, today email drives me to a site that has what I am looking for – only it brings me there instantly.

A Holly Jolly Holiday Shopping Season?

With 61 million consumers expected to shop online this holiday – an increase of about 10 million from a year ago - it stands to be a very jolly holiday for online marketers.  Does this mean Cyber Monday will be the most important day of the year for online retailers? No one really can say for sure? But it is safe to say that as long as marketers continue to offer discounts and promote their offers to relevant, interested consumers through a multi-channel marketing spectrum, the online marketing landscape will thrive on the Monday after Thanksgiving as well as any day throughout the year.

Q: I’ve heard a lot about email authentication and certification.  What exactly does it mean and is there a difference between the two?

A: Thanks for your question. Authentication and certification are hot topics among email marketers these days, and it is important to understand exactly what they mean.  This seems like a question that has a simple, straightforward answer, but the truth is many people confuse these two terms.  Is there really a difference?  Yes and no.  First, let’s define them. 

Certification is a process that promises to increase the deliverability of outbound email by doing just that, certifying you as a reliable sender.  Authentication is a vital component to successful email marketing. Once a company authenticates email, it begins building a reputation. Reputation is determined in a similar fashion to a driving record or FICA score. If you maintain a great sending history with few complaints, your reputation will reflect your commitment to excellence. If you don't, your company loses brand equity and revenue.

For more information on authentication, certification and your online reputation, visit the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance and Deliverability.com

Send your questions to askanexpert@datranmedia.com. If we answer it, we'll send you a FREE Datran Media t-shirt!