Despite a slow-to-recover economy, all indicators point to record-breaking volumes of email leading up to the all-important Cyber Monday again this year. Unica’s postmortem report on last year’s holiday season showed that email volumes had hit all-time heights. The economy is in a slightly better place this year, and email volume is poised to set record-breaking numbers again, which calls for marketers to be even more clever in how they engage their customers and prospects.
While it's tempting this time of year to send lots of campaigns, it's better to be targeted and focused. Otherwise you risk brand disengagement, lower sales, and deliverability fallout that even the most talented of ISP relations managers would have a hard time cleaning up.
A quick look at how major ISPs are handling the ramp-up to this week’s holiday bonanza reveals only a slight increase of email going missing. But for all intents and purposes, rates are normal, given that on average 20% of consumer mail doesn’t reach the intended recipient. Additionally, analysis reveals a 14% increase in email volume in November over October, and so far delivery rates to the inbox have held steady ground.
In the week leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, though, there was a decline of as much as 25% in mail that went missing and wound up as either junk mail or simply didn’t arrive.
It's worthwhile to ask why this trend keeps happening each year in the days leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Marketers’ zeal to get mail into the inbox backfires every single time. It’s been nearly a decade since the invention of the spam button by AOL, yet marketers still choose to send email on roughly the same days.
Marketers cause a virtual traffic jam of advertising bound for the same ISPs. To deal with that digital mess, ISPs are forced to queue messages as they deal with the backlog as well as the millions of pieces of spam bound for those same inboxes.
If you are prepared to make fundamental changes to your mailing habits, however, the holidays shouldn’t be a nail-biter. Change can be difficult, because of the fear of the unknown and the sometimes paralyzing need to drive sales. Still, without experimentation and variety, you’ll find achieving consistently higher ROI difficult, because change goes hand in hand with risk. The following recommendations are based upon our observations of how a little change can make a potentially big splash for your marketing program this holiday season.
1) Modulate the time of day that you send your messages. According to our research, marketers that send between 8 p.m. and midnight see the highest average rate of delivery. This conflicts with the strategy of most marketers, however, who insist on delivering their marketing between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Of emails sent during those peak hours during the holiday season, 67%-73% on average make it to inboxes. Email sent late at night, though, see 88%-92% inbox placement.
2) Avoid the Tuesday/Wednesday cyber traffic jam. It’s long been assumed that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to send email. But according to our research, inbox placement during these two days is on average 10% lower than for Saturdays and Sundays. These weekdays also demonstrate much longer delivery times, indicative of fierce inbox competition.
3) Adhere to best practices. Keep your lists free of unsubscribers and bounces. This is, of course, always a great idea, but during an already difficult period, you will do yourself even more disservice by drawing unwanted and negative attention toward your reputation as a sender. Make sure your lists are up-to-date and trouble free.
4) Create more segments to give you greater control. Segment your list and split out your top-tier ISPs from the rest. Because the top-tier ISPs see the most volume and traffic, they will potentially slow down the rest of your campaigns. By creating separate segments, you can get the rest of your mail out sooner and assume that delivery to the largest ISPs will move a bit slower.
5) Test your creative to ensure brand consistency and IP reputation before going into production. Optimize your emails to ensure they render properly when they arrive; code them correctly to avoid being identified as spam. Test, test, test, and test some more!
Yes, there is a school of thought that advises simply staying the course and doing what’s worked in the past. However, the rate of change is constantly accelerating. By adapting to new technology and the new media consumption habits of your customers and, most important, taking advantage of new and exciting ways to engage in meaningful dialogues with your consumers, you can gain more by listening than just talking.
Len Shneyder, Sr., is product marketing manager and Jake Cable is email services manager for Unica/Pivotal Veracity.
