E-mail was more influential than ever in motivating purchases during this past holiday season, according to a survey released by e-mail marketing firm Return Path.
The agency’s second annual holiday e-mail consumer survey found that about half of the1,800 shoppers questioned said they used e-mail offers in their holiday buying, up from 44.8% in 2004.
According to 60.6% of respondents, the dominant factor in consumers’ decisions to open and read e-mail during the holidays was prior knowledge of and trust in the sender—about flat with 2004’s results. Nearly half (47.7%) said they were influenced by earlier e-mail from the same sender that had proven valuable, while 42.9% said they responded to an attention-grabbing subject line. Discounts influenced about 25% of those polled—up from 17.5% in 2004-- and free shipping enticed 20.9%, up from 15.1% last year.
But the Return Path report also noted discrepancies between consumers’ expectations of e-mail and the amount they actually received. More than 71% of respondents said they either got more e-mail than they had expected this holiday season or didn’t know how much to expect. Forty-four percent said they received more e-mail from Web site registrations than they had anticipated. Nearly all said the excess was either spam or junk mail, a 20% increase over the number who said the same last holiday season.
As for the fate of those unwanted e-mail messages, 68% of respondents said they just deleted the. But 33.6% reported the senders of unpermissioned e-mails to their ISPs as spammers, and 30.5% unsubscribed from the excess e-mails.
One sign that mailers’ messages are being ignored, according to the return Path report, is that while marketers increased their e-mail frequency by as much as four times during the holiday shopping season just ended, most consumers (65.9%) said their e-mail volume habits did not change during the year.
