Shelley Kessler says, “Email volume for the 2015 holiday seasonVolume for the 2015 holiday season was almost 25 percent higher than in 2014. While the large increase in volume led to lower rates for the 2015 holiday season, it is important to note that the actual number of opens, clicks and transactions in 2015 were higher than those received the year before.Holiday email and mobile highlightsAs in past years, we’ve taken a special look at the holiday trends and performance of promotional emails from over 40 retail brands. This year we’re also following SMS messages of 20 of these... [...]

Matt Umbro says, “At the end of 2014, I wrote that dynamic copy needed to be an integral part of paid search advertisers’ 2015 arsenal. I spoke to the positive results I had seen with Google AdWords ad customizers.Then in June, I presented a case study of the AdWords countdown customizer that showed the CTR and conversion rate to be higher on dynamic ads than on their static ad counterparts. Needless to say, I’ve seen great results with dynamic copy.As a follow-up to these posts, I wanted to see if advertisers made use of countdown ads this holiday season“.How Much Did Countdown... [...]

Kristopher Arcand says, “With the winter shopping holidays now behind us, Forrester is wrapping up its annual qualitative exploration of US consumers’ perceptions of the holiday season, both for their own behavior as well as what they observed across retailers. The retail industry has seen an increase in consumer spending compared to last year — possibly due to savings from lower gas prices. Overall, we saw that consumers felt less compelled to go out and buy gifts on Black Friday itself, but they still love a good bargain. Some other insights we gathered:Black Friday sales effectively... [...]

Sandra Guy says, “Gap garners the lead for fastest-loading mobile site in Catchpoint Systems survey of its Top 50 e-commerce desktop and mobile websites.Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. gave its online shoppers the gift of speed this holiday season.That’s according to a just-released survey from website monitoring firm Catchpoint Systems, which measured the load time and availability on both mobile and desktop of the top 50 online retailers in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide from 23 locations across the U.S. at five-minute intervals. Web-page load time is the time it takes for... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Trends come and go in every industry, and it’s no different for paid search. This year, we saw brands adopting more methods and AdWords releasing a laundry list of features (including a place where you can view said laundry list at any time).But I want to cover three specific areas in paid search that advertisers should definitely consider in 2016, and I’ll also share what we learned about them in 2015.1. Your Ad Messaging StrategyIt used to be you could slap 95 characters on a PPC ad, give the client a few good options to choose from and call it a day. All that... [...]

Tracy Maple says, “Shoppers conduct more online research before buying, and that translates into online sales, according to MasterCard. Retailers also benefit as consumers spend money they’ve saved because of lower gasoline prices.Online retail sales increased 20% between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, while total retail sales excluding automobiles and gasoline rose 7.9%, according to data released today by MasterCard Advisors.MasterCard’s data shows that furniture and women’s apparel sales posted double-digit increases, accounting for a large chunk of the growth. MasterCard did... [...]

Matt McGee says, “It was a mobile holiday season for Amazon and its customers. Without releasing exact numbers, the company says almost 70 percent of its customers this holiday season shopped via a mobile device and the number of Amazon app shoppers more than doubled in the same period.The stats are part of Amazon’s traditional post-Christmas news release recapping a number of significant — and many more not-so-significant — shopping milestones.Among the more significant numbers are the growth of Prime, Amazon’s paid subscription service that offers free or discounted shipping... [...]

Sandra Guy says, “Consumers will make $600 million in online purchases on Christmas Day, Adobe predicts, an 11% increase over last year. Through Dec. 22, online holiday sales have increased 10.47% year over year to $73 billion, according to the Adobe Digital Index.Online sales have hit the $74 billion mark during the 2015 holiday shopping season, and consumers aren’t done yet shopping retailers’ websites.That’s according to just-released data from Adobe’s Digital Index, which shows online holiday spending Nov. 1-Dec. 22 jumping 10.47% year over year to $74 billion. That number... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, “Every year, the holidays have a way of sneaking up on us.Just like there will be a mad rush at the mall on December 24, there are probably some marketers out there who are trying to think of some last minute ways to connect with customers during such a congested season.Social media and other content is the best way to get some last minute and creative engagement with your customers. In the spirit of giving, here are three tips that could spread some goodwill between customer and brand.Tip #1. Every interaction is an opportunity …… even if it’s a complaint.... [...]

Jordan Elkind says, “Black Friday weekend is a unique time for retailers: The holidays are approaching, the shoppers are swarming and the prices are slashed. While the shopping extravaganza may come only once a year, the marketing trends we noticed through the weekend are unlikely to vanish as quickly as those 50-percent markdowns.The 2015 holiday weekend saw several interesting new trends in e-commerce and online marketing that are likely to have a strong impact through 2016. Here are the three key lessons we uncovered in this year’s “holidata.”Note: The stats below come from The... [...]