Holiday Special Offers: How Effective Are They?
Online merchants, including catalogers, e-merchants and brick-and-mortar retailers, made three times as many adjustments to their online marketing as they did their offline plans during last year’s holiday season, according to recently released report from Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation, and online research firm BizRate Research. And 70 percent of those adjustments involved either investing more in paid search or making improvements to e-mail campaigns.
The report also revealed the percentage of merchants that used various promotions, as well the merchants’ ratings of the effectiveness of those promotions on a scale of 1 to 5. Below are the findings.
* 79 percent of online merchants offered free shipping with conditions, carrying an effectiveness rating of 4.3;
* 59 percent tried online-only sales, with a rating of 3.9;
* 48 percent used free shipping with product upgrades, with a rating of 4;
* 39 percent employed sales offered both offline and online, with a rating of 4.2;
* 30 percent offered a loyalty program, with a rating of 3.5; and
* 25 percent gave their customers unconditional free shipping, with a rating of 4.5.
For a copy of Shop.org’s 2006 Online Retail Holiday Best Practices Report, visit http://www.shop.org/eholiday06/summary-download/default.asp
