What Retailers Should Learn From the 2019 Holiday Inbox

With a 3.4 percent growth in holiday retail sales, early reports from the 2019 season are positive. Online and mobile shopping saw the biggest growth last year, recording a 19 percent rise in online spending, and nearly 80 percent of consumers used their phones to purchase gifts.

Part of the continued shift from in-store to online shopping may be due in part to last year's shortened holiday season. Consumers were pressed for time to check off their lists, meaning retailers were also pressed for time to drown out competitors and get consumers to convert before Christmas Day. Many brands changed their usual Cyber Week and seasonal tactics to accommodate the anticipated time crunch and shift in seasonal shopper behavior.

Since July 2019, SmarterHQ kept a close eye on 19 retailers across key categories — top retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Target; membership-only brands Sam’s Club and Costco; department stores including Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Sephora, and Saks; and digital-native retailers including Amazon.com, Warby Parker, Bonobos, and more — to understand just how much their email strategies shifted over the holiday season and which promotions they prioritized most. Here’s what we found:

Retailers Dialed Back on Black Friday and Pushed Seasonal Promos Earlier

Due to Thanksgiving occurring later in the year, the holiday shopping season was six days shorter — the shortest season since 2013. Because of this, retailers couldn’t afford to wait for Black Friday in order for consumers to begin shopping.

Instead, many retailers started their promotions well before Halloween. Eleven out of the 19 retailers tracked sent out their first holiday promotion email sometime in October. Rather than slamming subscribers with content building up Cyber Week-only savings, most retailers sent a large influx of general holiday deals, decor and gift guide messaging in the weeks leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday to inspire people to start their holiday shopping early vs. waiting to cash in on deals after Thanksgiving. Even Amazon took this approach, mostly sending general gift and holiday entertaining guides throughout the majority of November. In fact, Amazon only sent one Black Friday-focused email before the day itself.

A few retailers we tracked did end up pushing Black Friday messaging weeks in advance: Target and Walmart held Black Friday preview sales, and Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s took a more personalized approach with private sales for VIP customers. Sam’s Club created its own shopping holiday entirely with a “Members Saving Event” on Nov. 9 to get consumers to shop early in the season. Each email from Sam's Club included a countdown timer to build hype for the big day.

Mass Blasts Dominated Strategies, With Few Retailers Pursuing Personalization

As expected, most retailers went full throttle during the most crucial time of the holiday season, Cyber Week, sending very specific messaging and promos a few days before Thanksgiving through the few days following Cyber Monday. Retailers, especially top retailers and department stores, inundated inboxes that week, sending multiple emails per day. One brand sent a total of 99 emails in November alone, and those sends didn’t slow down in December.

Though a higher email cadence is expected during the holiday season, the mass blast mentality many retailers employed greatly contradicts the wishes of today’s consumers. Millennials prefer just one to three marketing emails from a brand per month, and 74 percent are frustrated by receiving too many marketing communications. In addition, 72 percent of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging, making it that much more important for retailers to alter their approach.

During the holiday season, personalization in the inbox stood out. Brands that did personalize sent us less emails overall and made the ones they did send focused on shopper relevancy, letting us know VIP opportunities and previously browsed and carted items that were now on sale during the holiday season. Brands that didn't personalize their emails hounded us with “X percent Off” savings and “Final Hours!” calls to action that all looked exactly the same — and when viewed alongside other brands’ emails, just created more noise.

Email and Cross-Channel Marketing Needs to Be More Intentional in 2020

Consumer inbox fatigue is at an all-time high after the holidays. Subscribers are overwhelmed and annoyed by the amount of emails they receive from a single brand (and that’s on top of all of the other regular touchpoints they have with that brand, let alone all of the other brands they engage with, too). Therefore, consumers are that much more likely to glaze over your interactions with them. And no matter how much retailers claim they’re prioritizing personalization, the reality is that many aren't doing it as much as they say and are still relying on batch-and-blast as a lead strategy.

So rather than sending even more emails and simply upping communications across all channels, be more intentional about making each email and touchpoint more specific and relevant to each customer. Keep in mind their communication and channel preferences, as well as their brand, category and product interests, and suggest recommendations based on behavior and affinity. This will let your customers know you not only understand but value them, and will help to keep them loyal in 2020.

Michael Osborne is the president and CEO of SmarterHQ, a personalization platform that makes it easy for marketers to increase revenue now and customer relationships over time by powering highly relevant, cross-channel experiences.