Last January we held a webinar called 12 Things Retailers Must Learn from Christmas 2007. It’s basically a webinar on event marketing year-round, not just Christmas so check it out as Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…

I will add one thing we can learn from Christmas 2008 courtesy of Google Trends. Looking back at trends for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and what we call here in Canada “Boxing Day” (December 26) we find some interesting searches that savvy retailers can plan to bid on for next year in PPC.

Christmas Eve

The keyword “stores open on Christmas eve” is perfect to geo-target local brick-and-mortar stores or promote your online store open 24/7 with overnight delivery, especially considering search volume peaked at 4pm PST!

Christmas Day

“Stores open on Christmas Day” peaked at 9am PST and was even hotter than the Christmas Eve search. This NowPublic article was the top news result so do remember to reach out to your journalists and bloggers locally and nationally if your physical locations are open next year.

After-Christmas-sale and even December-26-sale keywords also were popular on Christmas day, so consider broad or phrase matching the following (of course you can expand this list, but you get the idea):

“after christmas sale”
“after christmas sales”
“after christmas sale 2009″
“after christmas sales 2009″
“after christmas clearance”
“after christmas deals”
“after christmas discounts”
“after christmas bargains”
“after christmas markdowns”
“2008 after christmas sale”
“december 26 sale”
“post-christmas sale”
“post christmas deals”
“after xmas sale”
“after xmas sales”
“after x mas sale”
“after x mas sales”

You can let these keywords run right into January, although trend data suggests these searches die at the beginning of the New Year.

This is a guest post from Anna Yeaman of Style Campaign, an email marketing and photography company. Anna also has a solid email marketing blog which I have come to love.

Helping shoppers find the right present for everyone on their list is the priority of your holiday email campaign. Sure you need to cover the basics, like gifts by recipient and price. But a little creativity can help you stand out in a sea of uniformity.

Get inspired by the 13 gift finder emails below. Be sure to check out my favorite No.13

1. Home Depot - By Customer Review:

11/20/08 - Top-Rated Products for the Holidays

view email here

Northern tool, Home depot and Norm Thompson are a few of the retailers featuring customer reviews in their email creative.

I would love to see a video, featuring real in-store shoppers. Who are they buying gifts for? What is their budget, and why that particular item?

Edit in some holiday music, and you have a video of holiday customer reviews.

2. Neiman Marcus - By Color:

12/09/06 - Green: Gifts in the season’s hot hue + FREE Shipping & FREE Gift Wrap

view email here

I would have added a color spectrum, to expand the appeal of this email beyond the color green.

3. Urban Outfitters - By Type:

12/14/07 - Neither Naughty Nor Nice…

view email here

Organizing gifts based on the personality of the recipient is intuitive and fun. Urban Outfitters sent another this year on Cyber Monday. Links included, “The starving artist”, ” The party girl” and “The Hibernator”.

4. Neiman Marcus - By Size:

12/20/06 - Final Day: Free TWO-DAY DELIVERY + Stocking stuffers they’ll love

view email here

Like the email states, “Don’t forget the stocking stuffers”. Put together a selection of small gift items, you’ll want to include gift cards in that category.

I love the creative of the above email, if your looking for affordable holiday graphics check out istockphoto. I usually pay $3 - $14 per image.

5. REI - Eco-Friendly:

11/27/07 - Give Green this Year

view email here

Put together a green gift guide this year. Feature an array of products, made from sustainable or recycled materials. If you have none, consider switching over to recycled gift-wrap and gift bags.

6. Forzieri - By the Editor:

12/10/07 - TOP 10 Editor’s Gifts + FREE Two-Day Delivery

view email here

I love the Essentials series on the QG website. Actors, musicians and designers name the 10 things they cannot do without. It’s the human element in both these examples that interest me.

7. Neiman Marcus - Hanukkah and Kwanzaa:

12/11/06 - Free THREE-DAY SHIPPING: Order now for holiday delivery!

view email here

Many of your email subscribers will be celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Be sure to include references to winter celebrations other than Christmas.

Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish holiday, beginning at sundown on Sunday December 21.

Kwanzaa is a week long, African American holiday observance held from December 26 to January 1st.

8. Crate&Barrel - By Price:

11/22/08 - 20 special gifts under $20

view email here

Shoppers are going to be more frugal this year. Most of the gift finder emails I’m receiving focus on price. Include a larger selection of lower price point items, under $25, $50 and $100.

Don’t make gifts by price the center-point of every email. Move it down to your holiday footer, to avoid becoming repetitive.

9. Forzieri - By Recipient:

11/26/08 - What MEN Really Want + Up to 50% Season SAVINGS

view email here

Along with price, shopping by recipient is the most popular way to break down gift categories.

Cashmere sweaters or scarves, is a wealthy persons version of socks and boxers. I could dedicate a whole post to holiday emails featuring cashmere, I’ve received so many. It’s a popular gift, so if you carry any now is the time to feature it in an email.

10. Brooks Brothers - Gift Cards:

12/18/07 - Hurry, Complimentary Shipping Ends Friday

view email here

In mid-December, when people are looking for last-minute gifts send out an email showcasing gift cards.

11. REI - Everything but the kitchen sink:

11/28/08 - REI Gifts to Fit Any Budget + Winter Sale Ends Monday

view email here

This REI email features gifts by price, top rated gifts, gifts for him and her and gift cards! It also features free shipping and their hassle free return policy.

It includes everything you want in a holiday email, along with a clean design and plenty of HTML.

Add a holiday gift footer to your email template like REI’s, and this one one from Land’s End.

12. Barneys - Video Gift Guide:

12/02/08 - Simon Doonan + Julie Gilhart FREAK OUT! + DESIGNER SALE: up to 50% off!

View video landing page here

Barneys is running a fabulous series of video email gift guides this year. Not only is it entertaining, it’s incredibly useful to see items in use, and from multiple angles.

Below is the landing page, you can easily access the products featured on the right-hand side.

Video can double your email click-through rates, and increase online sales. A video gift guide is a no brainer. Place it on your homepage, in emails, YouTube, Facebook and all your other social media sites.

A local video production company can work on a script with you, shoot at your place of business, arrange for a host or a model, edit your video and distribute it online - for around $600.

Speaking of retailers using online video, LK Bennet has a video of a fashion show on their homepage. Click on a product in the video, and it takes you to the landing page seen below.

Here another video of a model wearing the selected outfit does a 360 turn for you! You can click on each item she is wearing, to go to that individual product page. They also have some rather nice product photography…

13. Esquire - Behavior Dictates Price:

view larger image here

Here’s my favorite gift guide. Published in Esquire magazine, “The Big black book” 2007. The more degenerate the guy’s behavior, the more expensive the gift he needs to buy.

The title is, “Worm your way back into her good graces. And quick”. It’s an entertaining way to represent gifts by price. The copy can be adjusted to suit your audience.

Further Holiday Email Reading:

Holiday Email Marketing: 8 Tactics for Retailers
If You Make One Change This Holiday Season…
6 Holiday e-Card Ideas
Santa’s Helper - Animated GIFs in Holiday Emails

Marketing Sherpa recently published an email marketing case from Drs Foster and Smith which tested the impact of mixing educational content with product promotions, whereas in the past their emails were either informative or sales-oriented.

The results of mixing content were 7% boost in click through rate, 6% lift in conversion and 15% increase in sales (meaning average order size was higher).

The campaign involved segmenting the “dog owner” customer, and performing an A/B test using email creative that offered products and discounts comparable in value proposition. As you can see, both emails below include an offer for a free pack of BioSpot and an article about protecting your home and pet from fleas. The difference is which call to action appears first (and more than double the size) in the content area.

Week 1:

Week 2:

The winning design in both tests was information more prominent, offer less prominent. Remember, the informational call to action translated to a 15% increase in sales over the promotional offer.

The all-important landing page used shorter copy with a top image hot-linked to a product page where readers could purchase products relevant to the information. In a sense, readers were being pre-sold on an item with expert advice which further motivated the purchase.

Marketing Sherpa summed up the key takeaway as “Their audience responds better to relevant content than to a heavy-duty sales pitch.”

This is a perfect example of what Marketing Experiments’ Flint McLaughlin recommended in the recent web clinic Ecommerce Holiday Playbook: 13 Ways to Maximize Revenue and Beat the Downturn. If

If you skip to slide 31, Flint explains that the goal of the landing page is to sell (or in this case, pre-sell) the product. The goal of your email (or PPC ad) is not to sell, but to generate interest. A mistake is to try to sell in the email then sell again on the landing page.

Offering educational content within emails is a great way to generate interest — it’s non-committal and it builds trust and long-term loyalty. Even if the customer doesn’t buy from you today, he or she is more likely to open your email expecting to receive valuable knowledge in exchange for their time.

Two additional takeaways noted by Marketing Sherpa:

• Wisely placed educational articles may heat up sales in a blue economy. With consumers tightening purse strings, Web shoppers are not likely to be in as much of a hurry as they used to be. Therefore, holding people’s hands with educational content can be worthwhile for your brand.

• Educational content can create a comfort level for Internet shoppers who don’t have the luxury of physically assessing products the way brick-and-mortar shoppers do. Hence, relevant content can help bridge that gap between the product and the shopper.

Here’s an action item: McLaughlin suggests you look at your last 5 emails you sent, or the next 5 you plan on using for the Christmas season, print them out and lay them on the table. Look at the messaging and ask yourself if the email was written to get a click, or to sell something.

Also, take a couple hours to watch the replay of Ecommerce Holiday Playbook: 13 Ways to Maximize Revenue and Beat the Downturn. There’s a lot of valuable information here.

This post was originally posted on February 21, 2008. With the holiday season underway, and most of you new readers to Get Elastic, I’ve reposted it today in case you missed it the first time.

We do so much to encourage holiday gift shopping (or birthday, anniversary etc), but do we drop the ball in catering to the special needs of gift givers like gift boxes, gift wrapping, gift announcements / messages and gift receipts?

There are many ways you can accommodate gift givers to improve customer and recipient experience with gift options.

Gift Boxes & Gift Wrap

While it may be fine to ship something in a plastic bag or a brown box or a manila envelope (that’s what they send those MacAir computers in, right?), this doesn’t fly with gifts sent directly to the recipient. It also stinks for gift givers who ship items to themselves to wrap and give personally. The customer now has to find an appropriate box to put that personalized t-shirt in, and all he has kicking around is an empty GAP box from last Christmas. Providing a gift box solves a customer problem.

Then there’s gift wrapping. For some people, it’s a hassle. Gift wrap’s not cheap, and it may require an extra trip to pick it up at the drug store. And for customers who ship items direct to the gift recipient, it’s essential.

A couple examples: GAP offers one complimentary unassembled box for every three paid items ordered (why not one for one)? The other option is premium gift wrap service for $5 per order. Victoria’s Secret will send you a gift wrap kit for $3, or wrap the gift for you for $6.

These add-ons also give you an opportunity to brand yourself to the recipient. If you sell items carried by many other retailers, the recipient has no clue where the gift giver bought the item. Why not put your logo on your gift box, or as a watermark on the white side of the gift wrap?

Whether you include gift wrapping or boxes as upsells or freebies is up to you - one will bring you easy additional revenue, the other a fantastic customer service experience.

Continue Reading:
Giving Gift Givers More Options »

Every day I get about 8-15 retail emails from various e-tailers. Yesterday (US Election Day) it dipped to about 6, but 5 of those 6 referred to the election in their headlines:

Which One Will YOU Choose at Comp-U-Plus?
Fat Brain Toys Projects a Winner!
Happy Pre-Holiday Savings - Plus, Elect Free Shipping
Election Day Specials: Free Shipping Deals…
You Voted! Shop Our Best Sellers + Free Shipping

As you’d expect, fewer retailers sent emails on Election Day - voters were busy enough at the polls and glued to the news. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with having an Election Day sale, but I don’t see anything special about it either. What’s interesting is none of these campaigns segmented me out as a Canadian.

Kudos to Fat Brain Toys for actually holding an election - for the 2008 Fat Brain Toys Award.

Delia’s subject line including “You Voted!” sounds like they had a customer vote also, but it just links to the best sellers category. A real vote would have been more fun.