'Cyber Monday' is defined as the first workday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, and as logic would suggest follows 'Black Friday' which relates in this context to ecommerce and retail sales, specifically the upward trend that follows from these dates in late November through the Christmas period. The terms ‘Black Monday’ and ‘Black Wednesday’ are perhaps better known in the UK but not in the context of retail.
The report cites examples and highlights strategies used by different retailers, compares 2008 to 2007 and gives great food for thought. If you or your customers operate within the retail sector I would rate it as a recommended read purely for background knowledge, how retailers are using email in the US and perhaps above all the potential for idea generation.
For me the report made for interesting reading and rather than summarise its findings I thought I’d post some thoughts and questions that I had after reading it:
- The term ‘Cyber Monday’ originally coined by US marketers in 2005 (according to BusinessWeek) and has quickly grown. As the report states there is “greater acceptance” of the term including many brands using the term in subject lines and message content. This is interesting. Is it because here in the UK we don’t have a public holiday before Christmas there is less of a clearly defined start point (although broadly speaking the end of November signals an increase in retail spending)? There is no ‘Cyber Saturday’ as such here. If there was a similar term in the UK would brands use it in the same way as US retailers have been doing, mentioning it in subject lines, message body.
- I wonder how UK and US email volumes, strategies, subject lines, offers compare? Further, to what extent do US parented retailers adapt their home grown methodologies to the UK? What UK based research is available that could be comparable to this report?
- What if any emails that you received from UK retailers drove you to make a purchase late last year? For me it was this retailer. Who, interestingly had a better than most Christmas retail season in terms of sales.
- How would the email strategies of the top UK retailers correlate with their financial results? Who in the UK retail sector is using email in an engaging fashion? How can email be best used to drive sales in retail against a backdrop of slowing retail sales, how are retailers adjusting their email marketing strategies in the economic climate?
The 2008 ‘Cyber Monday’ report written by Chad White can be downloaded by DMA members free of charge here, login required.
Richard Gibson
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said on January 29th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Good questions, Richard!
I believe the idea of “Cyber Monday” will go away by the next holiday season. It was originally a very real spike in online sales the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – when people got back to work and a high speed connection. Now that most Americans (and British) have high speed at home, that day shows a very small impact on sales.
What is most interesting to me, however, is that when many retailers on both sides of the Atlantic were pressured to increase sales a time when consumers were holding on tight to their wallets – the most commmon responsse was simply to “send more email.” That is a very short term and short-sighted strategy, as it results in lower performance per campaign, higher list churn and lower deliverability (due to higher complaints). Most consumers here in the US were exhausted by the overload of messages in Q4 – from retailers and every other marketer!
The real challenge ahead is to do more than just “send more messages.” We email marketers must send more relevant messages and time our campaigns to the lifecyle of the subscrciber. This takes segmentation and data analysis, but it results in significantly higher return.
THANKS
Stephanie, Return Path, New York
said on January 31st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Interestingly Bill McCloskey wrote a Clickz post recently: When to take the high road.
(http://www.clickz.com/3632369)
He states in it ‘The whole concept of Cyber Monday should probably be retired after this year. In pre-high-speed Internet days, there would be a spike in online sales on the Monday following Thanksgiving, as people returned to work where they had high-speed Internet access. With high-speed Internet now ubiquitous at home, the Monday lift just isn’t there anymore and probably never will be again.’
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