E-mail

Retailers are focusing on giving shoppers what they want in an effort to turn browsers into buyers and ensure their brand stays top of mind this holiday season. More than 32 percent of consumers will shop online this holiday season, according to a study from the National Retail Federation. This reality makes email a perfect channel for delivering holiday messages. Here are five tactics to ensure your brand is at the top of consumers’ lists this holiday season:

Knotice, a provider of direct digital marketing software and services, announced the release of its Mobile Email Opens Report: First Half 2011, featuring valuable data on the percentage of email opens and click activity via mobile device across 11 industry segments, including retail, hospitality, telecommunications, health care and more.

Listen in as Joe Schmidt, director of e-commerce for Waterford Wedgwood Royal Doulton (WWRD), and Heather Bonura, director of brand strategy at Listrak, discuss WWRD's successful 2010 holiday email marketing program as well as its plans for this year's holiday season.

The disconnect between how executives and consumer privacy advocates view email marketing was never more obvious than during the latest hijinks surrounding Barnes & Noble's acquisition of Borders' customer data, including email addresses. As part of the Borders bankruptcy proceedings, Barnes & Noble paid $13.9 million for Borders' intellectual property, including its 48-million customer database.

Starting in 2005, Borders began amassing a database of more than 48 million email addresses of customers who participated in its loyalty program. Now that the company is in bankruptcy, that email database is seen as valuable property by Barnes & Noble, which won an auction to purchase Borders’ assets for $13.9 million. The problem for Barnes & Noble is that Borders originally promised many of the customers in its loyalty program that it wouldn't disclose their personal information without their permission. Borders changed its policy in May 2008, but collected millions of email addresses and other data before then.

In a session at the recent eTail conference in Boston, Jim Moore, president and CEO of The PSNE Group, parent company of online footwear retailer Birkenstock Central, discussed how his company’s email program has leveraged customer lifecycle management techniques to increase revenue from the channel. Moore focused on three specific areas of Birkenstock Central’s email program: acquisition, triggered messaging and re-engagement campaigns.

Responsys has released its Viral & Community Links in Emails 2011 report, which found that retailers are more focused on using email marketing programs to promote their social communities and less focused on email for social sharing.

Major retailers, including Nordstrom and Gap, have begun offering electronic versions of receipts, either emailed or uploaded to password-protected websites. The retailers report more customers are opting for paperless.

Forrester Research Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru was on hand at the Retail Email Exchange symposium in San Diego last month to offer best practices for four current trends in the e-commerce space. Looking to debunk conventional wisdom, Mulpuru advised that things often turn out to be different than they initially appear. With that in mind, here are the four trends that Mulpuru addressed:

DEMCO realized it needed to find new ways to increase overall conversions on its website. The company selected an email service provider to create more sophisticated, automated email campaigns with shopping cart recovery initiatives and new subscriber welcome programs.