100%
of the users surveyed said they planned to use email marketing to promote or increase their holiday sales in 2014.
73%
of their businesses are in the e-commerce realm
27%
are brick-and-mortar retail
51.1%
of respondents have one or more retail locations, such as a store or restaurant
78.1%
of those use email to support those brick-and-mortar shops
Company age
User's position / role at their company
The vast majority of respondents handle their own email marketing strategy and execution. Most send weekly, monthly, or irregularly, and consider email marketing overall to be very important to their business.
How often do you send emails?
Which of the following uses of email marketing would you rate as “very important” to your business?
How do you handle your email marketing strategy and execution?
| On our own / internally | Use an agency / consultant | |
|---|---|---|
| Email marketing strategy | 97.4% | 2.6% |
| Email marketing execution | 97.0% | 3.0% |
Most users say they don’t send different email versions to different segments of their audience. But those that do most often target based on signup source, subscriber-defined interests, and purchase data from integrations.
Do you send different email versions to different segments of your audience?
| Company size | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| < 10 | 23% | 77% |
| 11 - 50 | 48% | 52% |
| 50 | 39% | 61% |
How do you select which audience segments to target?
Most users surveyed say they plan to use email marketing to promote or increase their holiday sales in 2014. Slightly more respondents rank Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday as “not at all important” (vs. “very important”) to their holiday sales—but about half say they’ve developed marketing plans for these days in the past, and will again in 2014.
Which of these marketing tactics will you be using more in 2014, compared to 2013?
| Marketing Tactics | E-commerce | Retail |
|---|---|---|
| Banner or display ads | 23% | 18% |
| Blog | 40% | 28% |
| Email marketing | 59% | 61% |
| 48% | 56% | |
| Facebook paid ads | 33% | 29% |
| Google PPC | 26% | 10% |
| Other paid search marketing | 19% | 8% |
| 41% | 42% | |
| 13% | 10% | |
| Listings on Yelp / TripAdvisor | 6% | 9% |
| 45% | 38% | |
| 49% | 39% | |
| YouTube | 23% | 17% |
What kinds of communications are included in your holiday messaging?
On a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (very important), how important are these days for your holiday sales?
| Day | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black Friday | 28.7% | 14.4% | 22.5% | 12.9% | 21.4% |
| Small Business Saturday | 24.4% | 18.4% | 25.0% | 14.4% | 17.8% |
| Cyber Monday | 34.3% | 13.7% | 18.5% | 11.3% | 22.1% |
Have you developed marketing programs in past years specifically for any of these days?
Were they successful?
88%
Yes
12%
No
The majority of respondents expect both their total revenues and end-of-year holiday revenues to be up by 10% or more in 2014. Email is among the top three reported sources of revenue for both e-commerce and retail businesses, and 36.9% of respondents use MailChimp to track the revenue they generate via email.
How do you expect your 2014 revenue to compare to 2013?
| Revenues | Up by 10% or more | Up by < 10% | Same as 2013 | Down by < 10% | Down by > 10% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenues | 55.3% | 20.0% | 14.0% | 5.8% | 4.9% |
| End-of-year holiday revenues | 55.6% | 21.0% | 16.4% | 4.1% | 1.9% |
How much of your annual revenue comes from each of these marketing tactics?
| Marketing Tactic | E-commerce | Retail |
|---|---|---|
| Content marketing (e.g. a blog) | 11% | 8% |
| Directory sites (e.g. Yelp, TripAdvisor) | 1% | 2% |
| 25% | 21% | |
| Networking / events | 11% | 30% |
| Organic search | 46% | 21% |
| Paid search | 23% | 6% |
| Print advertising | 3% | 9% |
| Social media marketing | 11% | 8% |
How do you track revenue you generate via email?
How much does the holiday season contribute to your yearly revenue?
Sales and total opens are the two most popular ways to measure an email program’s success. Sales is also the most popular way to measure online marketing tactics’ success. New customers is second, at 69.4%.
How do you measure the success of your email program?
How do you measure the success of your online marketing tactics?