As you know, holidays are the most important time of the year for any business owner, so it’s not surprising if you already planning ahead for a great special sales season.
According to the latest study by Shop.org and Forrester Research, the US eCommerce industry has experienced a "blistering" compound annual growth rate of 33%!
In fact, Forrester predicts that revenue in 2006 will continue to grow another 20% to top $200 billion. And 41% of the retailers WebTrends surveyed said that the holiday season accounts for more than 20% of their annual revenue.
What’s essential to them? Segmentation, for one thing. In fact, 50% of retailers said that visitor segmentation was very important or somewhat important to the success of their online holiday season.
Why do I tell you all these? Because recently WebTrends release a new and interesting report called "
2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report", based on a survey made over 300 retail professionals.
WebTrends is leading the way in Marketing Performance Management. With an uncompromising focus on delivering the most accurate and actionable metrics, WebTrends enables thousands of web-smart organizations to improve campaign performance, web site conversion, and customer relationships.
This free report reveal the latest research, key trends and winning strategies merchandisers plan to execute this year.
So keep reading...
OK, I've got your attention now! One of the most important question for us was:
"What on-site features are you planning to use to generate online revenue from loyal customers during the upcoming holiday season?"
As you can see in the chart, the most popular site feature in 2006, as in 2005, is
suggested items, with about 49% of retailers surveyed.
A gift idea center is next, with 40%, and a featured item sales page, with 37%.
Imagine the power of these features if they were personalized to the clickstream behavior of customers!
On the other hand, the trends are very clear: offline promotion is down and online is up.
(
WOW... that's shocking, right?)
The biggest increases in spending (for advertising purposes) will be in
email marketing (52%),
SEM (46%) and
SEO (38%), while the biggest decreases in spending will be in online
banner ads (17%),
print advertising (16%) and
broadcast advertising (14%).
The advertising dollars are going where the consumers are. They’re also going where advertisers have more control over the targeting of their message, as well as the ability to measure its success.
These are really cool information here. Despite of what some "guru's" told us, email marketing is FAR beyond his death. Of course, there are many problems regarding an email promotion... but keep reading and I'll show you how to overpass these difficulties.
Back to the survey now: 80% of retailers said that
sending regular customer emails is the activity they're currently using to build customer relationships.
Demographic customer databases, regular emails, special events, and special offers are the most common activities that businesses are using to create customer relationships.
Strong relationships mean strong sales. Research shows that targeted email significantly improves revenue, and in fact, a recent JupiterResearch Executive Survey showed that email targeted based on web site clickstream behavior was nine times more successful than broadcast email.
Search Engine Optimization and
Search Engine Marketing are also vital to success in the holiday season.
In fact, the findings of this survey reflected those of a recent BizRate and Shop.org study, in which retailers said their most effective online marketing plan was email marketing, with paid and organic search optimization following close behind.
So here are my last thoughts!
Email marketing still a
GREAT weapon into your online arsenal. If you use email to communicate with your customers and subscribers, then...
... I have some extremely important updates for you!
Even as you're reading this letter, a massive industry shift is taking place that's going to dramatically affect whether or not
40% to 80% of the email you send gets delivered -- or filtered as spam!
Obviously, if your email isn't getting delivered, your
sales and profits are going to seriously suffer!So on the following web page, you're not only going to discover the exact email marketing strategies that one guy used to generate
$291,756.42 and
44,901 new opt-in email subscribers in the last
30 days alone.
But you're also going to learn how you can get "whitelisted" with Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail -- and guarantee the delivery of every email you send.
Plus you'll read about the 3 NEW criteria used by "spam filters" to deliver (or delete) your email -- accreditation, reputation, and email authentication!
Click here to get all the details!I hope you enjoy this post!
Valeriu
P.S. - by the way, if you visit this page during the next 3 days only, you'll ALSO get six bonus reports, valued at $394.73 but yours FREE... including the details of how you can
send email to the 2 BILLION consumers using mobile devices -- like cell phones and BlackBerries!
To get all the details,
visit this web page!
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