December Retail E-mail Spike Flattens: Email Data Source

After beginning the 2008 holiday shopping season with a massive spike over the previous year in e-mail volume, America’s top retailers have dropped back to 2007 levels in recent weeks, according to Email Data Source.

“I was expecting to see a lot more e-mails. I was expecting to see panic. And I’m not seeing it,” said Bill McCloskey, president of Email Data Source, a firm that tracks brands’ e-mail volume to their house files and coinciding Web site traffic.

In first third of December, retail e-mail volume was up 43% over the same period in 2007, according to Email Data Source. However, the volume has since dropped back to last year’s levels, according to the firm.

“With a couple notable exceptions, it [the last two weeks] was pretty calm,” said McCloskey. “Most of them stayed the course and sent out the same amount of volume they sent out last year, and most sent out pretty much the same type of creative they did last year.”

One notable exception, according to McCloskey has been Bloomingdales, which sent out twice as many e-mails to its customers during the last two weeks compared to the same period last year. Also, whereas last year Bloomingdales sent a 40%-off offer on Dec. 20, this year the retailer began sending 40%-off promotions by e-mail more than a week earlier and has sent more of them, said McCloskey.

“It’s almost like they seem to be in panic mode,” he said. “And I saw the same thing with Kohl’s—about two-and-a-half times more e-mail and a dramatic increase in saying things like 70% off.”

McCloskey added that traffic to top retailers’ Web sites in 2008 is similar to that of 2007.

“It’s almost as if the recession baked in last year,” he said. “There was a very dramatic drop in Web site traffic from 2006 to 2007. But if you look at traffic across the major retailers now, it seems as if we’ve hit bottom and we’re kind of coasting along the bottom.”

He added that traffic to the major retailers’ sites peaked the day after Thanksgiving and has since tapered off. Normally, he said, the retail-online-traffic peak comes in early December.

“There was dramatically more traffic in late November than you’re seeing in December,” said McCloskey. “They never really got that December push. Everything peaked that day [Black Friday], and has remained at about half the traffic of that day across the board ever since.”

He also said that, as is the case every year, retailers have universally simplified their creative for the holiday shopping season.

“During the rest of the year, they usually send out a newsletter with lots of things going on—very busy,” he said. “This time of year, everybody does the exact same thing, which is a big red or green background with a single offer, such as ‘save now,’ or ‘free shipping.’ They basically try to create what looks like a catalog during the year. This comes out looking like a flyer.”