Spamidays are here. Don’t be a contributor.

Lets face it, the barrage of emails during the holiday season ends up developing an impenetrable amount of noise for most email users.  According to my quick sentiment analysis (Twitter and Facebook) I would say that increased, non-targeted emailing has developed a new season that is not being taken too favorably. Being opportunistic I would like to offer a new term for the season: Spamidays.   Following suit with economists I would declare that Spamidays has already begun and, unlike our recession, has a definable end date, probably the second week of January.

What data supports my thoughts?  Your inbox is probably the biggest indicator but here are a couple of supportive tweets (selected out of about 2,000 from the last 2 days):

Have other Gmail user noticed an increase in SPAM in the last few days? 153 in a day is way more than what I usually get! Holiday SPAMMING?
CrazyKinux [Reply] [Profile] - 20:31

Holiday catalog spam & junk mail is piling up. You can practically feel the desperation of the retailers this year…so much paper & email.
crystallyn [Reply] [Profile] - 10:12

Ah, the holiday season. Filling everyone’s electronic in box with extra-special spam.
textualdeviant [Reply] [Profile] - 10:30

Interesting sentiment.   Last year year’s Spam Report also confirms an ever increasing tidal wave of email over the holiday season:

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but this month’s spam levels brought little cheer to anti-spam analysts.  Overall spam levels continued to increase, accounting for nearly three out of four emails in November. To put that growth trend into perspective, in May 2007 spam accounted for approximately 64 percent of all email traffic.  Symantect 2007 Spam Report

So I have labeled the obvious but how can you ensure your email campaigns are construed as valuable and assistive and not viewed as a contributor to Spamidays?:From an analytics perspective:

• Make sure the content is targeted and topical to receipients.  Don’t broadcast entire catalogs to every receipient.  Fatigue will settle in quickly this season, so if the reader does not eyeball something of interest right-away odds are your content will be categorized under SPAM.
• Keep an active eye on open-rates, click-throughs and other metrics which can indicate early signs of Spamidays ire.
• Constantly analyze your product spectrum and customer purchasing behavior to identify cross-sell, up-sell and other market basket opportunities.  Your customers may find the complimentary suggestions helpful. Especially if you remind them that the matching points for that velvet x-mas sweater are on sell.
• Keep track of your rosters and lists and make sure that you maintain an acceptable delivery velocity for every opt-in member across all your campaigns.  You don’t want too many examples like CrazyKinux.

From a content perspective the email service providers are offering several points on how to succeed for the Spamidays:

• Constant Contact :Using Email Marketing for the Holidays
• Vertical Response :Writing Holiday Copy That Sells
• AWeber: 5 Holiday Marketing Tips to Beat a Slow Season

Tags: Holiday Emails, Spamidays

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Constant Contact, Email Marketing, Personalized Email, Targeted Email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.