Amazon leads North America’s top e-retailers in sending email to new customers

 BY SANDRA GUY Senior Editor

An Internet Retailer survey shows Amazon sent 128 emails in November to someone who had just signed up to receive them.

Email is a staple of online retailers’ promotions this holiday season, whether it’s from discount giant Amazon.com Inc. or a single-owner wine e-retailer, according to an Internet Retailer survey.

It paid off for LivingSocial Inc., which had 31% higher sales than forecast for its Cyber Monday email promotion, says Danny Hsia, the retailer’s head of email and customer relationship management. He declined to give specific figures.LivingSocial ranked No. 5 for most emails sent to a single email address in November in an Internet Retailer survey of the Top 1000 retailers in North America, as ranked by Top500Guide.com. For the survey an Internet Retailer researcher signed up to receive email from all of the Top 1000 retailers that offered that option, and tracked the 13,000 he received. The survey is representative of what someone who had just signed up to receive email would receive from leading e-retailers.

The top five retailers in terms of number of emails sent in November to a newly signed-up consumer, are:

1. Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1 the Top 500), 128 emails.
2. WineChateau.com, 102 emails.
3. Hobbytron.com, (No. 627)100 emails.
4. Big Fish Games Inc. (No.179),  94 emails.
5. LivingSocial, 90 emails.

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A separate category examined retailers that sent emails that offered some kind of promotion. The top five retailers sending emails with such incentives during November were:

1. Amazon.
2. HobbyTron.com.
3. BlueFly.com (No. 229).
4. Rakuten.com (No. 51).
5. The Bon-Ton Stores Inc. (No. 181).

LivingSocial’s emails in November focused on giving as gifts experiences such as a massage, a facial or a restaurant meal, and more than half of the recipients read the emails from a mobile device, Hsia says. LivingSocial’s customers are primarily educated, affluent women who use email to do their shopping online, he says.

LivingSocial’s holiday emails started going out in early November, but Hsia would not disclose the size of the retailer’s email list. The e-retailer sends out 300 million emails a week to its audience throughout the year. The holiday promotions represent LivingSocial’s repositioning in September to launch programs for cash back at restaurants and online booking for health and beauty retailers, as well as to be a marketplace for consumers to purchase experiences, Hsia says.

Amazon.com owns a 31% stake in LivingSocial, according to Amazon’s financial filings.

Email is one of LivingSocial’s best-converting channels, Hsia says. “It always should have a place in any marketer’s plan,” he says. LivingSocial is No. 206 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide.

Wine retailer WineChateau.com, second in the number of promotional emails sent in November in the Internet Retailer survey and No. 555 on the Internet Retailer Top 1000, uses email as its primary promotional vehicle year-round.  But the retailer doubles the rate of emails it sends customers to an average of twice each day during the holidays, says Saurabh Abrol, WineChateau CEO and president.

The retailer’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions focused on shipping discounts and gift ideas, and WineChateau’s conversion rate is 3.1% versus an industry average of 2.5%, he says.

Retailers’ dependence on email promotions coincides with a study provided exclusively to Internet Retailer by email marketing firm Listrak. The study shows Listrak’s 800 client retailers have sent more email promotions and obtained higher conversion rates from email so far this holiday season than during the same period last year. The conversion data is from an index of 136 average Listrak retail clients. 

Retailers’ emails to consumers increased 32.44% on Thanksgiving Day compared with  2014; 50.74% on Black Friday; 48.59% on the Saturday after Thanksgiving; 46.18% on that Sunday and 41.89% on Cyber Monday, the survey shows.

Email’s share of conversions increased to 28.9% this year from 24.9% on Thanksgiving Day 2014; to 31.5% from 24.4% on Black Friday, and to 30.5% from 24.1% on Cyber Monday. Including the five days  from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, email’s share of conversions increased to 30% this year from 24% in 2014, the survey shows.

Listrak CEO Ross Kramer says retailers are sending more email this holiday season and using analytics to include deals tailored to customers’ preferences and shopping histories.

Even high-end shoe retailers such as Stuart Weitzman and John Varvatos sent emails promoting discounts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and those brands rarely offer discounts, even during the holidays, Kramer says.

“Retailers know it’s going to be a great opportunity to drive revenue,” he says.