Holiday Marketing Tip: Don’t Send Pointless Greetings!

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Holiday Marketing Tip: Don’t Send Pointless Greetings!

Posted by Justin Premick

Can sending a “Happy New Year” or “Merry Christmas” greeting hurt your email deliverability?

Earlier this week, I was talking with Tom (our founder) about the holiday marketing tips we posted recently, and we got to talking about the email habits of both publishers and subscribers around this time of year.

There’s something that thousands of businesses (and in my experience, especially small businesses) do on holidays that brings you little benefit while making it harder to get your email through. Plus it potentially hurts other areas of your email marketing and your business as a whole.

So what is it?

Sending Email on Major Holidays

Now, you may think:

“What’s so bad about sending a holiday greeting email? It’s a great opportunity to show the ‘human’ side of my business and build some subscriber loyalty. Plus I can even make a special post-holiday offer and up my sales.”

Sounds good in theory, right?

But Here’s The Problem With That Logic

You’re assuming that your subscribers are going to see your greeting, stop and read it, see that you care enough about them to wish them well, and get a warm, fuzzy feeling.

See, I don’t think that’s what really happens. To show you why, let’s play a little game called “count the holiday emails in our hypothetical inbox.”

The Clogged Holiday Inbox

Let’s say we get holiday emails from:

Family: Parents, Children, Grandchildren, Aunts, Uncles, Nieces, Nephews, Cousins… (maybe 5 emails in all, could be more/less depending on how spread out your family is)

Friends (? - let’s just say 5, though it could easily be far more)

Bosses, Co-Workers, Employees (5)

So far, only about 15 emails, which might not seem too bad.

But now, let’s say we’re subscribed to oh, 20 different mailing lists/newsletters, and they all send out a holiday email. Now we’re at 35 greetings. (And by the way, if this seems unlikely to you, consider that the two days when AWeber users send the most email are December 25 and January 1.)

Now, throw in the fact that we probably haven’t been at our computer as much over the holidays, so the other emails coming in over that time are piling up, too.

Are We Really Going To Read All of Those?

Especially when they all have a similar subject line? It’s not like “Happy New Year!” leaves us wondering what surprises await in the body of the email.

An overstuffed inbox is a batch of spam complaints just waiting to happen.

Now, consider that first day back. We’ve just been relaxing with family, and now it’s back to the grindstone. And the first thing we see? We have a big old stack of emails that we have to go through. Hooray.

Think anybody uses the “spam” button to clear a lot of that stuff out of the inbox? You betcha.

So complaint rates spike. And ISPs react. And deliverability drops.

Other Reasons Not To Send Holiday Greetings

They’re Not Relevant.

Sure, there’s a holiday and you’re emailing about a holiday. But your subscribers didn’t sign up for holiday greetings. And unless they signed up to your list to be some sort of calendar service, they don’t need you to remind them that it’s New Year’s Day.

They Create More Work For You

When you send an email, subscribers can reply to it, right?

If they reply on a holiday, when you’re out of the office, now you have to sort through all of that extra incoming email — and unlike your subscribers, you don’t have the luxury of just deleting it all, because there may be questions and unsubscribe requests in there.

The Long and Short Of It…

If you want your email to get noticed and read, don’t send when everybody else does.

If you want to build subscriber loyalty, don’t get them in the habit of expecting fluff from you.

If you want to get your email delivered, don’t send messages that are likely to get marked as spam.

There are plenty of good holiday marketing ideas that you can take advantage of. Don’t resort to the tired “Happy _________” greeting.

Tags: marketing calendar, relevance, strategy

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32 Responses

Martin Lee
November 28th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

Very interesting post and I think it makes a lot of sense!
Aaron
November 28th, 2007 at 3:49 pm

Justin:
Your blog posts are too long, i hate having to open the link from the RSS reader I use.
Justin Premick
November 28th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the feedback… guess I have a lot on my mind at times

Out of curiosity, would you find my posts so long if you could read them in full in your RSS reader?
Martin
November 28th, 2007 at 6:39 pm

Justin, hi,

Very interesting post! I was a holiday greetings sender, but I’ll definitely review that now - what you’ve said above a) makes a lot of sense and b) was echoed earlier this week by some posters on the Warrior Forum.

Thanks!
Lori Titus
November 28th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

Good points. Another reason not to send out holiday emails? There are several companies that send me Merry Christmas cards. Well, I know a good portion of my clientle are Muslim. Or Buddhist. Or Jewish.

OK, not everyone sends out Merry Christmas cards. But a Happy Holidays with a christmas tree on it, or a baby in a manger, or…. It is hard to get a truly non-denominational card out.

So we resort to coupons. And recipes. Who can turn down a good batch of fudge?

Justin - one thing I’d like to see a discussion on is what constitutes a bad spam rate. For example, I’ve been here a year or so, and in that time, 35 people have marked me as spam on a double opt-in list. I have a subscription of more than 1,000 members. So….is that bad? If I hit 50 over five years, is that bad? If I hit 50 in a day, is that bad?
Linda G
November 28th, 2007 at 8:09 pm

Thanks for the clear view and giving better options for christmas Greetings i think we do send out to much postcards is better if some one else do it for me.

Friends:
Steve Weber
November 28th, 2007 at 8:12 pm

Justin,

I too would like a post about what is considered a "bad" spam rate..is it a percentage…a certain number..per day or per month or ???…how and when is the spam rate considered bad?

While you are at it, what is a "normal" unsubscribe rate? IF you have good content, and IF you do all the rest right, what percentage might one expect for people unsubscribing? As it stands now, I don’t know if mine is too high or OK…can you help?

Thank You
Justin Premick
November 29th, 2007 at 8:56 am

Lori and Steve,

Great point to bring up - how many complaints are too many?

At any point, your complaint rate should be below .1%, meaning that you do not receive more than one spam complaint per 1000 messages sent.

If you find that your complaint rate is above that point for a message, you should try to determine why that is.

We’ll be fleshing this out in more detail in a blog post, but for now, take a look at this discussion of complaint rates in our Knowledge Base.
Sharon Turnbull
November 29th, 2007 at 10:27 am

Great advice…I’ve been getting so many emails that I’m mostly just hitting the delete button without reading them so had just decided that I’d send out the regular newsletter which included a gift to subscribers (a time-limited offer for a big discount on my Goddess Quiz) and woke this morning to discover my inbox full of mail from subscribers saying that the password I’d given them in the newsletter doesn’t work.

As it turns out the problem is at our server. It’s now requiring that any one arriving at any page at the site is getting a "username and password required to see this page" message.

So I’ve had to broadcast an email letting everyone know it’s broken and I’ll broadcast them again when it’s fixed! Planned to send one email only and now it’s three. Aaaargh!

Will be interesting to see how many unsubscribes and abuse-complaints I get out of this one.
Donna Gunter
November 29th, 2007 at 10:27 am

Justin–

Amen to this! I went on vacation the week of the US Thanksgiving and came back to an inbox clogged with Thanksgiving greetings — saying nothing more than they’re thankful for me being a client/being on their list. I deliberately chose NOT to send out a similar greeting because I thought, "What’s the point?"

I realized if I really wanted to send a meaningful thank you, I’d buy a card and write them a note..:) I haven’t yet done that, but that kind of "thank you" would actually be much more meaningful to me than an email.

Glad I’m not alone in thinking this..:)
Justin Premick
November 29th, 2007 at 10:47 am

Donna,

Exactly - I use what I call the "phone call or card" rule for sending holiday wishes. As in, "am I close enough to this person that I’m willing to call them on the phone, or buy/address/send a physical card, for the holiday?"

If the answer to that question is "no," then I don’t send them a holiday greeting at all.
Ruth
November 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am

I agree and disagree

I say it depends on your business and your relationship with your list.

90% of my own subscribed to lists I do NOT want a holiday message. I would consider them as only business motivated. And, at Christmas, it’s not what I want!

10% I welcome the greeting.

2 examples of Greetings I would read…
Jim Edwards
Rosalind Gardner
Arindam
November 29th, 2007 at 11:03 am

Hmm, now I know that I did the right thing by not sending my subscribers a ‘happy thanksgiving day’ greeting. Well I had already too many similiar messages in my inbox that day, so I could feel what my subscribers might be going through. Like you said, I deleted them all without even opening them!

Another not-so-obvious reason for NOT sending a holiday greeting is that if you want to stand out among the crowd, you shouldn’t do stuff that everyone else is doing. So, if everyone else is sending a ‘Happy New Year’ greeting, you shouldn’t do that or you will come across as a ‘one among the herd’ marketer.

The only exception to this rule is when I send out an email to my subscribers on my birthday - with gifts of course!

I see that some marketers don’t even spare the public holidays for sending out their regular marketing stuff- buy this, buy that, etc. Too bad! Hey, give your subscribers a break!

Very good points Justin.
david savage
November 29th, 2007 at 11:38 am

I got a one page hand written thank you letter from a prospect after a visit he made to us. Now thats a warm fuzzy feeling. E-mail thank yous are really loosing a lot of credibility
TonyEdward
November 29th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Ahhh…Yes! Thank you. Aweber finally said what I was feeling. I could not believe how many pointless happy thanksgiving emails I got last week. 15…20…25 Some even sent their email two or three days later. Doh!

The only exception to this is that I really appreciated the exceptionally high quality gifts that were attached to a very small handful of the emails. The best by far were from John Delavera, Ethiccash, and Wealthy Affiliate.

The worst were ones that said nothing or something about their families. I’m sorry but unless you have bonded with me as a customer lets just keep our emails B2B. Worse yet were emails that offered a free gift that was a meaty blog post? or a free gift if you purchase my product! Shameless pitching on Thanksgiving.
Betty Byrnes
November 29th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Thanks for the interesting post and discussion. I just wish it had been a little sooner!

For the 1st time ever, I sent out a Thanksgiving greeting. I won’t make the same mistake with a Christmas or Holiday greeting!

I’m thinking the place for these types of greetings might be a couple of sentences within my newsletter!

Thanks all!
Justin Premick
November 29th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

Betty,

Great idea - if you feel the need to express holiday wishes, a little blurb within a message that you’re already going to be sending near the holidays is a perfectly fine place for it. No need to dedicate a separate message to the greeting itself.
Kevin Lankford
November 30th, 2007 at 8:21 am

Thanks for the tips! It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who gets way too many emails and become desensitized to a post like Happy____. Why read it? The subject line has already made it obvious!

On the other hand I still want my subscribers to know the ‘human’ side of my business. So I like the idea of a "snail-mail" greetin card.

Thanks again and have a "Happy______!"

Peace
Michael Lodispoto
December 1st, 2007 at 1:25 am

A holiday greeting is fine, but not by e-mail. Every business I own sends out a Holiday card and usually without any special promotions included. The resulting effect is increased referrals all the time, without exception. People love to be noticed and a holiday greeting does help any kind of business.
By the way, I send out actual Christmas cards and not holiday cards only. if i know a client is Jewish I send out a holiday card but otherwise we know if clients are Christians or Jews or Muslims and send out the appropriate cards.
Audrey Burton
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:06 pm

Oh Justin - you are a genius!

Can you please publish this as an article - *everywhere*? As a business coach I’m constantly telling my clients that there needs to be a point and a call to action in every communication, or don’t do it.

It also annoys me a little when I meet someone networking and they email me with ‘great to meet you’ and no point!

Thank you very much. Tying a promotion to a holiday is one thing, but pointless emails are just that. I like the ‘card or call’ qualification - perfect.
Rob Wendes
December 4th, 2007 at 3:04 am

I have to say that I find the same with newsletters. Unless they have a point then I don’t read them! I’ve just had a clear out and I’m down to about 4 newsletters now. I’m pleased to say that the majority of these are sent through AWeber… (must say something)
cheers
Rob Wendes
December 4th, 2007 at 3:08 am

Just read what Aaron posted. Anyone got a view on how long a blog post should be? My target is around 500 words. It seems difficult to get a message across in much less?
Justin Premick
December 4th, 2007 at 8:33 am

Rob,

I don’t have a specific length that I shoot for, and I find that among the blogs I read that post length varies widely.

If you’re looking for more viewpoints, Darren at Problogger addresses this in a couple of posts.
Dina at Wordfeeder.com
December 4th, 2007 at 10:37 am

Hi Justin,

I can’t believe I’m just discovering this blog now, after being a customer for all this time. Great stuff! You make a very valid point about clogging people’s inboxes. This is why I FREQUENTLY recommend to my audience that they set up an alternate email address meant for ezines, e-courses and other "recreational" pursuits.

I know it’s an unpopular suggestion - everyone wants the primary email address of their future clients and customers. But, my feeling is that when the prospect is finally serious about working with us, we’ll have earned the right to their work email and we won’t have to ask for it.

I myself sign up for other people’s mails using a Yahoo address. Email marketers fear that their mails are less likely to be opened and read in this case, but it’s not true. I habitually check mine nearly every day. It’s my "wind-down ritual." As a result, my work email is far more manageable, and I’m far less stressed.

I also get the joy of having my "leisure reading material" all in one place. That means I’m less impulsive about which lists I subscribe to.

If we really want our readers to be happy and to give our mails a welcome reception when they come in, then I say that the new trend in email marketing is to suggest to your audience, as I have, that they open a new account reserved for this purpose.

I don’t want my subscribers feeling harried and aggravated when they get my mails. I want them to feel relaxed and ready to settle in with some good, quality reading.

How about you?
Bruce Rayner
December 4th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

Thanks for the tips Justin, certainly makes sense. A quick related question: I am almost ready to launch a free subscription, 1 email each 4 days.
Each email has information continuing on from the previous.
Considering it will very close to Christmas when this starts am I better to hold off until say end of first week January 08?
Justin Premick
December 5th, 2007 at 10:59 am

Bruce,

I think that probably depends on how you’re going to promote it and who is going to be getting that information.

What I mean is, if you’re going to be promoting it as related/value-added content to current subscribers, by letting them know about it via email, then you may want to wait until after the holidays, when their inboxes are a bit less "noisy."

If on the other hand you’re expecting a significant portion of your subscribers to this to be new ones (not on another campaign/list currently), then I wouldn’t consider the holidays to be (in and of themselves) a good reason to delay the campaign, especially if people are going to be able to sign up at any time after you launch (not just during a fixed/finite number of days).

If someone is coming and seeking you out/signing up for the first time, that’s when their interest level is highest and when they’re going to be most likely to open/read/engage with your emails. In my opinion, the holidays wouldn’t affect that quite so much.
Andrew
December 5th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

Justin,

First time here.

Thanx a million for your great tips
.
Yourcompany email for an AWeber test-drive was a blessing in disguise, and it came just when I was about to send out thankyou and Happy …….messages to my top insurance customers.

It’s a good thing that I decided to visit your blog for ideas after reading the email.

Now I know why nobodybothered to call me last Christmas.

Best wishes to you and all your readers in their marketing campaigns.during the hollidays and beyond.
Rosalind Gardner
December 5th, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Justin,

I’m SO glad that someone finally made this point!

Call me cynical, but most of those holiday greetings seem to be sent as just another opportunity to get product exposure.

I believe that if you’re doing email marketing correctly, holiday greetings and other messages of appreciation can and should be included with your regular (weekly) newsletter.
Affiliate Unleashed
December 11th, 2007 at 7:32 pm

I’ve been guilty of this once before.

Thanks for the tip. Great suggestion.
Holiday Greetings: Justin Makes a Great Point
December 13th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

[…] For more reasons not to send pointless holiday greetings, read Justin’s article here and check out the comments. […]
Wholesale Dropship Directory
December 30th, 2007 at 4:44 pm

Justin,

Holiday greetings with a thank you for being a subscriber or customer are not so bad occasionally. Thank you emails can be offered at other times though to avoid offending anyone who doesn’t recognize the holiday.I do dislike the thinly disguised holiday greetings that are an obvious pitch though.Thanks for pointing out that something even with good intentions, if not done with thought, can backfire.
Arindam Chakraborty’s Blog » 4 Holiday Marketing Mistakes
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 pm

[…] First of all, I'd like to commend Aweber for bringing up this issue before all internet marketers. […]