AMiable Solution #79: Five Fun Fall Facts About Email Marketing

In the spirit of this month’s lighter look at marketing, we offer the following five fun facts about email marketing and fall:

1.  E-mail usage by 18-24 year olds decreased by 34% in 2011, which is bad news for some marketers.  The good news for all of us, however, is that Daylight Savings Time—which ends this weekend—increases our well-being.  It’s credited with preventing traffic injuries and reducing crime.

2.  Marketers will have more success sending carefully crafted emails this November than farmers and grocers will have selling fresh turkeys: 47% of people say they open email based on the subject line, but only 24% buy fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving (the rest buy frozen).

3.  In 2012, emails sent on Tuesdays had higher open rates than any other day of the week.  Think that’s a narrow window of opportunity?  Try being a pumpkin farmer.  They have 80% of the pumpkin supply in the United States available in October.

4. This year, about 84% of all email traffic will be spam.  Sound like spam has the ultimate upper hand?  While it’s impressive (in size, not effect), the state of Illinois has it beat.  Illinois grows between 90 and 95% of the processed pumpkins in the United States.

5.  By 2016, there will be an estimated 4.3 billion email accounts.  That’s equivalent to roughly one-third the average viewership of this year’s World Series through Game 3.

AMiable Solution #78: Five Fun Fall Facts About Web Marketing

Last week we looked at direct mail facts as they relate to some of fall’s finer activities.  This week, we see how web marketing fares against seasonal subjects:

1.  Seventy percent of business-to-business marketers surveyed said that they planned to increase spending on websites this year.  They’re not the only ones spending more.  Halloween spending is already up by about 11% compared to last year, and spending for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas is also expected to increase by at least 11%.

2.  Content creation is expected to increase by 15.1% in 2013 as marketers and organizations continue to realize the value of added value.  Turkey production, by comparison, has increased by 110% since 1970 as more and more people recognize turkey’s value for every day meals, not just holidays.

3.   Successful websites need good roots.  Unfortunately, 50% of ecommerce sites don’t have them: they ask for the same information more than once, adding needless friction in the checkout experience. Corn stalks, on the other hand, have excellent roots: a healthy corn plant can grow as tall as five to 12 feet above ground and up to 6.5 feet below ground.

4.  Interesting content is one of the top three reasons people follow brands on social media.  A fork was not one of the three utensils used by the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving.  They had only knives, spoons, and their fingers.

5.  More Americans (approximately 85%) use the Internet than hand out candy at Halloween (75%).

AMiable Solution #77: Five Fun Fall Facts About Direct Mail

You know direct mail and you know marketing, but you may not know them as they relate to some of this season’s lighter subjects.  Read on to discover five fun fall facts and how they relate to direct mail.

1.  Forty-six percent of parents surveyed prefer to receive back-to-school promotions in the form of direct mail (second only to print ads, 46%).  However, 26% of them will wait until their kids go to bed or to school before sneaking a sweet from their kids’ trick-or-treat stash.

2.  The U.S. Postal Service processes an average of 6,100 pieces of mail every second.  In terms of quantity, that’s the equivalent of 161 of the 26.50-ounce size “big bags” of Fun Size Snickers.

3.  The Postal Service’s proposed price increases for 2014 could generate $2 billion in incremental new revenue.  Candy sales for Halloween alone are expected to reach $2.08 billion this year.

4.  There are more letter carriers that deliver mail entirely on foot (7,753) in the U.S. than apple producers (approximately 7,500).

5.  The USPS mailed an average of 692 million pounds of standard mail a month in 2012.  That’s more weight than Illinois--one of the country’s top four pumpkin producers--grew in pumpkins in all of 2008 (496 million pounds).

AMiable Solution #76: Leave the Lights On

For many Americans, October brought something much scarier than an end-of-month holiday: the federal government shutdown.  An estimated 800,000 American workers will see their workdays and paychecks stopped until Congress can reach an agreement on the new budget.

While USA Today reported last week that approximately 40% of the nation’s 2 million workers would be furloughed if Congress couldn’t come together on the budget, there is a silver lining in that figure for the marketing industry: the United States Postal Service isn’t among the federal agencies dealing with furloughs. 

                                                            

What saved mail delivery?  Funding.  Taxpayer dollars don’t fund the day-to-day operations of the post office, exempting the agency from the shutdown.

Although the length of the shutdown and the implications of the looming debt limit issue are yet to be seen, one thing is clear: direct mail is still open for business. 

That doesn’t mean our industry won’t go unscathed, but with the Postal Service in operation, we can feel a little safer.