Email Marketing Trends for January 2013

The New Year started off with a bang!  The first day of the year saw the number of brands sending more than one email within the first 24 hours of 2013 more than double.  So, how did the first month shake out?  Let's dig into sending trends for the first month of 2013!  

Email Volume by Day

Surprisingly New Year's Day came in as the 21st busiest day of the month.  The peak arrived on Jan 21st with 55% of brands mailing. Mailing volume on that day saw a mix of weekend sales extended, new sales launching, Valentine's Day promotions, Super Bowl Sales, and MLK Day events.  It definitely was a busy week!  The slowest day of the month was Jan 23rd with only 10% of brands mailing.  The day nearly flat lined.  Only a few one-day and weekend sales were seen. 

Thursdays were the busiest day of the week in Jan.  The month was filled with weekend sales.  These are common throughout the year but there was an increase (especially for white sales) this month.  Thursdays were used to announce the sales, drive in-store traffic or to reinforce urgency to shop before the sales expire. Saturdays were the slowest days of the month but it's interesting to compare the slowest days in Jan to those in Dec.  3.7% more brands were mailing during the holidays even on the slowest of days.

There was a shift to mailing later in the week in 2013 compared to 2012. New Year's Day 2012 was a Monday which helped push volume earlier in the week last year.

Emails Sent per Brand

The holidays are definitely over!  The most frequent sender dropped by 26 emails!  The average number of messages sent by all brands also dipped by nearly 5 emails.

Subject Line Trends

Longest: 

If the "list subject lines" are included, the longest subject line was by Gilt City NYC and clocked in at 233 characters.  Excluding the "list subject lines," the longest subject line was 90 characters shorter at 143.

"WOW" and "Shop" popped up again in January.  I see these subject lines frequently enough that they have started to lose impact.  FredFlare's "<33 FF" shortie was fun, clever and communicated enough about the sale to pique interest.

“The Tiny Dozen” features subject lines that are 12 characters or fewer to give you ideas to keep it short and sweet!

January Subject Line Word Cloud

Most Frequently Used Characters

Stars and hearts dominate once again though the bubbled numbers are still hanging in there.  These numbers have been used to liven up # day sales.  

(Click to view the full list of special characters.)

(Click to view the full list of special characters.)

Thankfully there brands are not saturating their subject lines with special characters.  There were only 4 brands who used 3 or more special characters in their subject lines.

Please let me know if there are other trends that you would like to see in the monthly Email Marketing Trend reports. And as always, I welcome your comments...any trends you're seeing? What do you make of the trends for January?

Jim Davidson
Manager of Marketing Research

Previous Email Marketing Trends Reports:

November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012