eDataSource

• Email messages containing "Free Shipping" steadily increased week-over-week until the week of Black Friday, when they almost doubled (81%) from the week before and more than doubled the 2-4 weeks prior (132% more than the week of Oct. 17).
  
  
• Tweets containing "Free Shipping" consistently outnumbered emails with the same term in the subject line by 50-80%, depending on the week.
  
  
• All digital marketing messages with "Free Shipping," including Facebook (63% higher than week prior; 96% higher than week of Oct. 17) peaked during the week of Black Friday.

eDataSource, the leading provider of competitive intelligence data in the email and social media space monitors the email and social media activity of thousands of brands, among those the largest passenger airlines. We analyzed email activity and email marketing efforts of the largest airlines as a basis for this analysis

We ranked the top North American airlines by number of passengers as derived from the Annual World Airline Report for the top North American Airlines and then looked at email activity from August 6th to September 5th and compared communication frequency per traveler. This gave us some interesting insights into the airline industry’s communication strategies. Please refer to the chart below for an overview of the information we used for our analysis.

Before diving into this data, it is important to note that some of these airlines utilize multiple email sending domains intended for different purposes that are not purely focused on airline passenger communication and promotions of airline tickets. Some examples are AA’s frequent flyer program, AAdvantage, and Southwest Vacations both of which have been excluded from this comparison. For other airlines, some loyalty program messages and travel agency services are mixed in with the general stream of email and thus not possible to exclude from this comparison.

With that said, there are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from this data. First, the open rates among these airlines range widely from approximately 7% for AirTran to around 18% for United Continental. Some of this difference could be explained by looking at the relative list size compared to total passengers, but then again, Jet Blue retains the second largest portion of their passengers’ emails and still it maintains an open rate above 12%

Secondly, it is interesting to see that the sending list size for these airlines is in many cases only a fraction of the yearly number of passengers, indicating that many airlines have not done a good job of acquiring email addresses. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that so much of the airline ticketing has moved from traditional travel agents to ecommerce. One would think that this would make acquiring email addresses easy, but only the low-cost carriers JetBlue, Airtran and Southwest seem to have capitalized on this opportunity for marketing and communication purposes.

Now, who is doing the best job when it comes to email marketing? Two companies stand out from the rest in this study. Southwest and JetBlue as the most effective email marketers. This is due to impressively sized email lists and relevant enough marketing messages to keep their open rates respectively at 12% and 15%. Although the open rates by themselves are not impressive the fact remains that these airlines have some of the largest relative percentages of their passengers’ email addresses and thus are marketing to a wider spectrum of their total passenger group with the same or better open rates that their competitors. On the other hand, AirTran captures almost a third of their passengers’ email addresses, but fails to be compelling enough in their messages to have their recipients open their communications. They should take a look at their email frequency, promotion strategy and overall segmentation. Maybe AirTran can figure out how to get more relevant about their messaging so that more than 7% of their customers on average open the email they send them. This might be a great opportunity for their marketing efforts.

Probably the least impressive email programs come from American Airlines, United-Continental (United) and Air Canada. Lagging open rates (except for United) and low percentage of known email addresses for passengers indicate a general lack of focus on this important channel amongst many of the airlines.

What did we learn?

The airline industry is unique because of the opportunities it has to capture email addresses from passengers, not only during the ticket purchase process, but through their loyalty programs and alert programs as well. The largest carriers have a lot to learn from JetBlue and Airtran in respect to email address capture so that they in turn can use email as a stronger marketing channel to a larger portion of their prospective passengers. But list size is only one of the challenges. Messages have to be relevant to the sub-segments of your list to get interacted with. Open rates are generally a good measure of interactivity, and none of these carriers are capturing the attention of their audience in an impressive way.  The habitual reliance of traditional airlines on travel agency networks and brand advertisement may be partly to blame for their lacking list sizes. The low cost carriers on the other hand have focused on the efficiency of Internet marketing and ecommerce to survive and thrive and their focus on these channels shows in this quick study. 

No channel really competes with email in terms of ROI. Maybe it’s time for the airlines to divert some more of their marketing dollars to email, grow their lists, test, segment and concentrate on what is relevant to their consumers. Focusing on special offers, better service notifications and informative passenger information could be a good start. Perhaps today is the day to call a meeting with the whole IT team to figure out how to make sure all the email addresses that floating around in the system are being captured and put them to work. The low cost carriers are currently winning the race in email marketing because they realized that list size and penetration into their target customer group is the key to successful messaging. 

Sources:
The performance data used for this ranking is from eDataSource, which uses a listening platform and a consumer monitoring panel of over 800,000 consumers to gain insight into actual consumer interaction with emails from thousands of brands. The information in this blog is derived from estimates based on aggregates of these individuals email interactions and our own monitoring of the email and social media space. The passenger data used comes from the World Airline Report 2011**. Email performance data has not been verified by the airlines in question.
*This column refers to estimated average number of individuals who would open a campaign sent to the airlines full list. eDataSource accumulates aggregated information on consumers interaction with email from commercial senders through a panel of over 800,000 consumers in addition to their email and social media listening platforms
**Air Transit World: World Airline Report (annual), July 2011.

eDataSource, the leading provider of competitive intelligence data, has released a ranking of effective email marketing based on the efforts of the Internet Retailer top 500 e-retailers.  Specifically, EDS has ranked the top 10 retail chain e-retailers with the highest 2010 web sales reported by Internet Retailer.  eDataSource has ranked these brands on their email marketing by how many active recipients they currently have.

The results place Walmart.com & Staples Inc. at #1 and #2 based on EDS’s calculation of active recipients in the last 30 days. The calculation is based on estimated overall reach and open rate data monitored by EDS Analyst.  As you can see in the chart below, both of these brands are ranked in the top 3 of Internet Retailers Top 10 Retail Chains, based on 2010 web sales.

At EDS, we pride ourselves on providing very statistically correct data.  At this time the activity level at W.W. Grainger has not been high enough to provide us with a large enough data sample to report an open rate which is why sample the Active Recipients number is not displayed.  Although the brand has 1.8B web sales for 2010 according to Internet Retailer, W.W. Grainger doesn’t seem to be proactively promoting their products by email.  Therefore, W.W. Grainger defaults to the 10^th place for this ranking.

Defining the monitored performance data used for the ranking:

• Overall Reach = total delivered email list for a particular brand based on the largest detected deployment in a specific timeframe. For instance, the total number of unique recipients of Staples’ emails is estimated at 19.98M.
• Open Rates = emails opened / emails delivered.  They are calculated percentages of how many emails were opened out of all of the emails that were delivered to/received by users.  Each unique email is monitored for a 7-day period as most emails are opened within the first 24 hours.
• Active recipients = overall reach for a brand X open rate for the same brand.  This is an average of how many of the total recipients (reach) were active (opened the email).

**Source: Internet Retailer 2011: Top Retail Chain Merchants

Groupon has just filed for an IPO, Amazon has invested in LivingSocial, and the list of online coupon competitors keeps growing. 

So what is the key to these overnight successors?

It is not often that a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google is rejected, nor is it a common occurrence that a company can raise near to $1 billion in fresh financing.

Groupon, the fastest growing business in history, is elevating to a new platform. 

The drive behind their success lies in generating publicity. What these deal giants are doing is providing a means of exposure for small and big businesses alike to a new audience whilst providing the consumer with up-to-date deals at a negotiated rate. Essentially, they are putting money in everyone’s pocket; business is generated for the retailer, the coupon reseller (ie. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc.) is taking a cut of the profit, and the consumer is getting discounted goods and services. All with a click of a button.

Groupon and LivingSocial appear to have different target markets, as well as slightly differing means for reaching their audience. However, according to comScore the two discount gurus of the online world occupy 90% of the market. As their popularity continues to increase, more and more smaller competitors are coming to light, vying for the public’s attention, and money. This year alone, 273 new daily deal sites were started (MarketingVOX). 

Groupon, based in Chicago, has followers typically from the West Coast, of a younger age, and more commonly female. LivingSocial, based in Washington D.C, is more popular on the East Coast with typical purchasers being middle-aged, with a more even split between the genders (comScore). 

While market segmentation and dollars spent in advertising is interesting, with the help of our program; EDS Analyst, we are able to get an insight into each companies’ contact methodology and reach.

Using EDS Analyst, we are able to see activity in the last 12 months; how many Emails, Tweets, Retweets, and Facebook Posts were sent, juxtaposed with Website Traffic on the respective days.

Is it any wonder that Groupon is the fastest growing business in history when over the past month they engaged with their contact list 5,053 times!

Amazon; the highest ranked Online Shopping brand, had under half the interaction, sending out 2,390 campaigns across Email, Facebook, and Twitter over the past month.

Breaking this down further, the tool also enables us to see just how many doting followers these market leaders are sending to.

eDataSource’s panel of 750,000 members enables us to show the relative reach of marketers on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly breakdown.

In a side by side comparison of their sending lists, we can see that Groupon is just a step ahead of LivingSocial.


                      
                       

                 
Yes, both Groupon and LivingSocial have over 30,000,000 subscribers receiving unique email campaigns!  

As comScore highlights, with the different market sectors and approaches the two giants are taking, success will be balancing on marketing execution as opposed to stealing clients from their competitor. The two are in a race to the top.

With a large portion of the market still open for the taking, the small guys have a shot to get to the top. The thing to follow will be who employs the best marketing strategy to woo those not yet interested. Groupon seems to be on the right path, but the market it still currently open for the taking…

Stay tuned, sign in, or request a demo and track the rankings.

Based on Internet Retailer’s 2011 Edition Top 500 Overview, merchandising categories were ranked by growth in web sales from 2009 to 2010.  The Apparel Category has seen a substantial growth of 19.29%, among the top 5 categories based on ecommerce sales growth. 

Based on analysis of Internet Retailer 500 Companies, it is evident that there is a linear correlation to being a top e-retailer with high web sales and increased growth and having a large reach.  Being a top e-retailer is ranked in Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide, 2011 Edition is based on factors such as 2010’s web sales as a percentage of 2010’s total sales and this percentage’s growth from 2009.  The overall reach data is ranked with the usage of the performance data monitored by EDS Analyst. 

Within the top 15 ranked fashion and apparel e-retailers over the last 30 days by eDataSource, six also appear in Internet Retailer’s Top 100 e-retailers ranking.  These e-retailers include Victoria’s Secret, The Gap, J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Eddie Bauer, and Coldwater Creek. Ranked at #5 and #7 in this report, both Express and Ralph Lauren appear in Internet Retailers Top 500 Guide in the fastest-growing e-retailers ranking for 2011.  Express Inc. is ranked #20 fasting growing e-retailer in the Top 500 Guide, 2011 Edition with 2010 web sales of $147.5 million and 55.26% growth.   It was also listed as a fastest growing e-retailer in the Top 500 Guide, 2010 Edition.  Ralph Lauren LLC is ranked #28 fastest growing e-retailer with 2010 web sales of $300 million and 50% growth.  Therefore, this rankings report compiled with EDS Analyst reach and inbox placement data shows the correlation of having high performance in these areas and being a top e-retailer.

As you can see from the report, other performance data is provided by EDS Analyst including the subject line, reach, inbox placement, and open rate of email campaigns that are monitored, stored, and analyzed by the tool.  Based on this data, analysis can be as to what your competitors are doing right, doing wrong and anywhere in between.

Since 2003, eDataSource has consistently and effectively provided competitive intelligence for digital marketing messaging.  Our EDS Analyst platform has become an invaluable source of data and analytics for our clients.  EDS is working tirelessly to enhance the platform and increase the amount of data that is monitored and analyzed every day. 

On July 1st, 2011, eDataSource launched its newest feature for providing data and analytics: open rates.  As an industry standard, this metric is generally considered to be a measure of how many people on an email list open or view a particular email campaign delivered to their inboxes.

For the overall email market, Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index™ 2009-2010 found that open rates averaged 17% for 2010, down from a 2009 average of 26%.  Why?  With EDS Analyst, comparisons over time, between companies, and across segments can be analyzed using the tool that now includes open rates to determine the reasons for increases/decreases among different email campaigns. Of course the core benefit here is not just to check your own open rates but, to gain access to your competitors’ rates as well.

Are you ready to find out where your company lies vs. your competition?  Are you above or below the 17% benchmark?  Where are you relative to your competitors and others in similar market segments?  Who is achieving a higher open rate and what do their campaigns look like?  Does this user interaction correlate to the website traffic they are receiving?

eDataSource can help answer these questions with new open rate data.  It just might be the key to the success for your next email campaign or may even open the doorway to a long-term revelation for all of your campaigns!

Check out the press release to read more about this exciting time for eDataSource.

The open rates feature will be available to all eDataSource subscribers as part of the EDS Analyst package. Please contact sales at 1.800.761.6580 or sign up for a demo.

Companies across all industries are using social media to create buzz and awareness and to generate higher levels of web reach and traffic.

Quick Tip for Brands - the social media world is competitive and getting increasingly crowded – include a link back to your brand’s website in Twitter tweets and Facebook posts to achieve greater web reach and increased traffic to your website

eDataSource is presently following nearly 6,000 brands on Twitter and over 4,000 on Facebook.  With the use of EDS Analyst, a leading competitive intelligence tool, social media campaigns are constantly being monitored and data is being compiled. Through analysis of EDS Analyst data for the last 30 days, it can be surmised that two of the top brands based on high levels of Facebook use, Twitter use, and web reach are MTV and VH1.

The data shows that the main social media vehicle that these brands utilize is Twitter, followed by Facebook.   Both MTV and VH1 generally have success with their tweets being retweeted by other people that are following the brands on Twitter.

·          Over 1.5M followers on Twitter ·         About 40 times as many retweets over last 30 days as there were tweets

Reach is much more than just a brand’s Twitter followers. Tweets get retweeted!

We noticed that June 6^th had a lot of social media activity for MTV.  On this day the most Facebook posts and
Twitter tweets had been made within the last 30 days.  This directly paralleled with their web reach per million.
From a sample of 1 million Internet users, 4,120 people visited mtv.com that day.  The Facebook posts and Twitter tweets that generated the most likes, comments, and retweets on this day were about a sneak peek for 'Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 2' and watching the new ‘Breaking Dawn’ trailer.

·         Over 225,000 followers on Twitter ·         About 10 times as many retweets over last 30 days as there were tweets

May 26 & 27^th were high Facebook and Twitter volume days for VH1.  This resulted in the largest web reach monitored within the last 30 days for vh1.com to be on May 30^th, a few days after VH1 made substantial social media efforts. Many of the posts and tweets had to do with famous music artists and ‘American Idol’ appeared multiple times.

After all, the buzz starts with followers!  Once a brand is followed by many, they then can have their tweets being retweeted by many, and in turn reach more people that will visit their website.

eDataSource’s approach to Facebook is to focus on the marketing messages that achieve the highest level of reach and user interaction.  In addition, EDS indexes landing page and clickstream data.  This unique approach gives brands a complete picture of their competitors’ effectiveness on Facebook, including which messages are working best, full details of the offer via the landing page, and an understanding of partnerships through the clickstream data.  EDS Analyst organizes all the data by brand and market sector, and makes the data searchable by keyword and domain.

How it Works:

1.     eDataSource “likes” thousands of fan pages of major brands on Facebook.  This allows EDS Analyst to collect and analyze the full stream of status updates from these pages in an automated fashion.

2.  Each status update is reviewed to determine if there is a link to a web page.  Updates without links are discovered.  This allows EDS analyst users to cut through the clutter and focus on marketing offers.  

3.  EDS Analyst “spiders” the links in the status updates, parsing and indexing the clickstream data.  This allows EDS Analyst users to “see through” shortened urls to see where the status updates are sending traffic.  The presence of affiliate links and tracking codes is also revealed. 

4.  EDS Analyst records the landing page of each marketing message.  All the text on the landing page is indexed and the landing page is imaged and preserved in EDS Analyst.

5.  For each marketing message an interaction score is produced, based on the number of times the message is “liked” or commented on by a user, and weighted by the number of fans the page has.

 6.     All marketing messages are organized by brand, company and market sector in EDS Analyst.  Additionally, the text of the status updates and landing pages are fully searchable, as is the clickstream data.

 Examples of eDataSource’s unique approach to Facebook measurement and analysis:

·         Quickly find which brands in your market sector are using Facebook effectively

·         See Facebook activity juxtaposed with Email and Twitter campaigns, and compare activity to web traffic.

·         Access landing pages from prior campaigns that may no longer be online.

·         See what third parties are promoting competitors’ brands

·         Isolate advertising and affiliate network activity on Facebook (Example: show me all status updates where Commission Junction is present in the clickstream).