Two thirds (66%) of the top online retailers failed to send customers any Christmas offers in the month running up Black Friday, according to new research.
The study, from Teradata also revealed that 74% failed to provide any information related to the Christmas sales. Only 28% of the top 50 sent information about Black Friday and of those that did send a Christmas offer to their customers, only 64% sent information relating to Black Friday.
The retailers who have a very active offline presence, such as John Lewis, Sainsbury’s and Argos, all provided customers with a Christmas offer and details about Black Friday. Whereas others, with less high profile campaigns failed to engage in the festive spirit at all. Of the 40% that complied with at least one of the report’s three criteria – Is there a Christmas offer? / Is there info on Christmas sales? / Includes a Christmas gift suggestion – only 70% opted to seasonally theme their emails.
The findings suggest that retailers have remained largely stagnant in their marketing efforts since last year, in which the same study found a only a third sent a Christmas offer, whilst 72% of the top 50 failed to send any Christmas sales information in their emails.
Christopher Kollat, Country Manager UK&I, Marketing Applications, Teradata, comments: “Retailers clearly value email as a channel, with 96% of the top 50 sending one or more emails to customers per month, but what is clear is that they are not utilising the tool enough to their advantage. In recent years, we have seen the number of targeted emails steadily increase, but Christmas still seems to remain their Achilles heel.”