This week the study finds:

• Email campaigns with offers in the subject line make up 28.6% of campaigns this holiday season – a 6% increase over the 27% of campaigns with offers seen last year.
• Offers in subject lines for percent off, dollars off, BOGO, gift cards and coupons have increased as a percent of total offers, while flash sales, free shipping and urgency make up a lower percentage of offers than they did last season.
• 87% of traffic generated by search terms containing “free shipping” was organic traffic during the week ending 12/15.
• Hot Products: top search terms to appliance & electronic sites were “beats by dre” and “otterbox” for the week ending 12/15.
• Multi-channel retailers, catalogers, and publishers had double digit increases in volume for the week of 12/9 – 12/15 compared to 2011.
• The increases in revenue per email we have seen this year over last year are holding as we approach the last 2 weeks of the season.

Highlights and trends: continue the conversation

As the holiday is almost here, it is important to expand upon and continue the relationships you have achieved with subscribers and buyers this season. Email is an excellent way to have multi-channel conversations with your customers

Social media:

Encourage subscribers to share their holiday gifts and experiences on your social media sites. Facebook and Pinterest are the most popular social media sites to appear in subject lines, and both received higher than average open and click rates during this holiday season.

Ratings and surveys:
Continue the conversation with your subscribers by sending surveys and/or requests for ratings and reviews of your products and services. Strong open and click rates on these types of mailings indicate that subscribers welcome the chance to interact with you in this way.

Thank-you mailings:
For a ‘quick win’ at the end of this holiday season and throughout the year, include campaigns with the words ‘thank-you’ in the subject line. Mailings sent to thank folks for subscribing to a list, or joining a loyalty program, or purchasing a product had more than 2.5 times the open rate and over 3 times the click rate of the average for all season mailings.

In addition to generating high open and click rates, ‘thank-you’ mailings provide exceptional transaction rates and revenue per email. Sending a ‘Thank-you for purchase’ mailing in addition to any order confirmations, can provide 6.5x higher revenue per email than the average for all season mailings.

Online consumer insights

Monday, December 17 was Free Shipping Day – which marks another major e-retail day as shipping deadlines approach to ensure timely holiday deliveries. Leading up to this day, variations of ‘free shipping’ search terms have  been rising since November, and have increased 91% since the week ending 11/3.

Continuing our watch of gift card searches as we get closer to the Christmas holiday, we see that searches containing ‘gift card’ increased 42% in the past week.

Experian Marketing Services

Among the top 10 terms, the top two terms stayed the same with facebook the top search term and “youtube” ranked at number two. The search term “craigslist” moved up from the fourth spot in 2011 to the third spot in 2012. “Facebook login” was the fourth most-searched term in 2012, followed by “facebook.com” and “yahoo.” The search term “amazon” moved into the top 10 terms for the first time. Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking–related terms dominated the results, accounting for 6.03 percent of the top 50 searches. This is an increase of 44 percent compared with 2011.

When combined, common search terms for Facebook — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — accounted for 5.84 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a 27 percent increase compared with 2011. YouTube terms accounted for 1.67 percent, representing a 23 percent increase compared with 2011. Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.91 percent — an increase of 20 percent compared with 2011. Yahoo terms accounted for 0.79 percent — an increase of 34 percent compared with 2011.

“Navigational searches continue to dominate the top search results as users continue to visit their favorite sites via search engines instead of directly entering a web address into their browsers URL bar,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services. “Single-word searches grew 16 percent in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results. Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.”

Other highlights include:

• The top 50 search terms accounted for more than 12 percent of all Internet searches in 2012 – representing a 30 increase compared to 2011.
• New terms that entered the top 50 search terms for 2012 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof – an acronym for Plenty of Fish, the top visited dating site in the US.
• The search terms yahoo and ebay have appeared among the top 10 since this ranking was started in 2006.

Top-visited websites in 2012

Facebook was the top-visited Website for the third year and accounted for 79.1 billion total US visits between in 2012. Google.com ranked second, with 78.5 billion total US visits — followed by YouTube (25.9 billion), Yahoo! Mail (22.2 billion) and Yahoo! (20.8 billion). eBay ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 2009.

The combination of Google properties accounted for 109.3 billion total. Facebook properties accounted for 79.1 billion total US visits, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 76.5 billion total visits. The top 10 Websites accounted for 276.3 billion total US visits or 32 percent of all U.S. Internet visits in 2012, which was slightly up compared with 2011.

Top public figure searches – Whitney Houston was the 196th most popular overall search term in the United States in 2012:

1. Whitney Houston (196)
2. Justin Beiber (242)
3. Kim Kardashian (291)
4. Nicki Minaj (371)
5. Bobbi Kristina (397)
6. Miley Cyrus (432)

Movies Titles – the top five searches from within the Movies category:

1. Breaking Dawn – Part 2
2. Magic Mike
3. The Dark Knight Rises
4. Prometheus
5. Dark Shadows

Music – the top five searched for artists/bands:

1. One Direction
2. Taylor Swift
3. Justin Beiber
4. Beyonce
5. Zac Brown Band

Branded Destinations – the top five search terms:

1. Disney World
2. Great Wolf Lodge
3. Disneyland
4. Hershey Park
5. Universal Studios Orlando

Top TV show searches – the top five primetime show searches from the Television category:

1. American Idol
2. Dancing with the Stars
3. The Voice
4. The Bachelor
5. South Park

Sports – The top searched-for athletes were Tiger Woods, Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning. The top searched for sports team was the Dallas Cowboys.

News and Media – The top non-celebrity search topics among News and Media sites in 2012 were hurricane sandy, iPhone5, election results and George Zimmerman.

If you are interested in more top 2012 data visits and fastest-moving searches, visit: the online trends page

The online traffic to the top 500 retail sites increased 5% for the period of December 2 – 8, compared to the same week in 2011.

Additionally, Amazon remained the top visited site among retailers, followed by Walmart and Target.   The chart below includes the top 10 results:

Experian Marketing Services also tracks top product searches.  Listed below are the top 5 product searches for the week ending December 8:

1. Uggs
2. iPad mini
3. iPad
4. Beats by dre
5. Ipod touch

We will continue to publish weekly retail site data and insights through this holiday season.  Please leave us a comment below if you have any specific questions along the way.

This week’s key findings:

• More promotional mailings are being sent on weekends. The average weekend this holiday season had 43% promotional and 57% trigger campaigns. This past weekend, 47% were promotional campaigns, a 9% increase from the 43% average.
• Although still a small percentage of mailings, the number of campaigns offering gift cards in subject lines more than doubled compared to the same week in 2011.
• The top 5 ranked Websites, in the Hitwise retail 500 by visits share, for the week ending 12/8 were Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and J.C. Penney.
• “Shutterfly coupon codes free shipping” and “Harry and David free shipping” topped the free shipping search term list for the week ending 12/8.

Email highlights and trends:

Christmas day mailings:

Only one third of brands sent promotional mailings on Christmas day in 2011 and, of those, about half of the campaigns included an offer in the subject line. Christmas day offers for post holiday sales actually did quite well, receiving double the transaction rate compared to the mailings without offers (transaction rate of 0.17% with offer in subject line compared to 0.08% without an offer).

If you do plan to mail on Christmas, make sure that you mail early in the day:

Post-Christmas week:

Promotional mailings with offers also did well in the post-Christmas week (December 26th – 31st).

The transaction rate for mailings with offers in their subject lines was 0.09% compared to 0.08% for mailings without offers. Revenue per email was also higher for the campaigns with offers.

The 4:00 AM time slot received a much higher percentage of total revenue than its percentage of volume, making it the best time to mail.

Morning mailings also did well on post-Christmas days. The 4:00 AM time slot received a much higher percentage of total revenue than its percentage of volume, making it the best time to mail.

Online consumer insights:

While Peak Week last year, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, saw big spikes in online retail traffic, there was another spike in traffic the day after Christmas. In 2011, there was a 3% increase in online retail traffic on Christmas and a 33% increase the day after Christmas.

^{Source: Experian Hitwise}

In 2011 we saw a spike on Christmas day occur in both social and search driving traffic to the Retail 500 sites.

As we noted last week, interest in gift cards peaks during the final weeks leading up to Christmas. While searches for gift cards last year reflect that pattern, it should also be noted that searches for gift cards during the week after Christmas were also at higher levels than those seen at the start of the season.

^{Source: Experian Hitwise}

Key findings:

Online traffic numbers climbed this year compared to last:

• Thanksgiving Day increased 6%
• Black Friday increased 7%
• Cyber Monday increased 11%

Search played a bigger part in Cyber Monday traffic this year compared to 2011:

• Downstream traffic from search engines to Retail 500 Websites increased by 5%

There’s still time to capitalize on email transactions this holiday season:

• Last year, December 16^th – 9 days before Christmas – ranked 4^th for email transactions

This week’s key findings:

• All peak days, from Monday 11/19 through Cyber Monday (11/26), saw increases in total email transactions and revenue. Email marketers experienced a 28% increase in the number of email transactions, and a 38% increase in revenue.
• There has been a 33% increase in the number of email campaigns with “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” in their subject lines this season compared to 2011.
• Personalization in email subject lines has increased 27% over 2011.
• Coupons in subject lines have increased by 58% this season.
• Cyber Monday search terms increased by 16% the week ending 11/24/2012 versus 2011 and by 5% the week ending 12/1/2012 versus 2011.
• For the week ending 12/1/2012, the top Cyber Monday search terms include “Cyber Monday deals 2012,” “Cyber Monday deals,” “Cyber Monday” and “Walmart Cyber Monday deals 2012″.
• 40% of Cyber Monday search terms contained 4 keywords in a search term.

Email highlights and trends: Peak Week performance:

Total email transactions and revenue increased every day of Peak Week compared to 2011, for a total increase of over 28% in transactions and 38% for revenue.

The largest email transaction and revenue increases are seen in the three industries that are the most ‘holiday’ and gift driven:

Online consumer insights:

Search was a big driver for the Retail 500 websites on Cyber Monday this year.

• Search engine downstream traffic to Retail 500 websites on Cyber Monday increased by 5% compared to 2011
• For Cyber Monday search terms over 12 weeks ending 12/1/12, the paid rate of generated traffic was 20.36% and the organic rate of traffic was 79.64%

• Mailers started earlier, with the Monday (11/19) before Thanksgiving having the largest percentage increase (20.6%) in volume.  Black Friday, Sunday 11/25, and Cyber Monday all had double digit increases in volume over last year.
• Forty-five percent (45%) of holiday season emails are being opened on mobile – up slightly from the 44% we saw just before the season began.
• Led by Black Friday offers, campaigns with offers in the subject line made up almost 30% of all campaigns sent this past week.
• Black Friday search terms increased by 107% between the weeks ending 11/17/2012 and 11/24/2012.
• For the week of 11/17/2012, visits to Cyber Monday websites increased by 259% compared to last year. Additionally, visits for the week of 11/24/2012 increased by 190% versus 2011.
• Cyber Monday search terms increased by 606% between the weeks of 11/17/2012 and 11/24/2012.

Email volume

During peak week, mailers started earlier, with the Monday (11/19) before Thanksgiving having the largest percentage increase (20.6%) in volume.  Black Friday, Sunday 11/25, and Cyber Monday all had double digit increases over last year.

Gift guides and gift cards
As the holidays get closer, more and more shopping is focused on gifts. Two popular gift-oriented ideas for email campaigns are gift guides and gift cards. Gift guides are popular and effective ways to present many products to undecided consumers, and they generate higher transaction rates than other promotional mailings.

Describing your brand as ‘Best’ in the subject line leads to the highest open and click rates for gift guides.

Last minute shoppers, and those looking for gifts for ‘hard to please’ folks, are often drawn to gift cards. In 2011, we saw the number of gift card emails double in the two weeks prior to Christmas. Forty-two percent (42%) of US adults have purchased gift cards in the past year.

Teens are notoriously difficult to shop for. No wonder, purchases of music/entertainment gift cards are highest among parents of teens. In fact, parents of kids ages 12 to 17 are 86% more likely than the average adult to have bought these types of gift cards.

Online consumer insights:
With the busiest holiday shopping weekend behind us – let’s recap what happened online. So far this past holiday week of online traffic from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday to retail sites is up 8% compared to last year. Cyber Monday, for the second year in a row, was the busiest of the three milestone days and looks to be tracking as the busiest day of the year in online retail visits.

Thanksgiving Day online traffic increased 6% in 2012 versus 2011 as the top 500 retail sites received more than 192.5 million total US visits.

Black Friday online traffic increased 7% year-over-year as the top 500 retail sites received more than 193.8 million total US visits.

Online traffic on Cyber Monday increased 11% in 2012 compared to last year, as the top 500 retail sites received more than 206.8 million total US visits.

Top product searches by milestone days

Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Cyber Monday while Walmart received the second most visits. BestBuy was the 3rd most visited site with Target and JC Penney rounding out the top five. Among the top 5 sites, Amazon saw the biggest year-over-year growth at 36%.

Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Black Friday while Walmart was the second most visited retail site. BestBuy moved up to the 3rd most visited site while Target was the 4th most visited site. JC Penney moved up from being the 8th most visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day to the 5th most visited on Black Friday. Among the top 5 sites, JC Penney saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 26%. Looking at the top 20 retail sites on Black Friday, the Apple Store site saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 99%.

Check back for CyberMonday insight and a weekly recap of this week.

The top five visited retail sites all saw growth on Thanksgiving Day 2012 versus the previous day. Amazon.com was the top visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day followed by Walmart, Target and Best Buy. Sears jumped up to the top 5 after ranking 6th the day before. Among the top 5 sites, BestBuy saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 104%.

Thanksgiving Day ranked as 3rd highest transaction day in 2011 and perhaps there was an increase in email volume in 2012 as retailers got the word even more. In 2011, Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Thanksgiving were the top 3 Email Transaction days during the holiday season.

Keep checking back for more holiday updates as we share the latest insights.