Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

conversionvoodoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 78 posts

Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

#3

Post by jordan0day »

That's a pretty interesting finding, I wonder if anyone else has done similar testing and would care to share their results?

Also, I can't help but grin about "conversion" and the religiously-tinged "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate. Perhaps the already-converted are more likely to... convert?

Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

#5

Post by jrockway »

I think people think the "Merry Christmas $name" email is not spam (it looks like a message from a friend), so they open and read. "Happy Holidays" is something that only people trying to sell you something say, so you mentally filter that email.

The conversion rate is just a depressing example of how people will buy anything you tell them to. Once you get people to read your email, you'll much more likely to convert. (You get Viagra spam because somebody clicks it and buys.)

This is basically why I give everyone a unique email address, and /dev/null the address after I stop needing it. People like the author of this post try to abuse my attention, and that is not OK with me.

Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

#6

Post by aresant »

jeffreyg wrote: post #4

And I bet if you sent 'Happy Hanukkah' vs. 'Happy Holidays' you'd get much more traffic from Jewish recipients. Repeat with any holiday specific to a group.

That’s a great point – clearly the demographic you’re sending to will influence the results.

The experiment was, however, about as controlled for general USA populous as we were able to do - big box retailer, drives most customer acquisition via SEM / SEO so these type of results should be duplicatable if your customers find you through search engines.

Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

#8

Post by fecklessyouth »

jordan0day wrote: post #3

That's a pretty interesting finding, I wonder if anyone else has done similar testing and would care to share their results? Also, I can't help but grin about "conversion" and the religiously-tinged "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate. Perhaps the already-converted are more likely to... convert?

Or maybe Jesus rewards those who keep "Christ in Christmas" with higher conversion rates.

Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.

#10

Post by jordan0day »

jrockway wrote: post #5

I think people think the "Merry Christmas $name" email is not spam (it looks like a message from a friend), so they open and read. "Happy Holidays" is something that only people trying to sell you something say, so you mentally filter that email. The conversion rate is just a depressing example of how people will buy anything you tell them to. Once you get people to read your email, you'll much more likely to convert…

While I very much agree with your sentiment (email marketing is usually a bad thing), this article seems like a small example of "psychological hacking" and I hate to admit how interesting this sort of thing really is.

It frightens me to know that there are people who spend as much time optimizing the performance of their marketing messages as we do on algorithms. The key difference (at least this is what I tell myself) is that while my work improves the actual product, the marketers work does no such thing.

Post reply on HN