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

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

#51

Post by jeffreyrusso »

btilly wrote: post #14

An important note about email conversion rates. There is a conversion funnel to actual paying customer. For this kind of test they are testing conversion from one step to the next. At other steps in funnels that I've seen, I've found that the increase in conversion at that step goes fairly straightforwardly to conversion to paying customer. However for email in particular at a couple of different places I've seen tha…

Very important point. Driving increases in CTR is a million times easier than driving increases in actual conversion rate. While the author mentioned that they saw "similarly impressive" increases in conversion, that isn't the norm. In a lot of cases, the extra traffic drawn in by jumping through hoops to increase CTR converts at a proportionately poorer rate - it's fickle, poor quality traffic.

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

#52

Post by aresant »

qeorge wrote: post #49

One problem: you did this test on Dec 21, well after Hanukkah had passed (it was December 1-9 this year). So for a big portion of the folks who are supposed to appreciate your PC-ness you missed the holiday by almost a month. Hardly surprising the remaining segment liked "Merry Christmas" better.

Lots and lots more agnostics and aethiests than Jewish people in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#M...

But fair point - would be interesting to test a happy holidays message earlier in the season.

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

#53

Post by patio11 »

klbarry wrote: post #36
jordan0day wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mys…

Marketers work does improve the actual product, in the eye of the consumer. Intangible value is still value!

Preach it, brother! If your stuff will improve someone's life, not hearing about it is the most severe bug you can think of!

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

#54

Post by qeorge »

aresant wrote: post #52
qeorge wrote: post #49

One problem: you did this test on Dec 21, well after Hanukkah had passed (it was December 1-9 this year). So for a big portion of the folks who are supposed to appreciate your PC-ness you missed the holiday by almost a month. Hardly surprising the remaining segment liked "Merry Christmas" better.

Lots and lots more agnostics and aethiests than Jewish people in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#M... But fair point - would be interesting to test a happy holidays message earlier in the season.

That's fine, but plenty of atheists/agnostics/other non-Christian folk celebrate Christmas (at least in the gift buying sense, which is what you care about).

So for people who do celebrate Christmas, regardless of religion, of course the more specific "Merry Christmas" would beat the generic "Happy Holidays."

Of the folks who don't celebrate Christmas, but do celebrate a gift-buying holiday, Hannukah is pretty important. My gut tells me that Jewish folks are a big portion of this segment, and running the experiment 3 weeks after Hannukah would pretty much kill any chance of conversion for them.

Still, the takeaway from your experiment is solid: if you're running an email campaign 4 days before a major holiday, go ahead and focus on those who celebrate it.

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

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

electromagnetic wrote: post #33
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.

The conversion rate could be much better because people rarely see Merry Christmas any more. I'd have bought something from Walmart if they just said 'Merry Christmas' over 'Happy Holidays'. I'm sorry, I'm not celebrating 'happy holidays' I'm celebrating mother fucking Christmas. I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday. I don't say 'happy holidays' to a Jew, because it's flat out rude . They're Jewish, it's…

> I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday.

They're saying "Happy Holidays", not "Happy Holiday". There are all sorts of holidays in December, including New Years.

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

#56

Post by electromagnetic »

ceejayoz wrote: post #55
electromagnetic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversion rate could be much better because people rarely see Merry Christmas any more. I'd have bought something from Walmart if they just said 'Merry Christmas' over 'Happy Holidays'. I'm sorry, I'm not celebrating 'happy holidays' I'm celebrating mother fucking Christmas. I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday. I don't say 'happy holidays' to a Jew, because it's flat out rude . They're Jewish, it's…

> I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday. They're saying "Happy Holidays", not "Happy Holiday". There are all sorts of holidays in December, including New Years.

When was the last time you bought a new years present, or even card? Stores aren't selling new years, they're selling Christmas - hence the christmas trees they put up.

I've yet to see 'Happy Holidays' when they're selling me Easter Eggs. So I grant your technicality but they're not using it that way given their own usage methods for multiple holidays.

I'd understand this terminology more in British-speaking countries where 'holiday' veritably means any non-regular brake from work. Whilst in North America it is almost literally still used for its original meaning as a Holy-day - with vacation denoting the chiefly British usage of holiday.

So why, in the US when Holiday is virtually still a contraction of Holy day are they not simply using the days name, when they use every other holidays name including other days of religious origin.

I believe the death/martyrdom and ressurection of Christ on Easter weekend is likely to be a more offensive holiday to bring up in the presence of Jews than his birth. But then, you know, that's logic. You can never be logical and politically correct, it must cause cancer or brain aneurysms as by the present date evolution seems to have made them mutually exclusive.

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

#57

Post by sanswork »

spitfire wrote: post #39
patio11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold a few hundred dollars of BCC with an email whose subject line was "Merry Christmas from Bingo Card Creator" It went to somewhere like 1,500 teachers who had previously expressed an interest in playing educational bingo and asked for a monthly email newsletter reminding them about activities they would probably like. The content is pretty predictable: it is almost Christmas, you're busy, here's something which…

Just one point about your wording. " It is easy, scales to any number of players, and..." sounds very uh, odd for the subject. I'm not sure teachers are thinking about scaling and Big-O, are they? It tripped me up while I was reading it.

Teachers definitely have to think about scale. The number of tasks you can effectively do with 5 students is a lot larger than the number you can do with 30 students.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

sanswork wrote: post #57
spitfire wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one point about your wording. " It is easy, scales to any number of players, and..." sounds very uh, odd for the subject. I'm not sure teachers are thinking about scaling and Big-O, are they? It tripped me up while I was reading it.

Teachers definitely have to think about scale. The number of tasks you can effectively do with 5 students is a lot larger than the number you can do with 30 students.

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

qeorge wrote: post #49

One problem: you did this test on Dec 21, well after Hanukkah had passed (it was December 1-9 this year). So for a big portion of the folks who are supposed to appreciate your PC-ness you missed the holiday by almost a month. Hardly surprising the remaining segment liked "Merry Christmas" better.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by ugh »

electromagnetic wrote: post #33
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.

The conversion rate could be much better because people rarely see Merry Christmas any more. I'd have bought something from Walmart if they just said 'Merry Christmas' over 'Happy Holidays'. I'm sorry, I'm not celebrating 'happy holidays' I'm celebrating mother fucking Christmas. I'm not religious, it's just the goddamn holiday. I don't say 'happy holidays' to a Jew, because it's flat out rude . They're Jewish, it's…

„Frohe Feiertage“ is the German equivalent to “Happy Holidays” (usually only referring Christmas and New Years because minorities play a much smaller role in German society) and I’m not aware of anyone who was ever offended by it. (I’m also not aware of anyone who was ever offended by „Frohe Weihnachten“, the German equivalent to “Merry Christmas”.) The local catholic priest will get very angry at Santa Claus but he will say „Frohe Feiertage“ (“Happy Holidays”) without even flinching.

To me this looks like a thoroughly ridiculous and awfully US-centric “controversy”.

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