"Happy holidays" smacks of politically-correct pandering and pussyfooting. (I'm a Christmas-celebrating atheist.)
Merry Christmas, HN!
“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.
#12I 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…
People like the author of this post try to abuse my attention, and that is not OK with me.
What does 'abuse my attention' mean to you? Is it unsolicited (spam) email, or just any form of marketing/promotion in general? This is an important point to address for startup founders who often rely on obtaining and nurturing attention relationships with their users.
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#13"Happy holidays" smacks of politically-correct pandering and pussyfooting. (I'm a Christmas-celebrating atheist.) Merry Christmas, HN!
I'm a Christmas-celebrating Catholic and I say "Happy Holidays". This notion that the words "Happy Holidays" are a political statement is bullshit. People said them long before Bill O'Reilly declared that there was a war on Christmas.
It's not "politically incorrect" or offensive to say "Merry Christmas" to someone who isn't celebrating Christmas (or, as is far more likely now, is instead preparing to celebrate New Years). It's stupid.
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#14An 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 that improvements in clickthrough rates do not convert linearly to improvements in revenue.
While 100% more people may have clicked through, I'd be willing to bet that actual purchases went up by substantially less than 100%. This is not to discount the value of, say, a 20% increase in sales. But you really should measure that instead of clicks. (That said, people like this company like to measure clicks because it is very easy to do so.)
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#15An 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…
Valid point.
In this case the results were nearly linear, this is addressed in the article: "While we haven’t included the buy rate in the chart above due to client confidentiality, the results were similarly impressive."
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#16I 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…
People like the author of this post try to abuse my attention, and that is not OK with me. What does 'abuse my attention' mean to you? Is it unsolicited (spam) email, or just any form of marketing/promotion in general? This is an important point to address for startup founders who often rely on obtaining and nurturing attention relationships with their users.
When you email me, that means that you update one of the only two applications on my Dock that's programmed to show a number — and the other one is a To Do application. Is your email as important as my to-do list telling me what I've got due today? If not, don't send it. When you email me, that means you update one of the only three applications on my Phone that are enabled to show me a number — and the other two are my phone app and my texting app. Would you TEXT me this announcement? Or would you CALL MY PHONE about this announcement? If not, don't send it.
When I get emails, I expect them to be from either friends or from clients. I like my friends enough to want to see the things they send to me ASAP; I want to hear immediately from clients so that I can respond to them at four in the morning (if I'm up anyway, that is). Know who I don't want interrupting my workflow? You.
If you're looking to get my attention because you've got a new feature or you generally just want me to come back to you, then come up with a way to make me want your reminder. Have me become a fan of you on Facebook, so that you can push to my feed. Have me follow you on Twitter. Publish your story to Hacker News, and make sure it's good enough that I'll notice it and check it out again. Get a blog and push your updates to me through RSS. But when you email me, you're being a jackass.
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
People like the author of this post try to abuse my attention, and that is not OK with me. What does 'abuse my attention' mean to you? Is it unsolicited (spam) email, or just any form of marketing/promotion in general? This is an important point to address for startup founders who often rely on obtaining and nurturing attention relationships with their users.
When you email me, that means that you update one of the only two applications on my Dock that's programmed to show a number — and the other one is a To Do application. Is your email as important as my to-do list telling me what I've got due today? If not, don't send it. When you email me, that means you update one of the only three applications on my Phone that are enabled to show me a number — and the other two are…
If you use unique e-mail addresses like the GP (jrockway), you could funnel all potentially-obnoxious mail into a separate folder that doesn't trigger notifications. At least, that works with gmail on my Android phone. It's unreasonable for everyone who wants to e-mail you to predict that you have an aggressive notification system.
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#18[deleted]
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#19I 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…
People like the author of this post try to abuse my attention, and that is not OK with me. What does 'abuse my attention' mean to you? Is it unsolicited (spam) email, or just any form of marketing/promotion in general? This is an important point to address for startup founders who often rely on obtaining and nurturing attention relationships with their users.
It's about control. With email, I can't control what I receive. If I want to unsubscribe from your newsletter, I'm at the mercy of your site. That sucks. If you want to send me an email because you came up with a message just for me, wonderful! If you want me to ready your form letter that you send to 100,000 people and that I didn't really ask for, fuck you and fuck your conversion rate. Sending me email is a gift; treat it that way.
What's interesting is that newsletters would be better-implemented as RSS/Atom feeds... but nobody ever does that. Why? Because nobody would actually subscribe. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.
(Again, I'm not saying that spam is ineffective, it is effective. But then again, coming up to me and hitting me on the head and taking my wallet would probably get you the money in my wallet faster than creating a business would.)
Re: “Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" - nearly double the conversion rate.
#20I 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…
That's all well and good for unsolicited email, but for those of us who have lists of people who have signed up to receive email from us, this sort of thing is terribly relevant.
And if you're selling things online and aren't creating these lists, you're leaving a bunch of money on the table.