It’s that magical time of year, the Holiday season once again.  Every day the retail email fairy leaves me well over 20 (some days over 40) red and green emails to spread joy and cheer throughout my inbox. I have begun to understand how time-consuming Chad White’s http://www.retailemailblog.com job must be.

The Holiday season is an excellent litmus test of how far direct messaging has come - and how much further it needs to go. In arguably the most competitive drive period of the year, retailers should be showcasing their direct messaging chops to break through the clutter, driving revenue and margin.  The epitome of direct marketing is relevance.  Yet the evidence in my inbox points to Holiday messaging firmly entrenched at the other end of the spectrum: one-size-fits-most messaging, with discounts of 20%+ thrown in to catch the eye.

Disappointed, I briefly considered checking last year’s emails to see if any retailers chose to reduce costs by re-using their Holiday 2008 creative.*

Where Did Relevance Go?

Part of the confusion is about how relevance is defined.  This year, most direct marketers in the retail space focused on integrating social media into email marketing messages.  Facebook and Twitter links now peer out from navigation bars and footers that hadn’t significantly changed in the last five years.

The more nimble marketers integrated ratings and customer feedback into emails, or gave their recommendations personality by identifying the recommender. All done under the assumption that this kind of “humanized” content is a step in the direction of increased relevance.

And it is.  These are good tactics, difficult to implement but not insurmountably so.  They have an incremental improvement in results that is generally equivalent to the effort invested - small to medium.  And they give very real results to present at the c-level as proof that the direct messaging program has made strides.

Yet when Holiday kicks off, the message to the customer hasn’t changed.  Which means that none of these improvements meet the twin criteria of driving more revenue while being cost-efficient to implement.  So direct marketers turn to deep discounts and free shipping, which are admittedly relevant to everyone. Except perhaps the bottom line.

Where Could Relevance Go?

Real relevance - the kind that matches customers with products and creates an aha! moment when the customer catches a glimpse of something they wanted from a retailer - is going to require significant investment in 2010. Direct marketers need more support, more staffing, access to some of the same tools the web team uses, and a data analysis team at their disposal. They need the buyers and merchants to integrate with them at an unprecedented level. And they need significant investment in budget in order to create labor-intensive proof-of-concept tests.

If direct marketers can get this level of support, the results can be magical.  Targeting a 100% improvement in revenues would not be outside the realm of possibility. Initially costly creative tests, with the right tools applied, could become a cost-efficient production model in the context of the incremental increase in revenues. The number one tool for driving ecommerce would accelerate results dramatically.

This is a call to arms for all B2C companies: make a decision now, while 2010 is still young, to invest in relevance.  By Holiday 2010, the results could be more inspiring than 40% off and a five star review.

*I left that task to Chad, who has so far identified a Bluefly subject line repeat.  http://www.retailemailblog.com/2009/12/am-inbox-reuse-and-recycle-to-reduce.html