If Santa was an email marketer…
Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow | 22 Comments | Licence this content
1. Nobody would get any presents unless they wrote to Santa explicitly asking for them.
2. The gift wrapping would have a little transparent preview window in it, so you could see the contents of the parcel without having to open it.
3. He would pack each gift twice. Once in colored gift wrapping and once in plain brown paper.
4. The message on the gift tag would be limited to 50 characters and always feature first-name personalization.
5. In roughly 10% of houses, Santa would emerge from the chimney to find himself in the trash can and not the fireplace. This despite a squeaky-clean sender reputation.
6. He would always get 99% open rates, despite the fact that his delivered content is often low-value or irrelevant.
7. The 1% who don’t open their parcels would get a new parcel around December 30th: same gift, but different gift tags and wrapping.
8. If they didn’t open the second parcel, Santa would write and ask them if they still want a parcel next year, otherwise he’ll stop delivering.
9. He would have spent all year arguing with Facebook Santa and Twitter Santa over who should get the biggest slice of (mince) pie, before deciding they would all benefit if they worked together to make the pie bigger.
10. He wouldn’t get many people reporting his gifts as unwanted (even though some of them are) and opting-out of future deliveries.
11. His detailed tests on the “best time and day to send” would have very conclusive results.
12. The content of each parcel would be determined on a one-to-one basis, using an analysis of each recipient’s prior behavior.
13. He would encourage you to share your gifts with your social network.
14. He’d send a follow-up message over New Year asking you to write a review of the gifts.
15. You would be able to sort presents into piles based on importance. One pile for important gifts, one pile for not-so-important gifts and a special pile for gifts from Great Aunt Mildred.
Add your own suggestion in the comments…
[With thanks to all those who commented on the original 2007 version]
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22 comments on “If Santa was an email marketer…”
16. Every few years when Santa is rushed your Christmas card will be addressed to %firstname
16. He would add an online link to see a webversion of your gift in case it would be broken or damaged.
He’d send your gift to 10 other people first to preview their response, just to make sure it’s the perfect gift.
I love those suggestions. And Jenny: I really wish he did do that…would save me a lot of disappointment!
He’d have a testing panel of elves on the North Pole checking your gifts for possible defects and production errors.
He would be wondering whether his gifts were actually delivered in person by his elves, or whether they got stopped for some security checks. The elves would have to prove that the few gifts that had been delivered already were indeed welcomed before they would be allowed to continue their journey to the remaining houses.
He would at least know how to guarantee delivery to billions within a short space of time.
And even with his best efforts, if the recipient didn’t like what they got (or it had to be left with a next door neighbour), he wouldn’t need to worry about any harm it may do to his reputation.
Hah – yes – bet he’d have very good relationships at all ISPs. Nobody wants to risk being taken off Santa’s Xmas list…
LOL – not ISPs – chimney cleaners
Even if his recipient specifically sent him a letter asking for his gift, they might still reject it thinking his is a fraud.
He would include an exchange your gift link in-case you don’t like what you got.
He would pack specially designed gifts for those who now also own caravans so that they can be used both on the road and at home.
…and some caravan users would open their gifts, others would just sort them for viewing later back home.
His team of elves would be using christmus.com to test their emails, rather than litmus.com
He would be waiting until the last moment before sunset on Christmas Eve for the last of the gift changes and sign-off from Mrs Claus.
He’d have used different wrapping paper to see what got the present opened the fastest and tried different patterns for different genders
Santa’s traffic to his opt down page was so bad that he actually implements the industries first Opt Up page.
…thereby saving his business after the near disaster of November 2011 when he took everyone off his list who hadn’t opened anything in the previous 6 months.
In certain houses, Santa’s presents would look quite bland and inanimate, even if they’re toys
Some people might get only 10-50% of a present in their stocking – which is based on how good they were during the year.
Some people would …
- not get presents from Santa in the future if they left this one unopened
- send copies of the present to their friends
- complain about Santa if they didn’t recognize him
I think you guys have pretty much everything here. I really enjoy reading the list!