• by Chad White , January 4, 2011

While the 2009 holiday season was marked by retailers serving up a variety of payment options in response to the recession, the 2010 holiday was noteworthy for the extra attention given to shipping options. With shipping such a huge point of friction when shopping online, retailers are certainly wise to explore new offerings. Here are some shipping trends from retailers emails during the holiday season:

Free Shipping Programs TigerDirect and Williams-Sonoma launched free shipping programs a la Amazon Prime. When Williams-Sonoma announced theirs in a Nov. 2 email, they explicitly connected it to the holiday season with the subject line "A Year of FREE Shipping -- Just in Time for Holiday Shopping."

Free Shipping All Holiday Season Eddie Bauer, J&R and a few others offered free shipping all holiday season, looking to remove uncertainty around on-again, off-again free shipping offers. After announcing their free shipping offer in this Nov. 8 email with the subject line "Our Gift To You: Free Shipping All Holiday Long," Eddie Bauer reiterated the offer in the preheader text of subsequent emails, like this Nov. 15 email.

Buy Now, Ship Later Harry & David and Neiman Marcus -- as in this Nov. 1 email -- promoted "buy now, ship later" programs, allowing shoppers to buy gifts early without having them arrive well ahead time.

Recurring Delivery Akin to "buy now, ship later" offerings, recurring delivery provides for regular deliveries of a product. Food of the month programs, contact lens programs and the like are the best-known recurring delivery offerings. In a Nov. 18 email, Cooking.com introduced a new recurring shipping program.

In-Store Pickup Letting customers order online and pick up products in their local store has become an established service offered by retailers like Kmart, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Nordstrom and GameStop, which announced the launch of their in-store pickup program in this Nov. 16 email. It's a popular service to promote in the waning days of the holiday season, as Sears did in this Dec. 22 email. But the most innovative messaging about in-store pickup was from Sports Authority. In a Nov. 14 email with the subject line "Black Friday Pre-Sale! -In Store Only- Skip The Lines and Pick Up On 11/26!" they promoted online pre-orders for pick up in store on Black Friday.

Free Shipping Day In its second year in existence, Free Shipping Day appeared in email massaging for the first time. Only 6% of retail emails on Dec. 17 mentioned Free Shipping Day and one of the retailers that mentioned it, J&R, only did so to mock it. This J&Rs email points out the two major flaws with the concept of Free Shipping Day: (1) Free shipping is extremely common during the holiday season, so having a special day that gives consumers something they were already getting is kind of silly. And (2) Free Shipping Day also bills itself as consumers' last chance for free shipping, which just isnt true for the vast majority of retailers. Several retailers, including L.L. Bean, REI and Target, used their subject lines on Free Shipping Day to point out that they would be offering free shipping for several more days. Celebrating Free Shipping Day seems to carry significant risk, from confusion about the end of your standard shipping to having competitors counter-message.

That said, comScore reported that online sales jumped 61% on Dec. 17 compared to the previous year. It's hard not to argue that at least some of that increase was because of Free Shipping Day -- but the numbers are likely skewed by the fact that Dec. 17 fell on a Friday in 2010 versus on a Thursday in 2009. Fridays are consistently one of the most popular email marketing days of the week, while Thursdays are less popular. Next year, Free Shipping Day's success will be blunted by the fact that it will fall on a Saturday, which is consistently the least popular email marketing day of the year. So the momentum that Free Shipping Day gained in 2010 will likely disappear in 2011. Free Shipping Day will not be following in the footsteps of Cyber Monday.

Gift Cards with Free Shipping on Purchases In past years, I've seen a few retailers offer free shipping for a limited time when gift cards are redeemed as a way to spur redemptions. Lands' End made free shipping part of the value proposition of their gift cards this past holiday season, promoting it in this Dec. 12 email among others. Gift cards are a huge business. An offer like Lands' End may tip the scale when a consumer is trying to decide between buying a Lands End' gift card and one from a competitor.

Extended Returns Several retailers promoted extended returns. For instance, ShopNBC and NFLshop highlighted in their emails that they accept returns through Jan. 31, while J&R accepts them through Feb. 1.

Did you see other retailers promoting shipping options in their emails?