Q: Does resort email performance dip for campaigns sent on holidays?

We’ve looked at one or two holidays individually, but what happens when you send an email on any holiday? Does performance spike or drop compared to the days before and after? And by how much? That was our query. This is what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at email campaigns sent by U.S. resorts during the 3 days before, the day of, and 3 days after 11 nationally-celebrated holidays from 2012-2014. Combined, these campaigns were delivered to just under 2,000,000 recipients. Average open and click rates are plotted below.

The resorts in our sample showed their highest open and click rates on the holidays themselves. Holidays averaged a 21.8% open rate vs 19.4% in the days before and 18.3% after. Holiday click rates were 9.4% for this sample vs 8.0% in the days before and 8.6% after.

What This Means
One of the questions that quickly arise from this result is whether volume plays a role because holidays in this sample did in fact see much lower industry-wide volume than other days.

But does it hold true for days besides holidays? Does performance usually jump on days when industry-wide volume goes down? Stay tuned, that’s what we’ll cover next week.

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