Holiday Shipping Deadlines in Your Emails

The question behind every holiday email

From now until Christmas, almost every shopper reading a store's email has one question before any other: if I order today, will it arrive in time?

Most holiday emails answer it vaguely, if at all. Order early for Christmas. Shop now to avoid disappointment. Limited time.

A shopper who cannot find a date has to go looking for it, on a phone, between other things. Plenty will simply buy from the store whose email told them.

The date is the most useful thing a holiday email can carry, and it belongs where people see it first.

Your dates, not the carrier's

Carriers publish their recommended last days for Christmas delivery around this time of year. Those dates assume the parcel is already in their hands.

Your order-by date has to allow for what happens before collection: picking, packing, a weekend, and the December day when the packing table is buried.

Then add a margin for weather and the seasonal backlog. The date in your email should be one you are confident of, not the last possible day.

Weekends count against you too: an order placed on a Friday evening may not leave until Monday, which is easy to forget when counting back from Christmas.

What the date block should say

• The order-by date for standard shipping, as a date and a day.
• The later date for express, and what express costs.
• Regions that take longer, such as remote communities and the North.
• The cut-off time on the last day, with its time zone.
• Local pickup, if you offer it, and its last day.
• Gift cards, for anyone who has missed every date.

The third is the one stores forget and customers remember. A shopper in a remote community who orders on the standard date and receives the parcel in January has a grievance one line could have prevented.

In the subject line

Many people decide whether to open an email from the subject line alone, and a phone shows only the first few words of it.

Put the date there, early: order by Friday, December 14 for delivery by Christmas. It does more than any adjective, and it is a reason to open now rather than later.

Use the preview text, the line that follows the subject in most inboxes, for the express date or the regions that need to order sooner.

Save last chance for when it is true. Customers who see it every week stop believing it before the real last chance arrives.

At the top, in text

Open the email with the dates, above the main image and the offers. Two or three lines are enough.

Write them as text, not inside a graphic. Some email programs hide images until the reader allows them, and a date inside a picture cannot be read aloud by a screen reader or found by searching the inbox.

Link the block to a shipping page on the site that holds the current dates. The email cannot change once it is sent; the page can.

Updating the dates as they pass

Each email should reflect what is still possible on the day it goes out.

While standard shipping is open, lead with its date. Once it passes, lead with express. Once express passes, lead with local pickup and gift cards. Never send a date that has already gone.

People open emails days after they arrive, so give the date as well as the weekday. Order by Friday, read on a Saturday, sounds like a week away.

Check the automatic emails too. A welcome message or an abandoned cart reminder written in October may still be promising plenty of time.

A worked example

A gourmet popcorn shop sells gift tins online and ships them across the country from a kitchen behind its storefront.

Last December its emails said order early for Christmas and nothing more specific. The shipping page had dates, but it was three taps away from any email.

Plenty of orders arrived in the week before Christmas, some from remote communities, and several of those reached their recipients after the holiday. The shop spent the first week of January refunding shipping and answering unhappy email.

This year its dates start from the carrier's published days, minus two days for packing and a margin for weather, with an earlier date for remote regions.

Every email from mid-November opens with a date block in text, and the subject line names the next date that matters. The automatic emails now point to the shipping page.

When the standard date passes, the next email leads with express and the shop's own pickup counter.

The site has to agree

An email that says December 14 and a checkout that says December 17 leave the customer to decide which is true, and they will choose the one that suits them.

Use the same dates in the email, the site banner, the shipping page and the order confirmation, and change them all on the same day.

One person should own the list of dates, so nobody updates one place and forgets the rest.

Different customers, different dates

If your list can be split, send customers outside Canada their own dates. Cross-border parcels take longer, and a stop at customs can add days.

Customers who usually collect in person need the pickup days and hours, not shipping cut-offs.

Where splitting is not practical, one clear block with every date beats a separate email for each group, and nobody has to wonder which list they are on.

The counter-case

A store that only delivers locally, or sells downloads and gift cards, has less to say, though its last delivery or pickup day still belongs in the subject line.

A store that sends a single email in December may not need a sequence, but that one email still needs the dates at the top.

For any store shipping gifts, the rule holds: the date first, in text, and correct on the day the email goes out.

Before the first holiday email

1. Check your carrier's published holiday dates.
2. Set your own dates with packing time and margin.
3. Add earlier dates for remote regions.
4. Put the next date in every subject line.
5. Open each email with the dates in text.
6. Rewrite automatic emails that promise time.
7. Change every date on the same day.

Step two is the one that keeps the promise. A date copied straight from the carrier leaves no room for the packing table, and the parcels that miss are the ones ordered on the last day.

When customers reply to ask whether there is still time, where that reply lands matters, as covered in reply-to addresses nobody monitors.

Frequently asked questions

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