Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays, winner = nearly double conversion rate | Hacker News Reader

Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays, winner = nearly double conversion rate

conversionvoodoo.com

31 pointsaresant38 comments

I think this is driven by the rejection of political correctness. In an ironic twist, I get the sense that more people are put off by politically correct language than are accomodated.

If there's a flaw in this strategy, it is that minorities are marginalized. You might avoid offending a Jewish (just an example) minority by using the term "Christmas", but you'll engender an emotional reaction in a larger number of people. By the numbers, this is a positive result. The question is whether or not you're ok with offending the minority, and to what degree?

You could use last name as a predictor and send out Happy Hanukkah emails.

You could but shouldn't. Because Christmas is a huge cultural deal in addition to a religious celebration, saying Merry Christmas to a non Christian would be far better than saying Happy Hanukkah to someone with a Jewish sounding last name and getting it wrong.

Not all minorities are offended by mentions of Christmas. I'm Jewish, and find the whole "Happy Holidays" thing to be bizarre and unnecessary. Christmas is a major Christian holiday. Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday. The only thing that they have in common is that they both take place at roughly the same time of year.

If you're Christian, and want to celebrate Christmas, then that's great; go for it! Don't go watering down your holiday messages, or attempt to include Hanukkah in your celebrations. (Government and the public sphere is a different thing, at least in the US.)

I live in Israel nowadays, where Christmas exists mostly as an item on the TV news. But I still find it amazing that anyone would be offended when someone expresses excitement and positive feelings about their own holidays.

Meanwhile, I found this marketing test to be fascinating, and a great demonstration of the need to actually test, rather than just go with gut feelings.

I lay no claim that all minorities will be offended, only that a minority population exists that will be offended. My personal preference is to just use the language you want. I'm of the generation that rejected the PC cultural influences developed by our aging parents.

My words are merely a caution against blindly following the numbers. The impact of "Merry Christmas" vs "Happy Holidays" may be innocuous, but you will inevitably face more impactful decisions where the best conversion may come at the price of marginalizing a minority unfairly.

> I lay no claim that all minorities will be offended, only that a minority population exists that will be offended.

There's always someone who will be offended, no matter what you do. (Example - some folks are offended by "Happy Holidays", and the reasons are not mutually consistent.)

Some minorities are worth worrying about but others aren't, and they're not the same in every situation.

> Some minorities are worth worrying about but others aren't, and they're not the same in every situation.

That's my point exactly. A direct quote from the post you're replying to:

> My words are merely a caution against blindly following the numbers.

I think the whole PC thing came about as a result of White Guilt and White Priviledge. We shouldn't be watering down our holiday. We just happen to have a country dominated by white Christians and it becomes a big deal. If the majority here were Jewish I bet that Jewish celebrations would get more attention. All in all though, Christmas in the US is more of a cultural sensation nowadays rather than a religious celebration even among many Christians. It's more about trees, lights, Santa, presents, good will, etc. than Christ being born. That's another good reason to do away with Happy Holidays because if Christmas is cultural like Columbus Day or Thanksgiving then everyone is invited to participate and in fact they are. Really, the only thing linking Christmas to religion these days, at least in the US, is the "Christ" part of the name. It's become just another holiday that can be given religious significance but that's optional. Like Thanksgiving. That's a cultural celebration but many religions have tried to make it part of their religion (specifically Umitarian and some Catholic Christians) but that doesn't mean it really is a religious deal.

This may not necessarily be about rejecting political correctness. In the United States (article mentions the recipients of the email were from the US), Christmas is celebrated by many for other than religious reasons and is its own cultural celebration, much in the same way how many people will watch the Superbowl despite having only a passing interest in football.

I assume the issue here is that "Merry Christmas YourName" is more likely to be perceived as a personal note whereas "Happy Holidays YourName" (or the more verbose version) sounds like a corporate greeting -- and one the reader therefore filters past.

Can someone explain to me how "open" rates are tracked? In all my mail clients I prevent remote images from loading automatically. I assume many people do the same. Is this tracking of open rates skewed as a result? Or maybe it just doesn't matter as long as you're just using it for comparison purposes?

Still images. Nowadays most of these emails are made up of entirely images... so checking "Okay, go ahead and show me" is effectively opening the mail.

I like to hear "Merry Christmas" and I am not religious in the least.

Happy Holidays makes me think that a corporate suit somewhere told the employee's that they have to be politically correct and not "offend" anyone.

I agree, a lot of people take offense to being sidelined for the purpose of "not offending anyone". So ironic.

I would say most people are easily offended. By anything.

It's not ironic, it's unfortunate.

Tried this for BCC last year on a lark. Christmas crushed.

As always.. I'm super curious about the answer to the question that ultimately doesn't matter much in the conversion-context.. Why?

Given your history w/ testing like this, I'm curious if you see value in asking 'why', and whether or not there are useful ways to get an answer. It seems like in addition to satisfying my curiosity about human psychology, it would be helpful in informing next-tests to make the entire process more efficient... but I don't see much talk about the 'why' when it comes to these tests.

I'm not patio11, but my guess (completely speculating here, of course) would be that "Merry Christmas" sounds more like something someone you know in a casual context (friends, family, etc.) would say to you, whereas "Happy Holidays" is used more by companies, which tend to try harder to be politically correct. When users see "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays", they might be more likely to just read the subject line and open the message without checking the sender, assuming it's from a friend. "MC" also sounds (to me) more like an email that is being sent with a specific purpose (as opposed to just a reminder that the company exists), e.g., maybe the company is offering you free bingo cards as a gift.

Out of curiosity, did you have a control? That is, was it "Merry Christmas from BCC!" vs. "Happy Holidays from BCC!" vs. "[Normal email subject] from BCC!"?

I'm curious to know how much "Merry Christmas" improves results vs. a baseline compared to how much "Happy Holidays" may hurt results, as has been suggested by others. The linked article only compares "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays", which makes it hard to know if "Merry Christmas" is really helping, or if "Happy Holidays" is only hurting.

This is a nice PR piece: timed for a specific holiday on the calender (timely), hooks into larger discussion around manners and the "best way" to greet somebody (social hook), and ends up with real-world data on conversion ratios. (Give us the numbers!). Very nicely done.

Interesting trivia point: originally the phrase was "Happy Christmas," see "The Night Before Christmas" for a source. Can't help but wonder how "Happy Christmas" compares to the others?

"Mery Christmas" [sic] dates back as far as 1565 - It's "Happy Christmas" that doesn't show up until the 19th century (and apparently is still more widely used in the UK than in the US.)

That to say, I think the origins of words and language are fascinating and could spend hours reading Wikipedia articles like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_greetings

To me it seems that "Merry Christmas" denotes the act of gift giving as opposed to just some holiday special. Therefore, I think that the "Merry Christmas" subject line makes the consumer feel like they're getting something.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm surprised that this hasn't been brought up by a previous commenter. In America, culturally, Christmas is a celebration to receive gifts. I don't see it this way, but on the surface, I think that many do. This is neither good nor bad, but I do believe that's why the phrase "Merry Christmas $NAME" had a higher conversion rate.

I guess they didn't A/B a subject line with a comma... ("Merry Christmas, Zack!" vs. the incorrect "Merry Christmas Zack!").

Worth noting that "happy holidays" is not something used colloquially outside of America (to the best of my knowledge).

Sure, we understand the context, but it's not something English speaking Europeans say to each other :) I'd be hesitant to suggest that alone is the cause, but might be an interesting additional data point.

It's not really used colloquially in the US either - if someone says "Happy Holidays" to you, it's because someone in charge of them told them they aren't allowed to say "Merry Christmas".

(Standard disclaimers about anecdotes and data apply.)

I guess the target audience of that site celebrate Christmas, it's why they responded better to it.

That's accurate however the site is about as large / vanilla of a demographic as you can imagine.

EG - if you're selling to general population this is likely going to work.

What's interesting is the author also says personalizing email subjects lowers conversion rates. I wonder if "Merry Christmas" would yield higher conversion rates than Merry Christmas <NAME>

Too bad there's no measure of the conversion rate among non-Christians.

Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpqknwKbvDE :-)

It is simply because they failed to notice that this year both Christmas and the New Year fall on the weekends, so there are no holidays.

Christmas and New Year's always fall on the same day of the week....

Seriously? A subject line with such a trivial change makes that much of a difference? It's the same email. A "please remember to buy from us while we cash in on the commercialization of the holiday" email from a retailer. I'm surprised to find out that people are actually influenced by that slight change in subject header.

Perhaps it just means that religious people are more likely to click on spam.

They really missed an opportunity to test out this season's hottest phrase: "Hey, baby Jesus, you wanna do pilates?"

I'm willing to bet this is because "Merry Christmas" sounds more personal. Your friend would say that to you, and it just feels more sincere. "Happy Holidays" sounds like PC jargon and robotic, customer ass kissing. If we just leave out for a moment the fact that not all people celebrate Christmas this makes sense.

I honestly think that Christmas is more of a cultural thing here in the US than a purely religious celebration. We have a majority of people who celebrate Christmas as part of their religion but even of those people a majority of them are focused more on the cultural sensation that is Christmas rather than the religious aspects even though they're Christian. The lights, the colors, Santa, presents, and the general mood of the holiday is what really makes Christmas in America, not the actual birth of Christ. That's why even people who aren't Christian or religious at all can get into it. They're surrounded by it and it's just a part of life here.

In countries where the "Christmas Spirit" isn't as prevalent in the culture with populations that are split between Christian and non-Christians more evenly I think Happy Holidays would sound more sincere and not exclusionary. Over here if you say "Happy Holidays" its like saying "I would say Merry Christmas but I'm going to be extra PC and say Happy Holidays just in case you're a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or other unspecified form of pagan, heathen, or otherwise non-Christian, non Christ believing individual". A little exaggerated, yes, but Happy Holidays really does sound like this to many and that's part of the reason that the conservative party over here makes a big deal over "the war on Christmas" every year with the "Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays" debate being very close to the center of it each time.

I know I said a lot, and my theory is based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence but I really think it makes a lot of sense. Try it on and see if you like it. Maybe I'm wrong.

Might get better results by making reference to scripture and glorifying Christ the savior as the reason for the season. The sheep are trained to gather around and financially support anything with gods name in it.

This effect is not an accident. It is the result of organized brainwashing that happens all over America between the hours of 9:30 and noon on Sunday.

As opposed to the brainwashing that happens all of the rest of the time?

As a pastor I despair of making enough of an impact in an hour or two to overcome all the influence of school and work that people experience for many tens of hours each week and the average of twenty hours (or is it more now?) of TV that people watch.

For the record, I prefer "Merry Christmas", except where someone is obviously trying to invoke a guilt purchase.

Might get better results by making reference to science and glorifying Dawkins the savior as the reason for the season. The free thinkers are trained to gather around and financially support anything with Dawkins' name in it.

This effect is not an accident. It is the result of organized back-patting that happens all the time on the Internet

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