Well, you can say you heard it here first: Cyber Monday is barely a few hours into full swing and yet we’re already seeing email volumes increase by roughly the same percentage as last year in the run up to today’s mailing frenzy.
Last year, we saw an increase in ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’ mentions the week before Turkey Day. This year, we saw even earlier and more frequent mentions of the two retail holidays in the run up to Thanksgiving.
- According to our data, in the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year (2010), email marketing volumes are up 23% overall.
- Holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions began before the week prior to Thanksgiving. Companies such as Sears led the charge by advertising black Fridays as early as October:
Keyword First Date Seen in Subject Line Black Friday 1-Oct-2010 Cyber Monday 11-Nov-2010 Christmas 5-Oct-2010 Holiday 5-Oct-2010
Of course, we had a feeling this might be the case all along. Our predictions from the 2010 Holiday Marketer said as much:
Overall email volume from Nov. 22 until Dec. 31 was up 15 percent year over year, spiking on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is interesting to note that in 2009, those high volume–prone days actually turned into longer spikes encompassing several days. The same pattern is likely to occur in 2010, with high volume periods of several days prior to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and each Echo Monday (the Mondays between Cyber Monday and Christmas).
We will keep you posted with more data about Cyber Monday as it becomes available. In the meantime, you can read other prophetic predictions for this holiday season in our recent report, The 2010 Holiday Marketer.