E-Mail Study: Call It Black Friday Or Cyber Monday, But Don’t Use “Cyber Week”

Yesmail says "Cyber Week" may not have created a sense of urgency in shoppers.

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Major retailers that sent out holiday e-mail marketing campaigns with the phrase “Cyber Week” in their subject lines got a proverbial lump of coal from consumers.

According to a Yesmail study, e-mails with that term in the subject line had an open rate that was at least two percent lower on average than e-mails that mentioned “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday.”

Yesmail looked at 831 holiday e-mails in November from 29 major retailers including Dell, Best Buy, Apple and others. Of those brands, 21 sent e-mails with the word “Black” in the subject line and 19 used the word “Cyber.” But the e-mails that said “Cyber Week” rather than “Cyber Monday” were the ones that didn’t perform as well. Yesmail says that might be because “Cyber Week” doesn’t create a sense of shopping urgency.

Interestingly, more than a third of the email marketers we tracked (37%) used the term “Cyber week” in their subject lines. These types of campaigns had open rates at least 2% lower than the 12.07% average, with some big-box stores experiencing opens of less than 7%. Marketers that stretched Cyber Monday deals over the course of a week might have experienced lower engagement by diminishing a sense of urgency in consumers to shop.

Overall, Black Friday-related e-mails had an average open rate of 14.27 percent, compared to 12.07 percent for Cyber Monday-related e-mails. On the other hand, Black Friday e-mails also had a higher deletion rate and a higher delete-without-opening rate.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
Contributor
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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