Cyber Monday Lessons Learned & Last Minute Holiday Email Tips

Yesterday we released our latest deliverability study, which showed that nearly one in four opt-in email marketing messages were not delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday. Celebrated as the busiest day of the year for e-commerce transactions, this past Monday saw inbox delivery rates plummet to a 7-day low of just 76.2%. 

Soaring volumes caused problems because a) ISP networks and delivery queues were overburdened with everyone mailing at the same time and b) faced with pressure to drive a ton of web site sales, many marketers mailed to inactive segments of their lists (which also has long term negative consequences).

Marketers can apply lessons from Cyber Monday to succeed in the remaining days leading up to Christmas. Here are my top 3 tips:

1. Don’t mail every Tom, Dick and Harry who ever signed up for your list. With customer engagement playing a growing role in deliverability, marketers who over-mailed felt the burn of rejection on Cyber Monday. Some marketers dug deep into their house files and sent email to people who haven’t responded in months. Their mail was bounced, blocked or sent to the spam folder because of inactivity on the part of the end user. ISPs are losing their patience for senders who mail to inactive segments; AOL went on the record to say so just last week.
2. Avoid peak volume hours. With so much emphasis on Cyber Monday, marketers were under pressure to send a flood of email in order to drive customers to their companies’ web sites. Volumes peaked between 9 – 10 am ET and 12 – 1 pm ET on Monday. When volumes go up, ISPs are forced to take tougher measures when processing email. Sending email at these times is similar to intentionally going to the airport on the busiest day of the year.
3. Consider timing of special one-day sales – send Monday’s deals on Sunday. Other research we recently released showed that the average amount of time that elapses between when retailers first send their email messages and consumers first notice them in their inbox is 23.4 hours. With that in mind, marketers with time sensitive Cyber Monday deals would have been well advised to get their mail queued up the day before – which not only would have enhanced the timing of their messages, but also enabled them to take advantage of lower traffic days with less stress being placed on ISP mail infrastructure.  The days before Christmas will be extremely busy. If you have a “last chance for shipping by Christmas” offer, make sure it gets to your customers before it expires!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Michelle Eichner
COO & VP of Client Development