• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 22, 2015

The peak days of this year’s holiday shopping season saw substantial year-over-year increases in email marketing volume, according to fresh findings from Experian. The trend was led by a 68% increase in travel emails, along with a 36.4% increase in emails from multichannel retailers. 

In particular, email volume on Cyber Monday was 28% higher than during the same period in 2014. Meanwhile, for the peak days from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, transactions were 22% higher than those seen last year.

Yet the higher volumes have so far failed to translate to more opens, clicks, transactions and revenue. Despite a nearly 30% increase in volume, in fact, retailers have only been able to match last year’s transaction rates, Experian found. n“When we look at the holiday data, we clearly have a long way to go,” Spencer Kollas, VP of global deliverability services at Experian Marketing Services, notes in a new report.

During the third quarter, email volume rose 24.8% year-over-year, while engagement rates matched or were above those recorded during the same period last year.

Experian also found that flash sales are still effective at driving transactions. In the third quarter, in fact, flash sales had 59% higher transaction rates than the third quarter multichannel retail benchmark.

In addition, revenue per email for flash sales was 29% higher than the 2015 third-quarter multichannel retail benchmark, Experian found.