• by Jess Nelson , November 28, 2016

Email ranked as one of the top three traffic drivers on Black Friday, according to new shopping data released Monday by Adobe Digital Insights (ADI). 

Online shopping this past Friday hit a record $3.34 billion, per ADI -- or $5.27 billion when Thanksgiving’s sales on Thursday are also included. This equates to an increase in Black Friday ecommerce sales of 21.6% year-over-year and a jump in combined Thanksgiving and Black Friday online sales of 17.7% year-over-year. 

Adobe’s Digital Insights team compiled the Black Friday report based on aggregated and anonymous data from 22.6 billion visits to retail Web sites. The company claims to measure up to 80% of all online transactions from the top 100 retailers in the United States.

Email marketing was the third-highest ecommerce driver, according to the study, with 17.8% of online sales derived from a consumer’s inbox. 

Search ads contributed the highest amount of shopping traffic through Black Friday, followed by direct traffic. Email marketing came in third. An additional 16.5% of sales came from shopper helper sites such as RetailMeNot, according to ADI’s study. Only 1.2% of online sales came from a display advertisement, and less than 1% of online sales derived from social media.

Black Friday 2016 also became the first day in retail history to drive more than one billion dollars in mobile revenue. Mobile sales generated $1.2 billion on Black Friday, according to ADI’s report -- an impressive growth of 33% year-over-year. 

More than half (55%) of all visits to retail Web sites on Black Friday occurred on a mobile device, according to ADI, with the vast majority of traffic derived from smartphones and 10% from tablets. Mobile accounted for 36% of all sales, with 11% derived from tablets.

ADI's data closely aligns with the Black Friday shopping data collected by Salesforce’s Social Studio and Commerce Cloud, which pinpointed mobile as accounting for 56% of traffic and 37% of orders.