Commentary

Cyber Sales Blowout: Email Metrics Boom -- But Not For Emojis

Black Friday was a roaring success for email marketers, judging by the plethora of studies coming in.

For instance, ContactPigeon reports a 14% increase in revenue and 12% rise in orders over the same day in 2016, based on a review of millions of transactional emails. 

Moreover, there was an 11% increase in emails sent this year. And email contributed to 23% of Black Friday sales, according to ContactPigeon.

But there were two findings that should give email marketers some pause. 

One is that emojis may have passed their peak, although 67% of the emails had them in their subject lines. Messages without emojis had a 1.5 times higher conversation rate than those with them. 

The other finding is that retailers are failing to send triggered emails — i.e., for cart and browser abandonment—and missing an opportunity. Only 2% of the emails studied by ContactPigeon were triggered.

But the firm claims that triggered campaigns drive a 3X rise in conversion — which means triggered campaigns have an average 26.2% conversion rate, compared to 5.3% for all types of email.

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Another takeaway is that emails should be designed for all channels.

Among all Black Friday orders, 51% were placed on PC and Mac desktops, producing an average click rate of 43% and conversion rate of 7%. In addition, 21% of emails were opened on Android devices, and 17% on iPhones.

As for timing, the most productive hours were 10 a.m. (with a conversion rate of 4.8%), 9 a.m. (4.1%), noon (4%) and midnight (3.3%).

This reflects “a peak in the early hours of Black Friday as retailers kick off their Black Friday sales as early as midnight when the clock strikes Friday,” ContactPigeon writes.

However, a separate study by Namogoo reveals that the buying peak on both days was from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Namogoo also found a 4.5% rise in website visitors on Friday. And on Monday, traffic was 3.4 higher than that of the previous six Mondays. 

In its analysis of 500 million sessions on retail websites, smartphones contributed to 55% of all ecommerce traffic, and contributed 48% on Cyber Monday. In addition, mobile devices generated 36% of all sales on Black Friday and 31% on Cyber Monday.

But there was one damper to all this good news: unauthorized ads are distracting consumers.

For example, 29.8% of Black Friday sessions produced unauthorized ads, and 31.2% on Monday. The average infection rate was 21.7%.

These numbers reflect a significant increase compared to previous weeks, as the average infection rate was merely 21.7%.

Look at the bright side: There are still 21 shopping days until Christmas. 

2 comments about "Cyber Sales Blowout: Email Metrics Boom -- But Not For Emojis".
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  1. marcia oakes from calendars.com, December 4, 2017 at 5 p.m.

    Emojis are mentioned in the title but not in the article. Is there missing data from the article? 

  2. Apostolis Lianos from tetragonobookstores.gr, January 3, 2018 at 8:03 a.m.

    Found the links of both sources for anyone further interested:
    - Contact Pigeon Infographic: https://blog.contactpigeon.com/black-friday-2017-email-marketing-report/

    - Namogoo Report: https://www.namogoo.com/how-did-consumers-react-to-black-friday-and-cyber-monday-heres-what-our-data-reveals/

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