• by Ray Schultz , December 5, 2017

SparkPost clients sent over 3.6 billion messages over the seven-day period that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- a 90% increase over the same period in 2016. 

That total included 607 million email messages on Cyber Monday, a 106% increase over last year, and 530 million on Black Friday -- a 76% increase.

This growth occurred despite the challenges facing email marketers.

“For a large number of retailers, email is the most important channel for reaching their customers,” says SparkPost CEO Phillip Merrick. “Over the Thanksgiving period, retailers often struggle with ensuring that email is delivered at the right time and to users’ inboxes — which can make the difference between profitability and loss.”

Holger Mueller, principal analyst and VP at Constellation Research, states that “deliverability is not only key — it's critical — during this time period, as well as the rest of the year.”

SparkPost, a cloud-based email delivery platform, claims that the majority of all marketing emails sent that week were delivered by either the SparkPost cloud service or by MarTech providers utilizing the company’s on-premises email servers.

The year-to-year comparisons include new and existing customers, SparkPost says. But the majority of the increase came from existing customers who were with the firm during the same period in 2016.