• by Ray Schultz , November 30, 2018

SendGrid experienced the highest sending volume in its history during the Thanksgiving holiday, handling 2.9 billion emails on Cyber Monday alone, the company reported on Friday.

From this, it gleaned these observations:

The company says use of discounts in subject lines fell to 6%, compared with 15% in 2017. This is most likely due to a falloff in engagement on discount messages.

Open rates on Black Friday occurred much more quickly than usual, decreasing from the normal Friday delay time of 4.5 hours by 42 minutes.

Firms that increased from one to two emails in a week experienced 25% more engagement, but those went from two to three had only a 9% increase.

The use of exclamation points in subject lines fell by 12%, although it rose slightly during the year. Again, this drop was probably due to lower engagement rates, SendGrid says.

Subject lines utilizing terms such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday performed significantly worse, the company says. Only 13% of emails featured them, down from 18% in 2017.