Well, you can say you heard it here first: Cyber Monday is barely a few hours into full swing and yet we’re already seeing email volumes increase by roughly the same percentage as last year in the run up to today’s mailing frenzy.

Last year, we saw an increase in ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’ mentions the week before Turkey Day. This year, we saw even earlier and more frequent mentions of the two retail holidays in the run up to Thanksgiving.

• According to our data, in the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year (2010), email marketing volumes are up 23% overall.
• Holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions began before the week prior to Thanksgiving. Companies such as Sears led the charge by advertising black Fridays as early as October:
  

  Keyword	First Date Seen in Subject Line
  Black Friday	1-Oct-2010
  Cyber Monday	11-Nov-2010
  Christmas	5-Oct-2010
  Holiday	5-Oct-2010

Of course, we had a feeling this might be the case all along. Our predictions from the 2o1o Holiday Marketer said as much:

Overall email volume from Nov. 22 until Dec. 31 was up 15 percent year over year, spiking on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is interesting to note that in 2009, those high volume–prone days actually turned into longer spikes encompassing several days. The same pattern is likely to occur in 2010, with high volume periods of several days prior to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and each Echo Monday (the Mondays between Cyber Monday and Christmas).

We will keep you posted with more data about Cyber Monday as it becomes available. In the meantime, you can read other prophetic predictions for this holiday season in our recent report, The 2010 Holiday Marketer.

Based on the analysis of 170 clients across all industries between 2006 – 2009, Experian CheetahMail has made the following determinations about the week of Black Friday:

• Email volumes increased by 24 percent for the week of Thanksgiving 2009  as compared to the same week in 2008.
• The trend of emailing more leading up to Black Friday continued in 2009 just as it had in 2008. However, the volume totals for several of these days — the Sunday, Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, along with Thanksgiving Day — were much higher in 2009 than last year.
• 50 percent of emails were sent prior to 8 am each day. Of the dates examined during this time period, Black Friday had the most even distribution of send time between midnight and noon.
• Black Friday itself saw almost identical email volumes as last year, dropping roughly 1% from 2008.

Meanwhile at Experian Hitwise, our source for consumer and competitive insight, we’ve seen how specialty websites focusing solely on Black Friday sales have played a significant role in driving traffic to retail sites. Comparing the week before Thanksgiving in 2009 vs. 2008, Hitwise saw the following:

• Visits to these specialty Black Friday sites are up 4 percent compared with the same week in 2008.
• Referral traffic from these specialty sites is up 14 percent compared to the same week of 2008, making them an increasingly important aspect of holiday retail promotions.
• Wal-Mart received the greatest share of referred traffic from Black Friday websites for last week with 13 percent, followed by Target and Best Buy with 4.12 percent and 4.04 percent, respectively.

And over at PriceGrabber.com, our sister company for comparison shopping, we saw the specific products that consumers were seeking on the day of Black Friday, as well as some indicators of the nation’s economic mood:

• The most sought-after products on Black Friday 2009 included Wii™ Console, nuvi® 265WT GPS and Apple iPod® touch 8GB.
• The down economy is forcing consumers to make do with what they have. With people holding on to critical items they already own such as cars, they’re researching ways to extend the life of what they are driving now. Searches for tires are up tremendously (118%) this year.
• Practical spending for the home saw a jump this year. Large home appliances such as freezers (104%), washers (50%), dryers (33%), refrigerators (30%), cooktops & ranges (23%) and dishwashers (21%) are seeing increases in traffic as consumers are researching aging appliances now that they are home more.

Contrary to popular belief, the term “Cyber Monday” was not coined by an army of scotch drinking Japanese robots from the 1980′s, but rather by Shop.org, the prominent digital retail group who sought to create a sister holiday for Black Friday that focused solely on online commerce. Cyber Monday falls on the first Monday after Thanksgiving and has become more and more recognized over recent years.

While we at Email Responsibly have touched on the topic of Cyber Monday in the past, today it’s time to look forward to see what is in store for Cyber Monday this year.

• In general, we expect to see an overall increase in the number of Cyber Monday and Black Friday mentions (by name) in email campaigns this year. This development comes on the heels of last year’s holiday season in which we witnessed firsthand the increasing usage of the actual term “Cyber Monday” in email campaigns. Furthermore, we expect to see these terms being used earlier, more prevalently and together in the same email – certainly more-so than in prior years.

• We also expect email volumes to increase on these days, but perhaps not as sharply as the increases seen in recent years. Considering that the volume of email sent on Black Friday increased 64% from 2007 to 2008, and 40% from 2007 to 2008, we don’t expect quite as large an increase from 2008 to 2009. However, the economy stands to play a large role in just how much email gets sent on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If consumer spending looks weak towards the end of November, we might see a spike in email volume as companies react by offering last-minute sales and deals.
• Looking at consumer behavior over recent years, we expect online shopping to heat up a few weeks prior to the start of the traditional holiday shopping season and then cool off slightly during the week of Christmas. Two years ago, online purchases peaked during the traditional shopping week ending Monday, November 26th (Cyber Monday) when fully a quarter of all adults bought something online. Online purchases in 2007 remained high for several weeks after Thanksgiving before falling to 17% during the week of Christmas. Now compare those statistics with those from last year (which had a late Thanksgiving) when online purchasing heated up even earlier – several weeks prior to Black Friday. In fact, between the weeks ending November 3rd and November 10th in 2008, the share of adults who made an online purchase more than doubled from 11% to 23%. For the most part, online purchase levels remained at or near this level for the duration of the 2008 shopping season until dropping back down to 16% during the week of Christmas.
• With Thanksgiving falling late in the calendar again this year, expect consumers to exhibit similar purchasing patterns as they did last year. In a typical week of the year, approximately 15% of all American adults make a purchase online. However, during the five weeks prior to last Christmas, an average of 23% of adults made an online purchase, which was 50% higher than normal. Look for more of the same when this holiday season rolls around.