E-Mail Study: Call It Black Friday Or Cyber Monday, But Don’t Use “Cyber Week”

Major retailers that sent out holiday e-mail marketing campaigns with the phrase “Cyber Week” in their subject lines got a proverbial lump of coal from consumers.

According to a Yesmail study, e-mails with that term in the subject line had an open rate that was at least two percent lower on average than e-mails that mentioned “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday.”

Yesmail looked at 831 holiday e-mails in November from 29 major retailers including Dell, Best Buy, Apple and others. Of those brands, 21 sent e-mails with the word “Black” in the subject line and 19 used the word “Cyber.” But the e-mails that said “Cyber Week” rather than “Cyber Monday” were the ones that didn’t perform as well. Yesmail says that might be because “Cyber Week” doesn’t create a sense of shopping urgency.

Interestingly, more than a third of the email marketers we tracked (37%) used the term “Cyber week” in their subject lines. These types of campaigns had open rates at least 2% lower than the 12.07% average, with some big-box stores experiencing opens of less than 7%. Marketers that stretched Cyber Monday deals over the course of a week might have experienced lower engagement by diminishing a sense of urgency in consumers to shop.

Overall, Black Friday-related e-mails had an average open rate of 14.27 percent, compared to 12.07 percent for Cyber Monday-related e-mails. On the other hand, Black Friday e-mails also had a higher deletion rate and a higher delete-without-opening rate.