Cyber Monday Email Spike & Dive
The stores aren’t going to be the only things clogged during the runup to Christmas. According to Responsys, quoted in the 11/23 issue of Directline, retailers will send more e-mail marketing message on Cyber Monday – the first Monday after Thanksgiving – than on any other day of the year.
“Despite the down economy, marketers are investing even more in the e-mail channel and Responsys predicts this will be the busiest e-mail marketing day in recorded history,” the company predicted in a statement.
Of course, that’s easy to do. Email marketing is probably the cheapest channel available for reaching the masses, so why wouldn’t people do it?
According to Responsys customer data, Cyber Monday was the highest-volume e-mail day during both 2008 and 2007. Cyber Monday email volumes were 40% higher in 2008 than 2007.
Responsys claimed that Cyber Monday accounted for $846 million in online spending last year, up 15% from 2007.
And in those last two statements lies the rub. Email volumes up 40% but online spending up only 15%. I am predicting that, while email volumes may jump another 40% over last year, I’ll be shocked if online spending jumps by double-digits. I do expect an increase attributable to the sheer volume of emails that go out. But I don’t expect a big leap in resultant sales.
In other words, I’m saying that the effectiveness of email marketing is actually on the wane, even during this season of the year. I do hope I’m wrong, by the way, but I’ll be surprised if I am.
Referring to Cyber Monday, “With the top retailers attributing up to 40% of their online sales through their e-mail marketing efforts, e-mail is definitely the power channel behind Cyber Monday’s rise to prominence,” said Scott Olrich, CMO of Responsys, in a statement.
Of course, Responsys has a vested interest in the prosperity of online marketing channels, including email. and they’re right about one thing…
“Thanks to retailers’ vigorous promotion efforts and mainstream media coverage, most consumers have become familiar with the term, which has become synonymous with ‘online-only,’ ‘one-day sales,’ as well as many involving limited-quantity ‘Web busters,’” added Chad White, research director at Responsys.
According to Responsys, twice as many retailers promoted the date by name in their email marketing messages last year as did in 2007. Retailers are also more comfortable promoting Cyber Monday by name than they are Black Friday. While 36% of retailers referenced “Cyber Monday” in their email messages on December 1st last year, only 25% of them referenced “Black Friday” in their November 28th email campaigns.
But the effectiveness of email as a sales medium will continue to diminish. Not simply as a function of the economy and the fact that people are generally spending less, but more importantly, as a function of its own success and ease of access. Because it has been so successful and because it has been so cheap, everybody is getting into the game. As the volume of emails skyrockets, the consumer’s tolerance for it plummets.
Whereas as television proved itself a mega-successful way to market, the costs provided a barrier to entry which kept most businesses out of the game. And the limits on time and space available for broadcast and print marketing provide a self-limiting buffer to over saturation of ads. Even the costs associated with “snail mail” marketing seem to limit the volume at the curbside mailbox.
No such restrictions with email and the consumer is bugged.
Good offers from trusted merchants may still get through. But most of the email marketing associated with Cyber Monday will be pre-deleted by spam filters. And most of what does get through will be manually deleted without so much as a look from most consumers.
Does this all mean email marketing isn’t worth doing? Not at all. At least not at all for now. It is so cheap, it can still be very profitable. But there is a diminishing return, and at some point I question the viability of email marketing at all.
Yes, Cyber Monday will provide an unprecedented spike in email marketing. But it may well lead to a subsequent dive.
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