• by Jess Nelson , December 7, 2015

Despite repeated claims that email is dead, recent data released by Yesmail indicates otherwise. In fact, email-driven revenue for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday doubled in 2015.

The number of email-driven Cyber Monday purchases grew by 129%, while email-driven Black Friday purchases grew by 162%, according to Yesmail's analysis of emails sent from its platform.

Email volume rose 87% on Cyber Monday and 31% on Black Friday, per Yesmail. Salesforce Marketing Cloud reports a rise in email volume from its users of 44% on Cyber Monday. The company claims that over 191 million emails were sent in under one hour on Black Friday. 

Some 62% of retailers sent more than one email on Cyber Monday, 18% of retailers sent three or more emails on Cyber Monday, and 2% of retailers sent more than five emails on Cyber Monday, according to research from Bronto Software. The percentage of retailers relying on one email to market Cyber Monday dropped by 7%.

Email marketing was the primary marketing channel driving online sales on Cyber Monday, accounting for 22.1% of all online transactions, according to Custora’s E-Commerce Pulse. Email is estimated to hae contributed about $660 million in holiday sales to Adobe's $3 billion total in online sales for Cyber Monday.