• by Jess Nelson , November 30, 2016

A fifth of holiday sales on Cyber Monday were generated by an email marketing promotion, according to the latest data from Adobe Digital Insights. 

Monday marked the largest online sales day in history as Cyber Monday inspired Americans to spend $3.45 billion online. Cyber Monday sales grew 12.1% year-over-year according to the Adobe study, which aggregated data from more than 23 billion anonymous visits to retail Web sites. Adobe’s data accounts for 80% of the top U.S. retailers.

Email played a motivating role in Cyber Monday’s high sales, driving 19.9% of online sales throughout the day. That’s a growth of 32.7% year-over-year, according to Adobe.

Shopper helper sites such as CNET, RetailMeNot or Ebates also experienced an upsurge this holiday shopping season, according to Adobe, growing 15.6% year-over-year to drive 18.5% of Cyber Monday sales.

Search and direct sales both contributed to more sales on Cyber Monday than email or shopping helper sites, driving 35.5% of sales and 23.8% of sales, respectively. That being said, both channels experienced diminishing returns, falling from holiday averages of 40% and 28%.

Cyber Monday was also a record-breaking email event for IBM, as its customers sent nearly 500 million email notifications from its platform to consumers around the world. Mobile push notifications also increased 47% year-over-year according to IBM.

Black Friday marked the first day in retail history where more than $1 billion in sales occurred on a mobile device, and now Cyber Monday marks the second day with $1.07 billion spent on a mobile device, per Adobe.