There seemed to be a surge of email marketing trumpting Cyber Monday Sales in big, glossy lettering in the week before Cyber Monday – so much so that I was bored of the whole thing long before the sales actually started. I wondered whether there actually was a big increase in volume of mail, or whether it was just louder, pushier and more noticeable.
So I went through my inbox and categorized the legitimate email I received, pulling out the consumer adverts from the personal mail, work-related commercial mail and so on, and charted it for the past couple of months, broken down into adverts for books, software, “tech” – consumer electronics / computer equipment / software etc., and everything else.
The vertical grid marks each Monday, including the obvious spike on Cyber Monday, November 28th. The regular cycle of junk mail early in the work week, followed by quiet over the weekend is pretty clear. And sure enough, there’s a significant increase on Cyber Monday and the few days beforehand, dominated by consumer goods, tech and otherwise.
Excluding high traffic discussion lists, the mail I was sent over the period of this chart was:
2.6% Consumer-targeted, opt-in commercial bulk email (as shown in the chart)
7.1% Other legitimate email (1:1, social media notifications, business-related mail, some discussion lists)
90.3% Spam
And, no, I didn’t buy anything on Cyber Monday.
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