[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/04130018/Movable-Ink-Black-Fri-Cyber-Mon-Email-Opens-2013.jpg) **_38% more email opens took place on Black Friday as online retailers started the battle for consumers’ inboxes earlier than ever_**Black Friday was the biggest day of the year for brand email marketers so far this holiday season, with marketers seeing 38% more email opens than they did on Cyber Monday, according to our research. With competition for consumers’ attention – and wallets – fiercer than ever, brands started their holiday email marketing programs early.Our study also found substantial differences in the devices used to open email marketing messages throughout the holiday weekend:* **Thanksgiving Day was the biggest day for smartphone opens.** On Thanksgiving, 59.9 percent of marketing email opens occurred on smartphones; by comparison, 45.5 percent of all marketing email opens in Q3 2013took place on smartphones. Black Friday was the second biggest smartphone day, with 57.5 percent.* **Cyber Monday was the biggest day for desktops.** While still beat by smartphone opens (45.5 percent), Cyber Monday showed the strongest showing for desktops, with 40.1 percent of all marketing email opens.* **Tablet use surged over the weekend.** 19.3 percent of Saturday’s opens and 18.7 percent of Sunday’s took place on iPads and Android-based tablets.In total, the volume of Movable Ink-powered emails between Black Friday and Cyber Monday increased a whopping 3,085% year-over-year, as leading brands continue to embrace innovative [Agile Email Marketing](https://movableink.com/platform) technology and strategies to cut through the clutter of the inbox.“Black Friday is now officially the biggest day of the year for email marketers,” said Vivek Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Movable Ink. “It should come as no surprise that in a controversial year where many leading retailers opened their brick and mortar locations on Thanksgiving Day itself, that they’d be just as aggressive in starting their email marketing sales events ahead of Cyber Monday. The surge in mobile opens should also make marketers take notice – without mobile optimization in place, a lot of money could have been left on the table.”**About Movable Ink’s 2013 Black Friday/Cyber Monday Research: **The findings above are based on data collected through Movable Ink’s Agile Email Marketing platform between November 20 and December 2 2013. The data reflects aggregate statistics across Movable Ink’s customer base, which includes more than 100 enterprise B2C marketers from the retail, travel, financial, media, and telecommunications industries. Because determining email opens requires images to load, the percentages for some devices and platforms might be over or underrepresented.
For Email Marketers, Black Friday is the New Cyber Monday
