According to Adobe, consumers spent a record-breaking $6.59 billion dollars during Cyber Monday alone, a 16.8% increase over 2016. That makes Cyber Monday 2017 the biggest shopping holiday in history!

As we know, email is a huge driver of online sales during the holidays. Every year, Movable Ink gathers our own data report on email marketing activity during the holidays.

The following report is based on data from 438,760,191 email opens between Wednesday, 11/22/17 and Cyber Monday, 11/27/17.

Email opens were highest on smartphones…

Last year, we saw smartphone email opens at 57.6%. This year, they edged up to 59%. As this number continues to grow year over year, it will become increasingly important to optimize email experiences for customers multiple devices – smartphones, tablets, and desktop. Why? It’s becoming more and more obvious that consumers interact with email more than once.

… but email conversions were highest on desktop.

So why would opens be higher on smartphones when more people are making purchases on their desktop? Simple: consumers initially open an email on their smartphone, save it, and then go back to it on their desktop when they’re ready to make a purchase. That’s why 53% of conversions happened via desktop, whereas only 38% happened via smartphone. Since many consumers prefer to research before buying, they’ll scour their inboxes for the best deals and then buy once they’re ready.

Email read lengths were highest on Black Friday

Interestingly, Black Friday read rates – with 49% of consumers spending 15 seconds or more reading email – were higher than any other day during Cyber Week, including Cyber Monday. There are a few reasons for this. First, Black Friday isn’t a national holiday, so lots of folks were at work and behind a computer that day. Second, many brands promoted their Black Friday deals early this year, so consumers may have been eager to see what else they had to offer.

Average order values were higher on tablets than on smartphones

Typically, AOV is highest on desktop, followed by smartphones, and then tablets. Last year desktop users spent an average of $162, smartphone users spent $134, and tablet users spent $123. But year this, things played out a bit differently. Desktop users spent almost exactly the same amount, but the tables turned for tablets and smartphones: AOV for smartphones was $83.98, and AOV for tablets was $106.50, giving tablets a $22.52 lead over smartphones. The wider adoption of tablets combined with the preference to purchase on a larger screen is a likely explanation for this.

Consumers spent the most on Cyber Monday

Consumer spend peaked on Cyber Monday, with AOV at $141 versus $124 on Black Friday. This goes to show that promoting multiple deals via email is a great tactic for keep customers engaged with fresh, new deals over a period of time.