Cyber Monday Domination

While Black Friday weekend suffered the first spending decline since 2009, Cyber Monday increased nearly 20 percent to a record level, according to ComScore. Online retail sales reached nearly $2 billion, with mobile devices generating more than 17 percent of online purchases, according to IBM.

Clearly, the lure of deeper discounts while steering clear (as in, not being in the car at all) of crazy Black Friday in-store madness is taking internet shopping to another level … and marketers are taking advantage. Looking into Who's Mailing What!, the world's most complete library of email and direct mail, you can search by "Cyber Monday" and see all the email creative along with other campaign details, such as time sent.

Since 2010, measuring the emails sent the day before and the day of Cyber Monday, the number of email subject lines with "Cyber Monday" has increased dramatically — by 99.1 percent from 2010 to 2011, and then 30 percent from 2011 to 2012. Looking at early returns from this year's Cyber Monday, it looks like this trend hasn't slowed down.

See the slideshow below for some examples — and a brief analysis — of Cyber Monday emails, from nearly every type of industry sector.

Ethan Boldt is the chief content officer of Direct Marketing IQ, the home of direct marketing research and Who's Mailing What!, where you can track competitors and see the best examples of email and direct mail creative. Ethan can be reached at eboldt@napco.com.