According to the trade journals and data supplied by comScore, Cyber Monday was a big hit this year, up significantly from last year. But from what I an understand, the numbers took into account the entire holiday weekend, from Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
When I actually look at the online stats for retailers and compare Black Friday's traffic numbers to Cyber Monday, it is obvious that the clear winner is Friday. Across the board, the Friday traffic numbers for Friday were much higher than on Monday and even those retailers who promoted specific Cyber Monday sales throught email drops did not see a particular spike in traffic to their site.
In a certain way, marketers have gotten things backwards. The term Black Friday (so called because traditionally that is when retailers went from the red to the black) was used to discribe a phenomena where people took advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday to do their Christmas and Holiday shopping. Cyber Monday was where the internet saw its boost because people used their high speed access at work to do their shopping when they returned from their Thanksgiving break. But today many people have high speed access in their homes and so Black Friday is a stampead for both online and brick and mortar stores. As a result, I don't think we see that monday spike happening as much anymore.
But markers still promote Cyber Monday sales and Black Friday sales, especially in their email marketing as if these terms meant something (like Thanksgiving sales or Presidents Day Sales) to the general public rather than the specialized marketing terms they acutally are.
I mean with the current stock market situation, do you really want to be promoting "Black Friday" sales to the general public? Maybe it is the Madmen factor: markers are convinced that the general public is fascinated by their every move.
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