Holiday Email Overload: Global Retail Email Volume Up 15% YoY

November 2022 Retailer Emails Jumped 24% From Previous Month

• Retail email volume sent during Q4 of both 2020 and 2021 was 19–22% higher than the quarterly average for Q1-Q3 of each year.
• The week of November 21, 2022 saw the greatest increase in email volume this holiday season.
• Australia suffers from the greatest increase in year-over-year email volume for early December — up 23% in 2022 compared to 2021.
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It’s the time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. A no man’s land where the days blend together, where some people are off for the whole week, and others muster up the energy to push something — anything — over the finish line before the new year. Welcome one and all to Twixmas (really, it’s a thing).

From Black Friday to December holiday sales and straight into Boxing Day, there’s a solid chance your inbox looks more like a shopping catalog than an email app.

As email users ourselves, we’ve felt the effects of the holidays on our inboxes — the marketing newsletters seem to suddenly skyrocket, and it’s hard to concentrate over the constant buzz of new sales hitting your inbox. But to what extent does email volume increase? When is email volume the most egregious? And are we really getting more emails now than last year? To answer all these questions and more, Edison Mail research took a deep dive into the numbers.

How does the retail email volume in 2022 compare to 2020 and 2021?

Figure 1a: The first value has been set to 100, and all other values scaled accordingly. This analysis of retail email volume received each month worldwide between January 1, 2020 and November 30, 2022 is based on de-identified and aggregated data from 100 top vendors including Amazon, Apple, eBay, Uber, and Walmart. The analysis encompasses over 2.3 billion emails and over 600,000 consumers, according to Edison Mail.

Figure 1b: The first value has been set to 100, and all other values scaled accordingly. This analysis of retail email volume received worldwide per quarter between January 1, 2020 and October 31, 2022 is based on de-identified and aggregated data from 100 top vendors including Amazon, Apple, eBay, Uber, and Walmart. The analysis encompasses over 2.3 billion emails and over 600,000 consumers, according to Edison Mail.

Emails sent by merchants take a big uptick come year’s end. Examining emails from 100 top merchants, users worldwide received about 22% more emails in Q4 2020 than they had in the previous three quarters on average. In 2021, that number was 19%.

Is Q4 2022 on schedule for the same kind of increase? In 2020 the increase in total emails from October to November was about 10%; in 2021, it was 15%. This year, it was about 24%, perhaps heralding a larger total increase in holiday emails this season than in the recent past.

Which country saw the biggest increase in early December retail emails?

Figure 2: This analysis of year-over-year change in retail email volume, in select countries between December 1 and December 15, 2021 and 2022, is based on de-identified and aggregated data from 100 top vendors including Amazon, Apple, eBay, Uber, and Walmart. The analysis encompasses over 90 million emails and over 480,000 consumers, according to Edison Mail.

Are countries across the globe seeing more emails in inboxes than last year? It seems so. Australia had the highest year-over-year rise (about 23%) of the countries examined, with Canada and the US second and third at 16–17%, followed by India with 9% and Singapore with 5%.

Which week in 2022 saw the biggest uptick in email volume?

Figure 3: This analysis is based on de-identified and aggregated data from 100 top vendors including Amazon, Apple, eBay, Uber, and Walmart. The analysis encompasses over 200 million emails and over 500 thousand consumers, according to Edison Mail.

Looking at emails by week, worldwide totals climbed steadily from the week of October 17 through the week of November 21, which was up 28% over the previous week. The following week, that of November 28, was down 7% from that of the 21st.

Has the trend been the same in every country? This was the case for the US, Australia, Canada, and Singapore; each showed a general rise with a peak the week of November 21. However, for India, the highest recent week was that of October 17.

“With so many marketing emails this time of year, many from retailers you may have only shopped at once or twice, email overload is almost inevitable,” said Hetal Pandya, Co-founder and VP of Marketing at Edison Software.

Managing your inbox during this time of year only adds onto the already present stressors of deadlines, social engagements, and the like. This is why our team recently launched our powerful new Subscriptions Insight and Timed Summary to help our consumers take control of their inboxes once and for all. This, paired with our already existing one-tap unsubscribe, improved search capabilities, and renewed spam blocking technologies are the easiest way to get your inbox into a much more manageable shape, just in time for the new year.

Edison Mail is available on the App Store, Mac App Store, and Play Store.