With an unusually late Thanksgiving, the 2019 holiday season is the shortest in seven years, though you wouldn’t know that from Cyber Weekend. Nearly 190 million people shopped during the five-day stretch between Thursday and Monday, when online shoppers spent a whopping $12 million every minute. That makes Cyber Monday the biggest ecommerce day in U.S. history, taking the crown from… well, Cyber Monday last year.

Here are four takeaways from the monumental Cyber Weekend:

Cyber Weekend Broke Records Across the Board

According to Adobe data, online shoppers spent more than $28 billion over the five-day period:

  • Thanksgiving: $4.2 billion
  • Black Friday: $7.4 billion
  • Small Business Saturday: $3.6 billion
  • Super Sunday: $3.83 billion
  • Cyber Monday: $9.4 billion

It wasn’t just Cyber Monday; the entire long weekend broke records. This year also marked the first time Thanksgiving sales surpassed $4 billion.

Mobile Commerce Milestones

In 2018, mobile devices accounted for more than half of retail traffic during the holiday season for the first time. Mobile traffic continued to increase during Cyber Weekend, going as high as 70% during Thanksgiving. Smartphone sales are skyrocketing as well.

On Thanksgiving, 44% of online sales came from smartphones. Meanwhile, Cyber Monday was the first $3 billion mobile commerce day in U.S. history. 

Email Marketing and Ecommerce

The most lucrative marketing channel, email is where most consumers want to hear from retailers. And since this is the most lucrative time of the year, retailers naturally send more emails during the holiday season.

This year, consumers have certainly responded. Comparing various channels, Adobe found that search continues to drive the most sales. As the number of sales from paid search (24.4%) increases, organic search continues to decline (18.8%) with email hot on its tails. This year, email accounted for 16.8% of sales, representing the biggest jump from last year.

The Evolution of Brick-and-Mortar Retail

Gone are the days of staking out a good spot in the Best Buy parking lot at 4 a.m. on Black Friday. According to data from retail analytics platform ShopperTrak, brick-and-mortar foot traffic on Black Friday decreased by 6.2%.

However, much of that traffic actually originated online. Compared with last year, 43.2% of online Black Friday purchases were picked up in-store. That number is perpetually on the rise, which makes sense: most customers who BOPIS make additional purchases once they’re there.

Download Sailthru’s 2019 Holiday Marketing Guide to learn how to recalibrate your recommendations strategy, the new table stakes, how to discount and segment strategically, and more!