- Retailers are using more aggressive marketing means
- Late night marketing and tracker-laden emails are now the norm
- Tracking pixels and links monitor online activity without the user’s knowledge
Over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, the top 50 U.S. retailers sent nearly 42 billion marketing emails to customers.
These statistics come from Proton, one of the most secure email providers. The ‘Spam Watch: The US Inbox Overload + Hidden Tracker Report’ examined emails sent from Tuesday, November 4 to Monday, December 1.
The report found that during this period, nearly 80% of brands included a secret tracking pixel or link in every email during this period, and over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend 10 billion emails were delivered to inboxes across the United States.
Brands fighting for attention
When it comes to awards for the most spammy senders, home decor brand CB2 averaged 2.11 emails per day with 13 trackers in each email, Macy’s managed to send seven emails in a single 24-hour period, and J. Crew sent three emails that each included a whopping 40 trackers.
Brands also ignored non-invasive marketing strategies and started sending emails late at night and even early in the morning. Banana Republic sent one email at 12:39 a.m. on Black Friday morning, and Macy’s sent seven emails between 10:58 p.m. and 12:16 a.m. on Saturday.
As for trackers, retailers often include a small invisible image in the email that can automatically capture the user’s location and device type. These trackers are used to create a user profile that retailers can use to bombard potential customers with aggressively targeted marketing campaigns.
“Spam Watch’s findings confirm a harsh reality: the inbox has become a high-volume, noisy channel where brands fight for attention while silently collecting data on every open. This is no accident: it’s an engineered assault on your attention and your privacy,” said Anant Vijay Singh, Head of Product at Proton Mail.
“At Proton, we believe you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your data just to shop online. We created Proton Mail to break this cycle, giving users the power to reclaim their digital freedom and block the silent harassers who have taken over their lives.”
The best password manager for every budget
