What does a brand actually spend when it adds one more email to its Black Friday calendar? The send costs almost nothing, which is why holiday calendars keep filling up. The expense lands later, in a customer’s willingness to open the next one, leaving your brand with a big marketing mistake.
In its Holiday 2026 Consumer Survey, released in September 2026, the email software company Validity found that 47 percent of consumers say already trusting a brand factors into whether they open its holiday email, ahead of the 39 percent who cite discounts or promotions. Trust earns the open. The offer only gets its turn after that.
That trust wears down faster than it looks. Nearly one in four consumers overall, and nearly half of Gen Z, say a brand’s holiday email practices have caused them to trust it less, buy from it less, or stop buying from it altogether. Other research points the same way. Optimove’s marketing fatigue report, which surveyed 1,034 consumers in households earning $75,000 or more in November and December 2025, found that 55 percent call email the most overwhelming channel during peak shopping moments such as Black Friday. Validity surveyed 1,000 consumers, so the Gen Z figure comes from a subset of that group and is best read directionally.
What do those numbers add up to for a calendar built on volume? Holiday email is a retention decision as much as it is a revenue one. Every send draws on the goodwill that makes the next send worth opening, and Gen Z, which is entering its spending years, reports the damage at roughly twice the rate of consumers overall.
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Silence is the wrong overcorrection
The tempting response is to pull back, trim the calendar and let the inbox breathe. That gives up the one stretch of the year when customers are actively looking for a reason to buy. Consumers expect the volume. Validity found that 42 percent want to hear from brands daily or every two to three days during the holiday season, and Optimove’s report found that 60 percent of consumers name email their preferred digital marketing channel. A brand that has gone quiet has handed that moment to every competitor still sending.
Validity’s survey results also point to a path between sending everything and sending nothing. Consumers are not asking to be cut off entirely, but they are split: just over 52 percent prefer less frequent contact, and 22 percent say a temporary opt-down, or snooze, would help more than an outright unsubscribe, a choice many preference centers still do not offer. The better move is to send with enough precision that a customer feels spoken to rather than inundated, and to give a customer who is overwhelmed something between “keep it coming” and “goodbye.” Give people a real reason to open, the same logic that separates genuine scarcity from a countdown timer.
Send emails like you know who’s listening
Start with resends. A third email to everyone who ignored the previous two sends adds volume without adding relevance, and these are the customers already closest to tuning out. Send the resend to people who opened or clicked and did not buy, and leave the non-openers and recent purchasers out. Treat opens as a rough signal, since mailbox privacy features inflate them, and weigh clicks and site activity alongside.