Reyo market report · Q4 guide 2026
Q4 in the inbox. What 222 shops actually mailed.
We read every newsletter that 222 German online shops sent between October 1 and December 31, 2025 – 4,617 of them. This guide sorts the result by what you have to decide in September: when to send, how much to give, when to start Black Friday, what to write in the subject line.
The PDF is in German. 57 pages, A4, no account needed.
- 4,617newsletters, read one by one
- 222German online shops
- 8industries with their own page
- 57pages, A4, German
Three of eight findings
The market decides Q4 in October. The Black Week only changes the wording.
The guide opens with eight findings. Three of them contradict what most Q4 plans assume – these are the ones you should have read before the October kick-off.
- 012.0
mails per shop and week from October 20
Q4 is decided in October.
From the week of October 20, the market sits at around two mails per shop and week – half again as many as at the end of September – and holds that level for seven weeks. Black Week is a peak in content, not in volume. Whoever ramps up on November 1 is two weeks behind the market.
- 0220 %
median fixed discount – in October as in Black Week
The middle stays at 20 percent. The top moves.
In every phase of the quarter the median fixed discount is around 20 percent. What shifts in Black Week is the upper quartile: from 25 to 33 percent, and the share of offers at 30 percent or more doubles. Anyone giving a fixed 25 percent is already above the market.
- 0347 of 84
shops sent their Black Friday mail between 6 and 9 a.m.
Black Friday is a morning event.
84 shops sent on the day itself, 47 of them between 6 and 9 a.m., and only 9 sent a second mail. Shops that started before November 1 played the occasion with eight mails over five weeks; shops that started on the day managed one.
The other five findings – Christmas start dates by industry, subject-line length, specials, high-frequency senders – are in the guide.
Three parts: the market, the handwriting of the mails, and your industry.
First the market as a whole – timing, frequency, discounts, Black Friday, occasions. Then how the mails are written – subject lines, specials, topics. Finally eight industry pages with the question that counts: if this is your industry, what do you do with it?
- 01
Foreword and the eight findings
What we would have wanted before our own first Q4 plan, in eight sentences.
- 02
What the numbers stand on
Data basis, message versus offer, industries and sender classes, what is not included, terms.
- 03
Timing: when the market sends
Seven weeks of plateau, the weekday, the hour – as a heatmap of weekday × hour, by industry and sender class.
- 04
Discount and mechanics
Median and spread of fixed discounts, why “up to” is the real battlefield, incentive type, offer duration, Q3 versus Q4 for the same shops.
- 05
Black Friday
The 30-days-before-and-after curve, late starters, the day itself, mails per shop in Black Week, and Black Friday by industry.
- 06
Occasions and Christmas
Which industries play Singles’ Day, Advent and winter sale, when Christmas actually starts, and the occasion calendar for Q4 2026.
- 07
Subject lines
Length and mobile truncation, emoji, numbers, urgency, the 25 most frequent words and two-word formulas, reminders and series.
- 08
Specials and prize draws
Free gifts, loyalty programmes, advent calendars, cooperations – which industry uses which format, and how prize draws are run.
- 09
Topics, tags, tonality
Topic tags per mail, what pure content mails work with, and how the tone shifts from informative to festive.
- 10
Large and small senders
High-frequency, regular and occasional senders: mails per week, campaign-type mix, subject-line habits – and why frequency replaces depth.
- 11
If this is your industry
One page each with the decisive numbers and a takeaway for eight industries.
- 12
Appendix
The weekly series from September 29, 2025 to January 4, 2026 and industry participation per occasion as lookup tables.
Every number in the guide says how many shops it stands on.
The data comes from the Reyo newsletter panel: 4,617 newsletters from 222 German online shops, October 1 to December 31, 2025, every mail classified individually – occasion, discount, mechanics, send time, subject line, content. Send times are Berlin time. Weekly series use a panel of shops with at least three mails in the quarter, so the growth of the observed set does not read as market growth.
The guide covers newsletters, not push, ads or websites. Where a figure rests on fewer than ten shops it is marked. Where the market does something we consider a mistake, the guide says so – the derivations are ours.
The guide shows the market of 2025. Reyo shows you yours – this week.
In the demo we set Reyo up with your competitors and show you what they mailed this week, at what discount and when – and what you do with it.