Happy Thanksgiving everyone! How many marketing emails have you received today? Not many? Me neither. Makes me wonder: why don’t online retailers take advantage of Thanksgiving as a jump start on the holiday shopping season?

The season essentially starts in early November these days, as most retailers start to ramp up  promotions and marketing. But Black Friday is the first day of heavy marketing. Remember when it was Cyber Monday? That’s no longer the case because most internet shoppers now spend time online at home every day, making the Friday after Thanksgiving more of a play than waiting until for everyone to get back to work on Mondays.

So, why not Thanksgiving itself? I was online for a while this morning – and I bet you were too. A quick scan of the analytics data for the various retailers who are clients at SwellPath shows that traffic isn’t down too much – maybe 25% to 50%. I bet it would be a little more solid if emails had gone out pre-dawn.

I’m going to make a forecast here and now: in the next couple of years, Black Friday will be begin on Thanksgiving morning. Shoppers will start looking for marketing promotions and special deals early Thursday; and they’ll start getting a little shopping in before NFL, turkeys, and pumpkin pie.  But make sure to get those emails (or Tweets, Facebook updates, etc.) out early, because as the folks at Clicky have pointed out, traffic drops off when it’s time to eat.