Trends & Insights
No time to wade through mountains of advice? We’ve done the legwork.
Just last year, 87.3 million people shopped online on Black Friday, while Cyber Monday counted 64.4 million online shoppers. Simultaneously, email volume increased 33% during those two days.
With that in mind, this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) opportunities are even higher stakes . . . and more lucrative for the brands willing to meet consumers where they are: in their inboxes, on their phones and using generative AI to find gifts..
Below, we’ve distilled a concise cheat‑sheet to help ecommerce marketers plan irresistible BFCM campaigns, starting now.
Fast Facts On BFCM 2025
Huge spending is expected . . . mostly online. U.S. shoppers spent $240.8 billion during the 2024 holiday shopping season, with Cyber Monday sales alone hitting $13.3 billion, surpassing Black Friday’s $10.8 billion. Online transactions will continue to dominate, with accounting for 44 % of all sales.
Email still rules. 69% of worldwide consumers say email is their preferred brand communication channel. Additionally, consumers tend to spend 128% more when shopping from emails than when using other channels such as social media or ads.
Mobile is the default. More than half of online holiday spending happens on phones, and 80% of emails are opened on phones.
SMS is the quick way to consumers’ hearts. If you want a consumer response, send a text. 90% of SMS messages are opened within three minutes.
Consumers will shop with AI and there are ways to optimize your pages and content, so tools like ChatGPT recommend your products. We cover this and more below . . .
Top BFCM 2025 Takeaways from Experts & Influencers
BFCM Marketing Tip #1: Plan Early & Build Anticipation
The time to get started is now! Multiple voices emphasize the importance of starting BFCM marketing early.
Launch early. Gelato’s 2025 guide suggests launching BFCM campaigns three to four weeks in advance to build anticipation. Creating teasers and countdowns will keep your lists warm.
Don’t fear burning out your subscribers. Nearly 60% of consumers want to hear about holiday promotions a month in advance. Now’s the time to analyze last year’s promotions’ data and set incremental goals for this year’s sends.
Spooky season = BFCM prep season. SMS experts urge marketers to begin SMS campaigns as early as October. Early drip campaigns can nurture subscribers with automated sequences that run in the background.
BFCM Marketing Tip #2: Use AI Email Personalization to Stand Out
Segmentation beats blasting. For ecommerce marketers, customer segmentation marketing isn’t optional. It’s table stakes, considering 71% of consumers expect personalized email experiences.
Keep things personal. Emails that are personalized—like using someone’s name or tailoring the message to their interests—get opened more often and clicked on much more than generic ones. In fact, people are 29% more likely to open said emails and 41% more likely to click something inside.
BFCM Marketing Tip #3: Create Content So AI Serves Up Your Products
Consumers are using AI. More than half of consumers—54%, in fact—plan to use AI tools this holiday season to compare prices, search for products, summarize reviews and receive deeply personalized shopping recommendations during BFCM.
Write for AI to recommend your products. As more consumers plan to use AI to help them put together gift lists and find products to purchase, we recommend using First Page Sage’s tips when writing content for your product pages.
Create structured and clear content. Organize product pages with clear headers, short paragraphs and bulleted information, so AI can easily understand your products’ details.
Be concise. Provide direct descriptions and explanations on product pages, and avoid flowery language, to increase the likelihood of AI sharing your products with consumers.
Be smart with keywords. Use well-targeted keywords that match user intent and their natural language to ensure your products surface accurately in AI-generated conversations.
Investing in quality data is critical. Staying ahead of the competition requires the right data to draw actionable insights from. Only partner with reputable solutions that run on data that's groomed, maintained and specific to your industry. You can read more about this at our blog on ecommerce data
BFCM Marketing Tip #4: Send Multiple Touches
More than one email is the norm. Successful retail brands send nearly 7 email touchpoints per customer, covering promotions, cart recovery and post-purchase follow-ups.
BFCM Marketing Tip #5: Create Urgency & Exclusive Offers
Make the most of limited timing. About 45% of consumers are more likely to convert on time-sensitive offers like 24-hour or BFCM-only discounts.
Visualize urgency. Limited-time deals can increase conversion rates by up to 332%, further driven by urgency and scarcity messaging such as flash sales and countdown timers. You can read our guide on how to effectively design emails to communicate urgency here.
BFCM Marketing Tip #6: Optimize for Mobile & Responsiveness
Projections for 2025 expect mobile commerce share to climb higher than ever, estimated to reach 69% of all BFCM purchases.
Ensure great design goes beyond email. Improving mobile checkout design and user experience can increase conversion rates by over 35%.
BFCM Marketing Tip #7: Showcase Products & Maintain Brand Identity
Showcase products clearly. Mailjet warns against “mystery” emails that focus solely on discounts. Instead, highlight clear product shots that showcase items and their benefits.
Stay on brand. During a noisy period, your distinctive voice, imagery and design choices help customers recognize you and differentiate your brand. Read our blog below to learn how to generate visual content, test it with different subscriber clusters, iterate and drive more revenue with Backstroke’s new AI Content Studio.
BFCM Marketing Tip #8: Design for Dark Mode
These days, most people prefer dark mode on their devices. You should optimize your email marketing to account for dark mode and accessibility preferences.
BFCM Marketing Tip #9: Craft Compelling Subject Lines & Calls‑to‑Action
Include a discount in your subject line. Nearly 80% of consumers say seeing the discount in the subject line influences them to open an email. So if you have an offer that can be succinctly stated in a subject line, use it!
Run A/B tests leading up to BFCM 2025. Ensure that your subject lines, send times and email formats are optimized and you know exactly what performs, long before critical sale days. Planning ahead (revisit Tip #1 👀) will give you plenty of time to nail down what your subscriber segments connect with!
BFCM Marketing Tip #10: Lean Into Social Proof
Social drives awareness and email drives the sale. 42% of online shoppers discover deals via social, but it contributes only 5% of total sales. Use social to amplify your message but prioritize email/SMS for conversions.
Emphasize customer enthusiasm. Brands that integrate user-generated content (UGC) and social proof see up to 6x higher conversion rates. Therefore, consider adding quotes, user-generated content and reviews to your product emails!
Putting It All Together for BFCM 2025 & Beyond
You now have the “spark notes” from some of the most respected voices in ecommerce, email and SMS marketing. To put these insights into action, demo Backstroke’s latest tools.
Backstroke’s intuitive automation, personalization and deliverability features are built to make your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails and texts as efficient and high‑converting as possible. In fact, our customers see an average of 31% more revenue per send.
Don’t just prepare for the holiday rush. Use Backstroke to dominate it.
