2025 Black Friday Insights Report

Black Friday has become one of the clearest snapshots of how consumer behavior is evolving, and this year was no exception. Iterable’s 2025 Black Friday Insights Report reveals record-breaking messaging surges and significant early-season activity across the platform. 

Multichannel engagement reached all-time highs as brands paired email with mobile channels like SMS, Embedded Messaging, and WhatsApp to deliver 360-degree experiences that feel connected, consistent, and tailored across every step of the customer journey.

And as AI transforms how consumers browse, compare, and buy, marketing leaders are rapidly updating their engagement playbooks to meet shifting customer behaviors — especially during high-stakes moments like Black Friday.

“Black Friday has always been a leading indicator of the marketing trends that shape the year ahead — and this year, AI and coordinated multi-channel engagement are clearly central to next year’s customer engagement strategies. Over the holiday weekend, we saw more customers than ever leverage our AI agents to make smarter decisions earlier in the season, sharpen personalization, and coordinate mobile-first journeys with incredible precision. It’s an early look at how new technology and shifting consumer behavior will reshape engagement in the year ahead, and why AI will become a baseline capability for every high-performing customer-first marketing team.”

~ Priya Gill, Chief Marketing Officer at Iterable

Zooming out across millions of messages and customer interactions, several dynamics shaped how this year’s holiday sale season played out. Here are the most notable patterns we saw across Iterable users this Black Friday:

1. AI was the Black Friday execution engine.

If 2024 was the year of AI experimentation, 2025 was the year marketers made AI a core part of their Black Friday workflows. Over 90% of Iterable customers used AI agents in their holiday programs, leveraging Iterable’s Governance, Scheduling, Delivery, Customer Journey, and Responsible Activation agents to accelerate content creation, optimize journey routing, and engage across channels and send times with pinpoint precision. 

AI handles the scale and operational complexity that the holiday retail season demands, so that teams can respond to consumer intent faster and unlock performance that manual workflows simply can’t match.

2. Early-season activity reached record levels.

With more than half of US consumers starting their holiday shopping in early October (one of the earliest starts on record) Iterable customers leaned into early-season activation strategies with significant increases in pre–Black Friday messaging volume. Brands using Iterable launched 30% more campaigns from early October through Thanksgiving this year compared to the same period last year, ensuring they were top-of-mind the moment consumers entered the BFCM market. That early momentum only intensified in the days leading up to Black Friday.

3. Real-time, 360° experiences grew dramatically.

Brands doubled down on orchestrating seamless, 360-degree experiences for customers with touchpoints that felt connected, contextual, and naturally embedded into the customer journey. Embedded Campaigns surged 294% year over year, underscoring a rising preference for messaging that lives natively inside the customer experience.

terable Journeys followed a similar pattern: triggered campaigns grew 10% year over year, (representing millions of sends) and and drove a corresponding reduction in batch-and-blast message volume. Together, these trends reflect growing momentum behind real-time, behavior-driven workflows and 360-degree engagement.

4. Brands thrived on mobile and multichannel.

Multichannel engagement continued its rapid climb this year as marketers paired the power and scale of email with the immediacy of mobile channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and Push. SMS had an especially standout season, surging nearly 60% year over year as brands relied on its speed and high intent during peak shopping moments. 

WhatsApp also surpassed six-figure volume, reflecting growing demand for global, conversational communication. Together, these trends signal a decisive move away from single-channel thinking and toward coordinated engagement that follows consumers across every step of their journey.

What Black Friday 2025 Tells Us About 2026 Marketing Trends

This year’s Black Friday weekend platform data signals a decisive shift in how high-performing brands compete: AI-driven decisioning, mobile-first engagement, and fully coordinated, multichannel communication are now the operating standard for modern customer experiences. 

As CMOs face rising pressure to prove revenue impact and efficiency, more are adopting AI-native platforms that unify data, automate decisions, and orchestrate 360-degree journeys in real time — ensuring they deliver personalized value to customers at the moments that matter most.