🚀 Key Highlights from BFCM 2025

✅ Message send volume grew 284% month-over-month and 587% year-over-year compared to BFCM 2024.

✅ GMV driven by SmartPush soared 646% year-over-year, marking a significant uplift in marketing-driven revenue.

✅ Email performance remained strong, with over 99% deliverability and a 27% average open rate during BFCM—peaking at 63% on Black Friday.

Next, we will review key insights from this marketing campaign across three dimensions—data highlights, core strategies, and practical cases—to provide an actionable guide for your 2026 BFCM strategy.

1. AI Empowerment: Making Every Email Hit the Mark

During this year's Black Friday, merchants using SmartPush's AI features saw an average 19% increase in email open rates and a 22% rise in click-through rates. Behind these results lies the implementation of three core AI tools:

1.1 AI Timing Assistant: The Magic of Personalized Sending Schedules

A key observation during Black Friday 2025: In U.S. time zones, most senders clustered their email campaigns at 6 PM, but users actually preferred opening emails at 8 PM. This universal congestion often left emails unread. SmartPush's AI Timing Assistant solves this problem—it not only references users' historical email open times and time zones but also integrated new data on store visit and order placement times this year. This enables more accurate calculation of each user's optimal sending time, ensuring marketing messages never "miss" their audience.

1.2 AI Product Recommendations: Driving Dual Growth in CTR and Conversion Rates

By building user profiles through "basic attributes + real-time behavior + interest tags," AI delivers personalized product lists to different users. One merchant using the AI Product Recommendation feature saw a 203% increase in click-through rates—demonstrating the power of "one-to-one personalization."

1.3 Gmail Discount Code Prefetch: Capturing Price-Sensitive Customers at a Glance

Data shows that SmartPush merchants send an average of 3.2 emails per user. How to make yours stand out? Utilizing Gmail's promotional tab feature, discount codes like "BF2025" and "CYBER2025" are displayed directly in the preview pane, letting users see the value without clicking. SmartPush clients who enabled this feature saw an average 20% increase in open rates.

2. Order Recovery: The "Last Line of Defense" Against Lost GMV

Traffic is hard-won, and every lost order deserves maximum effort to recover. During BFCM this year, SmartPush deployed on-site retention pop-ups and automated emails for three key stages: browse abandonment, cart abandonment, and checkout abandonment. This combined strategy helped partner merchants recover an average of 35% of potential orders.

💡 Merchants using the pop-up + email closed-loop strategy recovered 12% more potential orders than those using only automated emails.

• Browse Abandonment: Triggers a "above-the-fold pop-up" with limited-time coupons for visitors about to leave immediately after entering the page, successfully retaining visitors.
• Cart Abandonment: For users who add items to cart but don't checkout, sends an on-site pop-up first, followed by emails/SMS with a "5% discount for checkout within 30 minutes" to drive conversion.
• Checkout Abandonment: Sends instant pop-up reminders after abandonment on the checkout page to address user concerns, followed by a secondary email touchpoint when the user leaves the website.

3. Traffic and Conversion: Dual Gains in Exposure and Customer Acquisition

3.1 Forms Become a "Magic Tool" for Customer Acquisition

Data shows that form impressions during Black Friday 2025 increased by 18% compared to usual, while contact information collection surged by 77%. This performance confirms heightened user engagement intent during Black Friday and highlights the core value of SmartPush's form feature in traffic conversion and lead nurturing—helping cross-border sellers seize holiday marketing opportunities efficiently and convert surging visitor traffic into reusable customer assets.Spin-the-wheel pop-ups can also be mentioned here.

3.2 Price Reductions + Low Stock Alerts: Unlocking Black Friday Conversion Codes

In promotional conversion tactics, "price discounts" and "scarcity creation" are indispensable. During Black Friday sales, merchants used combined offers like "cross-store thresholds for discounts + direct product price cuts"; during the final phase, they sent low stock alerts. Data shows that merchants using this strategy saw an 8% increase in orders and revenue growth during Black Friday.

4. BFCM Ends? Repurchase and Retention Are the Path to Longevity

BFCM is not the end of marketing but the starting point for repurchases. SmartPush advises merchants to seize the following key touchpoints for effective user retention:

• 7–15 days after purchase: Promote complementary products or membership discounts to drive secondary consumption and trigger repeat orders
• 21 days after shipment: Conduct experience surveys and offer cashback for review posts to build user goodwill
• 28 days after shipment: Send reminders of rewards for product reviews, which helps accumulate brand reputation while increasing user stickiness

5. 2026 Preparation Guide: Act Now to Win at the Starting Line

Based on this year's practical experience, SmartPush offers 3 actionable strategies—there's still plenty of time to start planning now:

1. Build an "Omnichannel User Pool" in Advance: Use SmartPush's "subscription pop-ups + automated workflows" to convert regular visitors into SMS/email subscribers (e.g., "10% off first order for subscriptions"), avoiding the last-minute rush for traffic during peak sales.
2. Test AI Features and Accumulate Data via A/B Testing: Enable SmartPush's AI Timing Assistant, Content Generation, and Product Recommendation features now. Test their effectiveness during regular small promotions (e.g., "Christmas Season," "New Year Sales") to accumulate user behavior data for next year's BFCM, helping AI better "understand" your audience.
3. Lock Key Stages and Plan in Advance: Focus on three phases for BFCM 2026—Warm-up Phase (mid-November), Peak Phase (Black Friday/Cyber Monday), and Post-Sale Phase (early December). Create marketing plans for each phase in advance and implement unified attribution analysis to avoid chaos.

Conclusion: BFCM 2025 has proven that competition in cross-border marketing has long shifted from "traffic acquisition" to "precision operation." Every refined operation—from AI-powered engagement and recommendations to full-funnel order recovery and post-purchase repurchase guidance—determines the final revenue height.

New to SmartPush? Register now to enjoy a 15-day free Premium Plan trial with full feature access; and experience the impact of AI-powered marketing at zero cost.

‍