Brands using Attentive’s agentic AI during BFCM 2025 grew 2x as fast as those that didn’t. Here's how to put it to work for BFCM 2026.

Faster copywriting is only the starting point. The compounding returns of using AI for marketing come from sharper targeting, timing, and 1:1 personalization that no team can do manually at scale.

The 2026 BFCM shopper is more deliberate—comparing you against every other tab they have open. A finer-tuned email and SMS program can stand out with relevance.

What the data shows:

• 73% of shoppers say relevant product recommendations make them more likely to buy during BFCM.
• Brands running AI across both SMS and email during Cyber Week 2025 earned 23% more revenue per send.

Here’s what Attentive AI™ handles during one of the busiest weeks of the year:

• Grow your list with sign-up units timed to each visitor's behavior.
• Recognize more subscribers on site, even as the technical landscape shifts.
• Refine campaign segments by adding likely buyers and excluding those unlikely to engage.
• Personalize send times when your offer window allows it.
• Send triggered messages that adapt to each shopper and to your sitewide sale.
• Generate on-brand copy at Cyber Week volume.

These tools are available to put to work in your email and SMS program today.

Why start early: AI performance improves with more data

Personalization gets sharper the more data you collect, but manual workflows limit how fully you can use it. Attentive AI removes the ceiling, helping teams use more of that data.

And it learns over time, learning what leads your customers to subscribe, click, and buy. Turn it on early, and you enter Cyber Week with models already trained on your audience.

Early adoption also gives you a window to test and refine your setup before campaign volume increases.

AI Grow: Build a higher-value list before and during BFCM

Pre-BFCM list growth is the top driver of year-over-year messaging program improvements, according to marketers. But 72% of shoppers say pop-ups appear before they’re ready to subscribe.

Static pop-up rules show every visitor your sign-up unit on the same schedule. AI Grow learns which behaviors signal a visitor is ready to subscribe, and surfaces your sign-up unit when they're most likely to subscribe.

On average, brands using AI Grow see a 25% lift in sign-ups from existing traffic and 35% more welcome series revenue.

“Once we A/B tested AI Grow against our standard popups, the difference was clear, so we made sure it was fully in place going into Black Friday.”

– Kait DeNolf, Lifecycle Marketing Manager, Made In Cookware

Keep AI Grow running through the sale itself. Subscribers who sign up during Cyber Week are a small but high-value group: In 2025, they made up 0.8% of brands' lists but drove 22% of their Cyber Week revenue.

Go deeper: 7 Ways to Grow a Higher-Value List Before BFCM

AI Pro: Personalization for SMS and email

AI Pro is a suite of advanced AI tools that work together to recognize more of site visitors, refine targeting, create brand-specific copy, and personalize send times (for campaigns that aren’t time-sensitive).

Brands using AI Pro across text and email see a 15% increase in revenue and identify 10% more subscribers.

Identity AI: Recognize more of your BFCM traffic

Personalization depends on recognizing the shopper—shortened cookie lifespans, ad blockers, email proxies, and VPNs can make site traffic look anonymous. Identity AI helps address that signal loss, recognizing subscribers across devices and sessions.

Little Sleepies used AI Pro to identify and target 43% more of their site visitors, then used that recognition to generate $10.2M in SMS revenue over the BFCM weekend.

Go deeper: Why Identity Resolution is Your Biggest Revenue Opportunity in a Privacy-First World

Audiences AI: Reach more high-intent subscribers

Manual segmentation is a solid foundation, but it can leave gaps: high-intent subscribers who fall outside your criteria, and subscribers less likely to buy who land inside it.

Audiences AI identifies behavioral patterns that may be difficult to spot manually, adding likely buyers to your segment and excluding those who aren’t.

Stonewall Kitchen used Audiences AI to include 28% more engaged subscribers in campaigns and earn a 35% lift in incremental email revenue.

“Seeing the Audiences AI tool add in and remove subscribers based on which ones were interacting with a specific topic really helped open our eyes to how we could better segment our customers.”

– Monica Gorycki, E-Commerce Platform Manager at Stonewall Kitchen

Go deeper: Segmentation: The Audiences to Define Before BFCM

Send Time AI: Personalized timing, when campaign windows allow it

Send Time AI allows you to deliver each message based on each subscriber’s engagement patterns, improving CTR and CVR for 75%+ of eligible campaigns and increasing email conversions by 15% on average.

Personalized timing will spread delivery across the day based on when each shopper is most likely to engage (within your brand’s Quiet Hours), so we recommend using Send Time AI in the before and after Cyber Week to support end-of-year campaigns.

We don’t recommend using Send Time AI for time-sensitive campaigns or ones where same-day message order matters. So you may want to use it selectively for BFCM itself.

Keep manual send times for:

• Sales with hard start and end times
• Flash sales and limited-time offers
• Products that may sell out
• Updates subscribers need immediately
• Cascading offers that require control over the order of messages

AI Journeys: Personalize triggered messages at scale

Behavioral flows play an important role in the background during Cyber Week, particularly your welcome and abandonment journeys.

A traditional flow sends everyone the same template. AI Journeys creates a 1:1 personalized message for each subscriber—drawing on your brand data, product catalog, and their behavior—to better reflect their intent.

On average, brands see a 200% revenue lift and 5x+ incremental ROI using AI Journeys.

During Cyber Week 2025, AI Journeys drove a 13% conversion lift on SMS.

For sitewide sales, you can add those details to AI Journeys so when a shopper abandons a cart on Black Friday, the message references your live promotion, adding urgency to an already high-intent message.

When CB2 used AI Journeys for cart abandonment, browse abandonment, and welcome for BFCM, they saw a 561% revenue lift from cart abandonment, a 268% CVR increase from browse abandonment, and 46x ROI across all AI Journeys.

Go deeper: 9 Behavioral Flows to Turn On Before BFCM

Copy Assistant and Brand Voice AI: On-brand copy at Cyber Week volume

BFCM often requires more copy than any other stretch of the year: sale announcements, reminders, updated offers, and segmented variations.

Copy Assistant and Subject Line Assistant—part of AI Essentials, included with every Attentive plan—generate SMS copy and email subject lines quickly, with multiple variations informed by high-performing message patterns. Brands have saved 50% of their copywriting time as a result.

‍Brand Voice AI—included in AI Pro and AI Journeys—learns your tone from your historical messages, so the output better reflects your team’s voice. For tighter control, you can exclude specific keywords, emojis, or phrases.

For BFCM, this means more consistent copy across campaign volume, and variations for every segment without starting from scratch.

Next read

These tools improve as they learn more from your data: the models learn your audience, your voice, and your catalog, so the earlier you start, the more informed your models will be when Cyber Week traffic arrives.

Learn more about how Attentive AI can support your BFCM strategy and get a demo.

Next, build your Cyber Week campaign calendar:

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More from The Edit

• Your Pre-BFCM Messaging Tune-Up
• Segmentation: The Audiences to Define Before BFCM
• How to Tune Your Behavioral Flows for BFCM

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Disclosure: Where this material includes Attentive proprietary internal product, platform, or performance data, certain benchmarks, summaries, statistics, or insights may have been compiled or analyzed with AI-assisted tools using Attentive proprietary internal data believed to be reliable. AI-assisted analysis was subject to internal review, but may contain errors, omissions, or limitations, and the data reflects the applicable dataset, methodology, assumptions, and time period used for the analysis. Unless otherwise stated, the data has not been independently audited or verified by a third party and may not be representative of all customers, industries, campaigns, use cases, or time periods. This material is provided for general marketing and informational purposes only and does not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction of future performance, savings, revenue, conversion rates, deliverability, engagement, or other business outcomes. Individual results may vary.