This Cyber Week marked a turning point. Attentive customers used AI to personalize shopping experiences at a scale like never before. 

This year, brands weren't just sending more messages—they were coordinating smarter, more relevant ones. The nearly $2B in revenue generated by Attentive brands didn't come from doing more of the same. 

Brands built a full stack strategy. SMS, email, push, and AI worked together to create coordinated experiences that converted at every touchpoint. And the results speak for themselves.

Brands using Attentive for SMS alone did well. Add email, and they did even better. But brands that combined SMS, email, push, and AI? They dominated—driving higher revenue, stronger engagement, and smarter customer journeys by allowing Attentive AI to orchestrate the perfect customer touchpoints. 

Want the full breakdown? Join us for our Cyber Week 2025 recap webinar and learn how to apply this year’s BFCM insights to your 2026 strategy. Register here.

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Cyber Week at a glance: November 24 - December 1 

This Cyber Week, brands that understood their customers' channel preferences won. Attentive brands sent 5.7 billion SMS and email messages—a 46% year-over-year increase—by meeting customers where they actually want to engage.

SMS continued to excel, with an AOV of $143 (up 13% YoY) and revenue per click up 20% YoY. Global markets showed similar momentum: UK revenue grew 48% YoY, while AUS revenue climbed 44%.

Timing is everything

Black Friday was the top-performing day, but strategic channel timing told a more nuanced story. Email engagement peaked on Monday the 24th as shoppers browsed and built carts. SMS shined for closing deals—Cyber Monday had the highest conversion rate as shoppers rushed to secure final savings.

Most brands sent SMS around noon and emails at 8am, following customer behavior: emails caught morning inbox checks at desks, while texts hit during lunch when shoppers were on their phones. The exception was Thanksgiving, when emails went out in the evening to prep for the weekend ahead.

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The orchestration advantage: How coordination beat noise

Sending more messages isn't the answer—sending smarter ones is. And that means pairing the right products together.

The brands that excelled this Cyber Week built a strategy around using SMS for immediacy, email for depth, and AI to optimize both. This led to higher revenue, better engagement, and customers who actually responded instead of tuning out.

Brands using Attentive’s agentic AI grew 2x faster than brands not leveraging AI during Cyber Week 2025. Agentic AI played a defining role in this performance gap, helping brands send the right message to the right person at the right time—with personalized recommendations that their consumers love.

We analyzed specific combinations to see where the performance gains came from: SMS paired with AI, SMS combined with email, and the full stack working together. Here's what the data showed.

The AI effect on SMS 

When Attentive brands paired SMS with AI, we saw a measurable difference in engagement. 

The unsung hero was AI Journeys' built-in sale messaging capabilities. Brands layered site-wide promotions—like "20% off everything for Cyber Week"—directly into personalized journey messages through a simple UI set-up. The result? 

AI Journeys powered record-breaking BFCM performance with hyper-personalized messaging that drove a 13% conversion rate lift, 20% higher revenue per click, and 7% higher AOV for SMS customers—compared to those who didn't use AI.

From browse to buy, Attentive’s AI Journeys redefined our holiday strategy. Dynamic and adaptive personalized messaging helped us stand out and deliver results like never before. 
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- Ami Patel, Associate Director, Brand Marketing at CB2

The full stack

This time of year, every message counts.

Attentive brands using AI for SMS and email showed 23% more in revenue per send compared to companies without AI. The performance gains were consistent across nearly every metric.

• Revenue per Click increased by 89% with AI orchestration
• CVR rose 123%, driven by smarter timing and personalization

The channel combination effect was undeniable. SMS accompanied by email drove 18.4% higher CVR and 14.9% higher revenue per click than SMS alone. 

The key insight? SMS and email aren't taking revenue away from each other—they're creating a reinforcing loop. Email primes customers with richer content and browsing opportunities, while SMS delivers the urgency and immediacy that drives conversions. When used together, each channel makes the other more effective.

Instead of guessing when to send an SMS versus an email, AI analyzed real-time behavior to determine the perfect sequence and timing for each subscriber.

What does this coordination actually look like in practice? A customer browses a product via an email campaign on Friday, then receives a personalized SMS reminder with a deeper time-sensitive discount on Sunday—right when AI predicts they're most likely to convert. It's this kind of intelligent sequencing that turns interested browsers into buyers.

Brands that embraced the full stack—SMS, email, and AI working in concert—gained the most this year.

AI played a bigger role in Cyber Week 2025 than ever before—and it showed up on both sides of the transaction.

Shoppers relied on AI to help them make decisions: nearly 50% told us they used AI during Cyber Week, whether brainstorming gifts for hard-to-shop-for relatives or researching which air fryer actually lives up to the hype.

What's next? These strategies don't stop working after Cyber Week. Multi-channel coordination, AI-powered personalization, and behavioral timing apply to every high-stakes moment ahead—holiday gifting, New Year promotions, Valentine's Day, and beyond.

Brands building these capabilities now won't just win the next peak season. They'll win every day in between.

Ready to replicate these results? Join us for our full Cyber Week 2025 recap webinar, featuring industry experts from Snowflake and Movable Ink.

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Data source: Attentive anonymized internal data from brands who partner with us, from Monday, November 24 through Monday, December 1, 2025, i.e. Cyber Week. Revenue data is based on UTC timing. Data is for all markets that Attentive operates in.

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