The BFCM debrief 2024

Black Friday, love it or hate it, is a big event in the ecommerce world. We’re taking a look into the numbers from the busy BFCM weekend, analyzing how AI plays a role, and where sustainability comes in.

Black Friday evolution

Initially Black Friday was only a holiday in the USA, marking the day after Thanksgiving. Research now shows that globally, 95% of consumers are aware of Black Friday, with the USA still leading at 97%.

Remember when Black Friday was the big day for in-store sales and Cyber Monday was the day for online stores? Now, Black Friday is the big event across the board and Cyber Monday feels like more of a last chance saloon offering the same or weaker promotions – with the added element of dwindling stock, of course.

On the Dotdigital platform, Cyber Monday email send volumes were down by 17.8% compared to Black Friday – proving that Black Friday itself is where marketers and consumers are focusing.

BFCM is a big deal here at Dotdigital, we know how important this time is for our customers so it means all hands on deck to ensure everything runs smoothly. This means our Customer Service team need to be alert and ready to help, and our servers need to be ready to handle the uplift – and there was quite the uplift.

An upward trend

We always expect a busier time over the BFCM weekend and throughout the entire month of November. To add some context, this year the number of emails sent in November was 13.6% higher than total emails sent in October.

Despite the term ‘Black Friday fatigue’ being thrown around over the years, it doesn’t appear to be slowing down – at least for marketers. On Black Friday alone, our platform sent out over 365 million emails.

Black Friday saw the highest number of emails sent and beat last year’s record with emails sent on Black Friday itself up 7.7% YoY.

Total email sends over the BFCM weekend were up 15% on 2023, and SMS sends were up a huge 22% – we’ve been saying SMS is a channel on the up.

How AI is assisting marketers during BFCM

To speed up our response time to busy (and likely stressed out) customers in need of support, we employed AI to answer direct queries where suitable on our live chat function. Doing this cuts down on waiting time for our customers and frees up our team to answer more complex queries.

We’re pleased to report this was a success and over the BFCM weekend, 204 queries were immediately answered by our live chat AI. We know AI isn’t for everyone or every situation, so for anyone wanting or needing to speak to a human, they only needed to wait 84 seconds before being connected to a member of our friendly Support Team.

As well as our live chat AI, the Dotdigital platform has inbuilt generative AI in the form of WinstonAI to offer support to marketers from within the campaign builder.

Interestingly, when looking at the four days that comprise the BFCM weekend, Cyber Monday saw the highest use of our generative AI tools. This included use of WinstonAI’s subject line assistant, grammar check, and copy rephrase. It’s safe to say that by Cyber Monday, marketers were tired and out of witty copy ideas – we totally feel you.

The most important number

All of these numbers are encouraging from a marketer’s point of view. It demonstrates that the holiday many businesses rely on for sales is showing no signs of slowing. Every one million emails sent produces the equivalent emissions to charging your smart phone over 14,000 times. That’s for one million, and our platform alone sent 823 million over the BFCM weekend.

That’s a lot of emissions – thank goodness we’re carbon neutral. You can read more about our sustainability pledge, including our commitment to become net-zero by 2030 here. We value marketing, but not at the cost of the planet – we’re proud to recognize the bigger picture, always.

Caring about and actively working to mitigate the ongoing climate crisis is something that matters to today’s consumers. By using green suppliers such as Dotdigital, you can prove to your customers that you align with their values. If you’re a Dotdigital customer, be sure to shout about the fact your emails are carbon neutral – just chat to your Customer Success Manager for help adding this information to your email footers.

Partnering with Dotdigital makes achieving sustainability goals easier and one less thing to worry about, whilst doing right for the planet.

Until next year.

Methodology

Figures for this Black Friday debrief came from data pulled from the Dotdigital platform from 00:00 on Friday, November 29 to 23:59 on Monday, December 2. This data includes insights from over 40 industries to provide a comprehensive representation of the BFCM weekend around the globe.