This holiday season made one thing clear: peak performance is no longer driven by manual campaign planning. It’s powered by AI that reacts in real-time. Each year, SAP Emarsys analyzes hundreds of billions of customer interactions across our global customer base, and this year’s activity tells a compelling story. High-performing campaigns were driven by AI interpreting every click, view, and behavior the moment it happened.
During Cyber Week, SAP Emarsys saw nearly twice the behavioral activity of a typical day, with every signal flowing directly in our models to trigger instant decisions across channels at the exact moment shoppers were ready to engage.
Consumers navigated more channels, compared more options, and increasingly relied on AI to shop. Brands that delivered seamless, real-time personalization across touchpoints earned the strongest results. This is especially critical for brands now, considering the Customer Loyalty Index revealed that 64% of consumers ignore brand names entirely when shopping—meaning loyalty now hinges on relevance, not recognition.
AI in Action
In 2025, brands sent more messages and made every interaction smarter. AI-powered recommendations surfaced the right product at the exact moment a shopper opened an email, browsed onsite, or engaged in-app.
Unlike static batch approaches, these were true real-time interactions:
- Email recommendations updated the moment messages were opened, showing what was relevant now, not yesterday.
- Onsite and in-app recommendations adapted instantly as shoppers browsed.
- AI optimized who to target, when, and how to engage, maximizing readiness and intent.
This is where SAP’s differentiation becomes clear. Peak readiness. Peak intent. Peak relevance. The numbers speak for themselves.
Record Engagement During Cyber Week 2025
Across Cyber Week, SAP Emarsys customers rose to the challenge:
- Omnichannel engagements increased by nearly 20% YoY.
- Mobile and emerging channels surged: massive growth across Inbox (+91%), In-App (+61%), and SMS (+32%).
- Brands like Home Depot, flaconi, and Adore Beauty leaned on AI-driven product recommendations to guide shoppers to higher-value purchases.
- 100% product uptime ensured flawless execution on a global scale.
Cyber Week Engagement by the Numbers
Year-over-year changes for Cyber Week, November 28–December 1, 2025:
- Overall Send Volume: nearly +20%
- Inbox: +91%
- In-App: +61%
- SMS: +32%
- Push: +27%
- Web Channel: +22%
- Email: +17%
- Web Push: –32%
Mobile Wallet and Conversational Messaging also gained momentum, underscoring the rapid evolution of the channel mix.
The decline of Web Push is not new. This shift reflects several years of tightening browser policies, rising privacy expectations, and decreasing consumer tolerance for intrusive notifications.
What’s changed is how AI reacts. Real-time models automatically reallocated engagement to high-performing channels, like in-app, onsite, SMS, and especially Inbox.
Inbox stood out as the clearest beneficiary of this shift. This change reflects a move toward customer-centric engagement: no consent barriers, no interruptions, and content discovery that happens entirely at the customer’s pace. As Web Push lost reach, Inbox emerged as a frictionless, high-signal environment that consistently outperformed traditional push surfaces.
The surge in engagement translated directly into commerce performance:
- Higher-value purchases increased (+18% YoY AOV).
- Overall revenue grew substantially (+40% YoY GMV).
Holiday traffic wasn’t just high, it was high-return, powered by unified data, real-time decision-making, and AI automation working together across the SAP CX suite.
Singles’ Day Customer Engagement Volume
Singles’ Day delivered some of the biggest engagement increases of the entire season.
Year-over-year changes for Singles’ Day, November 11, 2025:
- Overall Volume: +43%
- SMS: +264% (Yes, 264% is correct and not a typo.)
- Inbox: +100%
- In-App: +54%
- Email: +42%
- Push: +42%
- Web: +13%
- Web Push: –21%
El Buen Fin: Expanding Its Reach and Results
The Mexican shopping event now spans five days, from Thursday to Monday over the weekend before Mexican Revolution Day.
Year-over-year changes for El Buen Fin, November 13–17 2025:
- Inbox: +33%
- SMS: +15%
- Email: +13%
- In-App: +13%
- Web: +4%
- Push: +1%
- Web Push: –30%
Learn Home Depot’s peak season strategy!
Mizuno’s Strategy for Lasting Loyalty
Holiday success doesn’t end at checkout. The strongest brands use peak season engagement to deepen loyalty. Mizuno partnered with SAP Emarsys to unify data and deliver automated, personalized experiences that extend far beyond the sale.
“SAP Emarsys is helping us get to know the consumer, and data is the key to that understanding. The better the data we’re able to collect and leverage, the better the personalization experience, which drives deeper, long-lasting customer loyalty.”
Mizuno’s automated loyalty programs delivered +62% revenue from premium customers YoY. This aligns with insights from the Global Consumer Products Engagement Report, which found that nearly half of consumers want more personalized deals and offers.
What This Means for Marketing and CX Leaders in 2026
The future of engagement is intelligent, omnichannel, and adaptive.
As consumers adopt agentic AI to shop, brands must evolve their tech stack to deliver relevant, personalized engagement across every channel. SAP powers this evolution by helping brands build meaningful campaigns and execute flawlessly.,
With the latest Q4 Product Release and major product innovations launching in 2026, SAP is committed to delivering the agility, intelligence, and scale required for the next era of engagement.
From our team to yours, happy holidays, and here’s to an engaging start to 2026!
Get creative with your first-party data!
About the author
Kelsey Jones is a dynamic marketing leader with over 15 years of experience driving business growth through innovative strategies. As Global Head of Product Marketing for SAP Emarsys , she is dedicated to telling the real story of how marketers use technology to achieve powerful business outcomes. With a focus on go-to-market strategy and sales alignment, Kelsey excels at crafting and implementing solutions, leading high-performing teams, and scaling programs for growth. Her passion for business transformation fuels her leadership in product marketing and her ability to move businesses forward.
