San Francisco, Dec. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Iterable, the AI-powered customer communication platform, has revealed groundbreaking insights from its 1,200 customers during the 2024 Black Friday Cyber Monday period, revealing a decisive shift toward mobile marketing. For the second consecutive year, marketers have embraced mobile-first strategies during the holiday shopping weekend, with SMS leading as the dominant channel for customer engagement.
These findings demonstrate how brands are evolving to meet growing consumer expectations for instant, personalized, and on-the-go communication. Amid fierce competition for consumer attention, mobile channels have proven to be the most powerful drivers of engagement, delivering perfectly timed, highly tailored messages that transform immediate sales opportunities into lasting brand relationships.
Mobile Channel Surge: Record-Breaking Growth in SMS, Push, and In-App Messaging
Today’s mobile-savvy consumers crave quick, concise communication that fits seamlessly into their fast-paced digital lives. Mobile channels like SMS and Push notifications are perfectly suited to satisfy this demand, offering brevity and immediacy—SMS messages are capped at 160 characters, and Push notifications are designed to deliver bite-sized, impactful content. By opting into these channels, consumers actively signal their readiness to engage, paving the way for deeper, more personalized interactions with brands.
Iterable’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday data underscores the growing dominance of mobile marketing. This year, SMS saw an unprecedented 68% increase in message volume on Black Friday, while Push notifications surged 32% on Cyber Monday compared to 2023. Additional highlights include:
- Mobile Push Notifications: Up 25% on Black Friday.
- In-App Messaging: A 22% increase on Cyber Monday.
- Web Push Notifications: A 43% rise on Cyber Monday.
This marks the second consecutive year of double-digit growth in mobile engagement, reflecting a broader strategic pivot toward mobile-first approaches during high-stakes shopping events.
While email remains a foundational marketing channel, Iterable’s 2024 data reveals a noticeable shift. Email volumes, which had risen by 40% year-over-year in prior Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, experienced a more modest increase this season. This trend underscores marketers’ growing reliance on mobile channels, which are now the primary drivers of real-time engagement and consumer responsiveness during critical shopping periods.
Cross-Channel Coordination: 80% of Iterable Customers Leverage Multiple Marketing Channels
Channel expansion has been a defining trend of 2024, and it shows no sign of slowing down in 2025. With consumers engaging with brands across multiple platforms and channels—with an emphasis on mobile— brands are quickly realizing that connecting with customers at every touchpoint is crucial to staying relevant. This shift is reflected in the numbers: Businesses with strong cross-channel marketing strategies retain 89% of their customers on average, compared to just 33% for companies with weaker single-channel strategies.
This growing imperative to meet customers where they are is why more than 80% of Iterable customers ran campaigns across multiple channels during the 2024 holiday season. By orchestrating campaigns across SMS, mobile push, in-app messages, and email, brands can engage consumers on their preferred channels and at multiple touchpoints throughout their journey. This cross-channel approach ensures the right message reaches the right customer at the right time, increasing engagement and fostering deeper customer relationships. These stronger customer connections directly correlate to increased revenue, with consumers who engage with a brand across multiple channels spending 30% more than those who interact with a business through just one channel.
Empathy as a Strategy: Thanksgiving Messaging Reflects Consumer-First Focus
Amid the holiday rush, Iterable’s customers demonstrated the power of empathy-driven marketing. On Thanksgiving Day, message volume dropped by 50% compared to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, signaling a deliberate effort to respect consumers’ personal time. This approach highlighted an important opportunity: while 68% of consumers expect empathy from brands, only 37% feel businesses consistently deliver it.
Empathy is more than a value—it’s a powerful competitive advantage. Consumers increasingly expect brands to demonstrate genuine care and understanding before making a purchase decision, with 79% stating they need to feel valued to even consider buying. This focus on empathy pays off: customers who feel understood are 68% more likely to spend with a brand. Additionally, 94% of consumers who receive an exceptional customer experience are likely to recommend the brand to others, amplifying its reach and reputation.
By prioritizing trust and loyalty over short-term transactional gains, Iterable customers demonstrate that empathy is more than a moral imperative—it’s a powerful marketing strategy that drives revenue and long-term success.
Big Data Gains: Harnessing Consumer Insights for Personalized Engagement
A new era of brand relationships is unfolding, fueled by consumers’ growing willingness to share data in exchange for personalized experiences. Nearly 50% of consumers now say they are comfortable sharing personal information with brands to receive tailored messaging, reflecting a notable increase from previous years. This shift, paired with declining concerns about data privacy (down from 61% to 52% since the introduction of AI tools like ChatGPT), reflects growing consumer trust in brands’ ability to use data responsibly.
Iterable customers are seizing these opportunities, using advanced data and AI tools to convert raw insights into actionable strategies. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024, Iterable managed over 2.2 Petabytes of data—a 12% increase over 2023—demonstrating the growing scale of consumer interactions and the trust brands place in Iterable to activate this data for seamless, personalized, real-time experiences.
Key Iterable innovations empowering marketers to harness consumer data include:
- Smart Ingest: An Iterable-native feature co-developed with Hightouch that directly connects to leading cloud data platforms and enables marketers to bring all of their valuable customer data into Iterable.
- Data Schema Management: An intuitive user interface that makes it easy to manage and control data structure.
By leveraging these capabilities, Iterable customers are turning evolving consumer behavior into valuable opportunities. They’re meeting the demand for relevance and timeliness, building stronger customer relationships, and driving sustainable growth.
AI Adoption Surges During Black Friday Cyber Monday, Setting the Stage for 2025 Growth
After a transformative year of widespread AI adoption, marketers are witnessing measurable success and are poised to double down in 2025. A recent study revealed that 94% of marketers attributed revenue growth in 2024 to AI technologies, with 95% planning to increase their AI investments in the coming year. This momentum was evident during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where brands leveraging Iterable’s AI Suite achieved real-time customer engagement and delivered impactful results.
Iterable customers boosted their use of AI by 20% year-over-year, signaling increased confidence in AI tools to refine and elevate marketing strategies. Among Iterable’s suite of AI-driven capabilities, two AI features emerged as indispensable during this peak shopping period:
- Send Time Optimization: A feature that helps send messages when customers are most likely to engage with them. Send Time Optimization analyzes historical engagement behavior and selects an optimal, per-person send time.
- Copy Assist: A tool that enhances and expedites the process of writing copy for campaigns by generating alternative suggestions across email, SMS, and push notifications.
By harnessing these powerful tools, marketers can create hyper-personalized experiences that ensure the right message reaches the right customer at the perfect time with ease.
This increased reliance on AI underscores a decisive shift in strategy—marketers have graduated from cautious exploration to strategic implementation of AI capabilities, using them to scale operations, enhance personalization, and drive impact during critical moments. With Iterable’s AI Suite, brands are not only maximizing success for the holiday season but setting the stage for sustained growth in 2025 and beyond.
“The trends we observed in customer engagement across Black Friday and Cyber Monday highlight a growing recognition among brands that lasting success is not just about quick sales—it’s about building deep, meaningful connections,” said Adriana Gil Miner, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Iterable. “Iterable customers are harnessing AI, mobile, and empathy to transform their strategies from one-off transactions into personalized, impactful experiences at scale. The brands that will win the business of tomorrow’s consumer are those that focus on relevance, resilience, and authentic real-time connections—and our customers are leading the way.”
To transform your marketing with Iterable, visit www.iterable.com.
About Iterable
Iterable is the AI-powered customer communication platform that helps organizations like Redfin, Priceline, Calm, and Box to activate customers with joyful interactions at scale. With Iterable, organizations drive high growth with individualized, harmonized and dynamic communications that engage customers throughout the entire lifecycle at the right time. Learn more at www.iterable.com
