Retailers and brands have faced a challenging 2024, making a successful holiday season more crucial than ever. According to Adobe Analytics, online shoppers spent a record-breaking $10.8 billion this Black Friday. The biggest retail event of the year gave Listrak’s savvy clients an opportunity to outperform the competition and win consumer dollars with AI-powered, hyper-targeted, omnichannel messaging. Our experts have crunched the numbers and analyzed retailer strategy and results in order to bring you an informative recap of our Black Friday retail marketing data.

Discount Strategies Among Listrak Clients

Up against strong competition within a tough economic landscape, retailers and brands felt the need to aggressively attract customers who might be pinching pennies.

• Discounts: When it comes to discounts, most clients either stayed the course or kicked things up a notch, with 86% of clients offering equal or greater Black Friday discounts in 2024 than they did last year.‍
• Breakdown: 54% used the same offer as last year, 32% increased their offer, and ‍ 14% used a lower offer.

Discount Strategy

• Promotion Type: 2024 brought a significant shift in the types of promotions being touted by retailers, with many more employing big sitewide offers to draw in customers than the previous year.
  • 20% increase in retailers offering sitewide discounts
  • 21% increase in retailers offering "up to X% off the site"
  • 43% decrease in retailers giving category- or product-specific offers

Those clients with sitewide Black Friday offers shifted to higher overall discounts year over year (YOY) with an average of 29% off sitewide in 2024 compared to 27% the previous year.

Overall Email and SMS Performance

Email and SMS saw greater utilization and increased performance over last year. Clients relied on the guidance of Listrak experts and the power of AI-driven personalization to squeeze the most out of their Black Friday marketing spend, capturing and converting shoppers in the channels they connect with the most.

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Black Friday Results by Vertical

As always, different retail verticals took unique approaches to their Black Friday strategy and saw diverse results. Here are some standout stats among Listrak clients:

• Apparel leaned heavily into text messaging marketing and saw incredible returns, with SMS sends up 90% YOY contributing to a revenue increase of 60% YOY.
• Toys, Hobbies, & Sporting Goods relied on strong email campaigns to reach their customers, resulting in a 20% increase in email sends YOY.
• Home & Housewares found success with Listrak’s hyper-personalized targeting and omnichannel approach, lifting conversions by 20% YOY.
• Beauty saw remarkable increases in revenue across marketing channels with email revenue up 40% YOY and SMS revenue up 75% YOY.
• Auto customers were enticed to spend more in 2024 – email average order value (AOV) was up 11%, and SMS revenue was up 70% YOY.
  

Black Friday Results by Campaign

Email remained a strong channel for Listrak clients, with Black Friday email campaigns driving revenue and conversions for retailers as well as creating a seamless, loyalty-inspiring customer experience.

• Broadcast Email: An aggressive approach to broadcast email was necessary among retailers this Black Friday, with broadcast email sends up 16% in order to achieve flat revenue YOY.
• Abandonment Email: Retailers made increased efforts to stand out from the competition and recapture shoppers’ attention, increasing shopping cart abandonment (SCA) and browse abandonment email sends by 5% YOY.
• Post-Purchase Email: A 33% increase in post-purchase revenue YOY proves the critical importance of maintaining connection at this stage in the customer journey, on Black Friday and always.
• Alert Email: An alert email send increase of 15% YOY connected customers with the products they were most likely to purchase.

SMS empowered Listrak clients to cut through the noise and get personalized offers in front of their customers, most of whom – almost 53%* – did their Black Friday weekend shopping via mobile this year.

• Broadcast SMS: Retailers leaned in to broadcast text messaging and were rewarded for their efforts, with a 35% increase in sends resulting in a 25% increase in broadcast revenue YOY.
• Abandonment SMS: The use of text messages to recapture browse and shopping cart abandoners skyrocketed this year: A 110% increase in sends led to an 80% increase in abandonment revenue YOY.
• Post-Purchase SMS: Like broadcast and abandonment, retailers beefed up their post-purchase text campaigns, increasing sends by 35% YOY.
• SMS Average Order Value (AOV): Overall, the SMS channel saw a 3% increase in average order value YOY, indicating that Listrak clients’ send strategies and targeting efforts resulted in capturing high-value customers.
  

While Black Friday is behind us, the busy holiday season continues for retailers and brands. Omnichannel marketing will no doubt maintain its momentum to keep shoppers engaged and converting. We’ll continue to monitor discount strategies used throughout the holiday and how low retailers will go to capture the sale. Stay tuned for our Cyber Monday data analysis and more key takeaways from the experts at Listrak.

*Adobe Analytics