NEWTOWN SQUARE, P.A. — The 2025 holiday season provided a glimpse of a retail future shaped by real-time insights instead of traditional, calendar-based strategies. SAP Emarsys examined hundreds of billions of customer interactions across its worldwide client base during Cyber Week, Singles’ Day, and El Buen Fin, and the findings show a significant shift in how shoppers find products and how brands need to respond.
The headline: performance leaders in 2026 will be retailers that allow AI to interpret every click, view, and behavioral signal as it happens. As consumers explore more channels and compare more options, relevance becomes the new foundation of loyalty. SAP Emarsys highlights its Customer Loyalty Index, which shows that 64 percent of consumers now ignore brand names entirely when shopping. Engagement is no longer about recognition; it’s about precision.
Real-time AI becomes the engine of holiday performance
This season marked a shift away from static tactics. Brands sent more messages, but each touchpoint was dynamically optimized. Email recommendations updated instantly upon opening. Onsite and in-app suggestions changed immediately as shoppers browsed. Targeting decisions were recalculated in real time to boost readiness and intent.
For SAP Emarsys, the key differentiators are what its team calls peak readiness, peak intent, and peak relevance. Among retail clients like Home Depot, flaconi, and Adore Beauty, AI-guided recommendations helped guide shoppers toward higher-value purchases and generated high-return engagement at scale.
Cyber Week 2025: engagement surges across key channels
Cyber Week volumes showed how quickly consumer behavior is evolving and how fast AI is reallocating attention to high-performing surfaces.
- Omnichannel engagements increased nearly 20 percent year over year
- Inbox activity surged 91 percent
- In-app interactions rose 61 percent
- SMS grew 32 percent
- Email climbed 17 percent
- Web Push declined 32 percent as privacy expectations tightened and browsers continued to limit intrusive notifications
The decline in Web Push is part of a multi-year trend, but 2025 highlighted the increasing strength of AI-optimized channel shifts. As Web Push lost reach, real-time decision-making redirected engagement to channels with stronger signals and fewer obstacles. Email inboxes became a clear winner. With no consent friction and discovery driven at the shopper’s pace, it consistently outperformed other channels throughout the season.
These engagement gains directly led to business results. SAP Emarsys reports an 18 percent rise in average order value and a 40 percent growth in gross merchandise value for the period. With unified data and automated decision-making integrated across the SAP CX suite, holiday traffic was not only high but also highly effective.
Singles’ Day and El Buen Fin: new global momentum
The season's most substantial growth spikes occurred outside the United States.
On Singles’ Day, year-over-year engagement jumped 43 percent overall. SMS activity increased 264 percent. Inbox doubled. In-app grew 54 percent. Email and Push rose more than 40 percent each.
Mexico’s El Buen Fin continued its expansion, with Inbox up 33 percent and steady double-digit gains across SMS, email, and in-app activity. Web Push again declined sharply.
These events underscore the accelerating shift toward mobile-first discovery, frictionless surfaces, and AI-driven allocation across international retail calendars.
Loyalty gains take the spotlight
Holiday success now goes beyond just the moment of conversion. Brands are leveraging peak season traffic to boost long-term customer value, and SAP Emarsys highlights Mizuno as a top example.
“SAP Emarsys is helping us get to know the consumer, and data is the key to that understanding. The better the data we are able to collect and leverage, the better the personalization experience, which drives deeper, long-lasting customer loyalty,” said Lisa Fair, growth marketing specialist at Mizuno.
Mizuno’s automated loyalty programs achieved a 62 percent increase in revenue from premium customers year over year. This growth aligns with findings from the Global Consumer Products Engagement Report, which indicates that nearly half of consumers desire more personalized deals and offers.
What this means for retail leaders in 2026
The direction is clear. Engagement is becoming smarter, more omnichannel, and more adaptive. As shoppers adopt agentic AI and expect every interaction to be personalized in real time, retailers must ensure their marketing and CX platforms can keep up.
For brands gearing up for the next retail cycle, the key message of SAP Emarsys for the 2025 season is clear: the future of engagement goes to those who can respond at the speed of the customer.
