Bloomreach’s AI shopping assistant is emerging as a clear Black Friday winner, with a new Business Wire release reporting a 113% increase in messages sent on Black Friday versus the prior Friday. The data shows how conversational commerce is starting to sit alongside email and search as a core performance channel during peak season, rather than a fringe experiment.
Conversational AI drives engagement spikes
Based in MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA, Bloomreach positions its platform as “agentic” personalization, and its AI shopping assistant as a way to guide shoppers through complex catalogs in real time. On Black Friday (November 29), messages sent to the assistant surged by 113% compared with Friday, November 21, while Cyber Monday (December 1) saw a 61% uplift versus the prior Monday. Customers were mainly asking product-focused questions, often prompting the assistant to “tell me more” as they shopped for gifts, a behavior Bloomreach says is ideal for conversational guidance when shoppers are less familiar with items.
Mobile was a major starting point for these conversations, consistent with usage outside peak season. Evening hours drove the heaviest traffic, with many businesses seeing message peaks on Black Friday night or steady volume across the entire Black Friday–Cyber Monday window, indicating that shoppers are comfortable chatting with AI while winding down and browsing on their phones.
Black Friday still beats Cyber Monday in volume
Beyond chat, Bloomreach’s data underscores that Black Friday continues to edge out Cyber Monday in raw search and engagement volume. Its e-commerce search data showed an 18% day-over-day increase in searches from Thanksgiving to Black Friday, compared with a 6% increase from Sunday, November 30 to Cyber Monday. That points to Black Friday remaining the primary peak for discovery and intent, even as deals stretch across the full Cyber Week window.
For retailers, this suggests that AI-powered search, merchandising, and conversational assistants should be calibrated to handle the heaviest lift on Black Friday, while Cyber Monday plays more of a follow-up role—capturing shoppers who are refining choices, checking specs, or returning to wishlisted items rather than starting from scratch.
Email and SMS remain critical channels
While conversational AI stole some headlines, traditional channels still did heavy lifting. Bloomreach customers sent nearly 600 million emails on Black Friday and around 510 million on Cyber Monday, confirming that email remains a dominant channel for peak-season campaigns.
SMS also showed strong growth, with a 104% year-over-year increase in SMS volume on Black Friday and a 47% increase on Cyber Monday. Push notifications grew more modestly—up 6% YoY on Black Friday and 16% YoY on Cyber Monday—but continued to act as a meaningful revenue driver for brands using Bloomreach. Together, the numbers point to a channel mix where email, SMS, and push all remain vital, even as AI chat moves into the foreground.
What Bloomreach says about the new peak mix
“We’re increasingly seeing that holiday shopping isn’t about a single channel,” Christina Augustine, Chief Operating Officer, Bloomreach, said. She explained that even as conversation showed clear momentum, the most successful brands were those meeting customers with relevant experiences “wherever they are,” framing personalization as a journey across all touchpoints.
With more than 1,400 brands using Bloomreach worldwide, including retailers such as American Eagle, Sonepar, and Pandora, the company is positioning its AI assistant, search, and marketing tools as a unified way to orchestrate that journey. The Black Friday–Cyber Monday data signals that shoppers are ready to use AI like a digital sales associate—but they still respond strongly to well-timed emails and texts.
Why this matters for retail and fashion
For fashion, beauty, and lifestyle retailers, the takeaways are clear. First, conversational AI is no longer a side experiment: double- and triple-digit engagement lifts around Black Friday show it can act as a true “sales floor expert” online, especially when shoppers are unsure about fit, fabrication, or gifting suitability. Second, search and email still anchor peak-season performance, with AI now threading through these channels rather than replacing them..
