How Braze supports exceptional customer engagement during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond

For many brands, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) shopping period—a major shopping tentpole for consumers around the world—is one of the most nerve-wracking times of the year. Capitalizing on this period is essential, but the size, scale, and complexity associated with BFCM can make it hard for marketers to successfully cut through the noise of other brands’ campaigns and seize the opportunities in front of them.

To make that happen, brands need the right technology and support to carry out successful campaigns at a wide range of different scales and complexities. Thankfully, the Braze customer engagement platform is built around AI and architected to manage massive volumes of highly sophisticated, personalized messages across channels and touchpoints. This allows marketers to better understand and serve their customers even during the year’s busiest periods. So let’s explore how real brands like Bed Bath & Beyond and Mercari are leveraging Braze to uplevel their customer engagement efforts during BFCM and beyond.

Achieving customer engagement at scale

When it comes to customer engagement, a strong foundation is essential: After all, you can’t effectively activate, engage, monetize, or retain your customers if they don’t receive the message you send. And for many brands, the BFCM period represents the peak of their annual messaging sends—which makes ensuring that those messages are sent swiftly, delivered effectively, and personalized thoughtfully represents a core business need.

Braze provides that foundation, allowing brands to send messages—even highly sophisticated, personalized ones—at scale during BFCM and other major messaging periods. This year, Braze powered over 59.9 billion messages during the four-day Black Friday/Cyber Monday period with 100% uptime, showcasing the platform’s ability to support brands of all sizes as they work to connect with their customers across channels and touchpoints.

Powering connections between brands and consumers with AI

Over the past three years, AI has evolved from a nice-to-have in the customer engagement space to a key marketing requirement, allowing brands to accelerate their existing efforts while also elevating what’s possible.

AI isn’t just about reaching consumers effectively—this technology makes it easier for marketers to understand and anticipate their customers’ wants and needs more successfully, supporting both increased revenue and stronger customer/brand relationships. The launch of the BrazeAI Decisioning Studioᵀᴹ earlier this year expanded the Braze platform’s AI capabilities, amplifying what’s possible for brands when it comes to effectively serving their customers.

“BrazeAIᵀᴹ will help us properly plan and then anticipate for Black Friday/Cyber Monday,” said Andrew Luxem, Senior Director, CRM at leading retailer Bed Bath & Beyond. “In the past, we were somewhat reacting to what the pressures of the business would be…[but now] we’re able to identify that these are the different paths the customers are going to potentially go down, and we’ll be able to create a number of variations to be able to capture that demand and to be able to bring those customers in. It’s been a game changer for us.”

Driving exceptional time-to-value

When marketers are preparing their customer engagement programs for BFCM or other major moments during the year, speed is of the essence. A brand that’s capable of swiftly leveraging new technologies and functionalities—or building out new programs and campaigns—in an efficient manner can out maneuver its competitors, allowing it to stay engaged with today’s ever-changeable customer.

One smart way to accelerate timelines and drive strong time-to-value? Partnering with customer engagement experts, allocating resources to the teams that need them most, and using the technology at your disposal thoughtfully. Leading Thai conglomerate Central Retail partnered with Braze and our one-time services team to make that happen, building out an effective onboarding strategy as they switched customer engagement platforms, allowing them to migrate 250 campaigns across a range of business units in less than two months, 17% faster than planned.

“The level of collaboration we experienced with Braze was exceptional,” said Muhammad Nauraiz Kharal, Group Head of CRM, Central Retail. “They truly understood our goals and tailored their onboarding process to meet our unique needs.”

Braze is also built to support brands in flexible ways as they work to build out, adjust, and optimize their customer engagement programs. Leading selling app Mercari has taken advantage of the Braze platform’s Canvas journey orchestration feature, alongside Content Blocks and Braze Landing Pages, to more easily adjust, update, and reimagine their campaigns on the fly in effective and efficient ways. “Braze Landing Pages have reduced our promotion landing page build time from two weeks down to two hours,” said Kenadee Hatch, CRM Technical Manager, Mercari “It’s been a fantastic change for our team.”

Building customer loyalty and engagement for the long haul

Black Friday/Cyber Monday and the rest of the winter holiday season may represent a surge in revenue and key connection point with your customers—but arguably the real opportunity lies in what comes next. Sustaining momentum, reactivating new buyers, and deepening relationships with loyal customers are essential for long-term growth, and that requires just as much thought and care as any holiday promotional program.

Thankfully, Braze makes it possible for brands to both drive meaningful business results during BFCM and other major promotions while also setting the stage for stronger relationships with customers over time. Children’s audio and retail brand Tonies leaned on Braze as they worked to build out an ongoing user journey, allowing them to leverage the platform’s support for tailored cross-channel messaging to convert free users to paid ones and to create deeper connections with their audience over time.

“By introducing users to Tonies’ world of storytelling and song for free, we pave the way for future purchases and longer customer lifetimes, as families grow with Tonies’ rich library of paid content and collectibles,” said Anh Ha, Head of Digital Growth, Tonies. “Braze powers this through seamless onboarding journeys, followed by powerful segmentation and messaging personalization later in our customer relationships.”

Final thoughts

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday period can be a major challenge for marketers. But with the right support—and the right technology stack—it can also be a major opportunity to drive stronger performance and bolster long-term customer retention and loyalty. Even better? The same tools and tactics that make for a great BFCM can also support effective customer engagement during other major shopping periods and high-importance campaigns through the rest of the year.

Want to learn how to better capitalize on the holidays for long-term success? Check out our BFCM hub for additional insights, best practices, and customer stories.

Forward-Looking Statements

This blog post contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the performance of and expected benefits from Braze and its products and features, including without limitation BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™. These forward-looking statements are based on the current assumptions, expectations and beliefs of Braze, and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Further information on potential factors that could affect Braze results are included in the Braze Annual Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2025, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 5, 2025, and the other public filings of Braze with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this blog post represent the views of Braze only as of the date of this blog post, and Braze assumes no obligation, and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.