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The 2025 Black Friday shopping event has provided clear data on the accelerating shift in how businesses communicate with customers during peak periods. Early global platform data from Sinch reveals a significant move towards richer, AI-powered conversational messaging formats, with RCS (Rich Communication Services) volumes surging 144% compared to 2024. This growth, alongside a 32% year-over-year increase in November email volumes, underscores a trend where brands are blending traditional, reliable channels with more interactive, AI-enhanced experiences to drive engagement.
Sinch's global data shows a 144% year-over-year increase in RCS messaging during Black Friday 2025.
Email volumes for November grew by 32% compared to 2024, remaining a core channel for promotions.
Total interactions across the Sinch platform during Black Friday week reached 27 billion.
The surge is driven by brands adopting richer, AI-powered conversational formats to stand out and meet customer expectations.
Traditional channels like SMS and email continued to provide the foundation for authentication, delivery tracking, and mass marketing.
The trend reflects longer promotional campaigns, earlier deals, and demand for real-time updates and support.
The standout statistic is the explosive growth of RCS, which offers features like read receipts, high-resolution images, and interactive buttons within the native messaging app. This 144% surge indicates that retailers and service providers are actively moving beyond plain text SMS to create more engaging, app-like experiences directly in the messaging channel. This shift is part of a broader adoption of conversational channels, including WhatsApp, to facilitate seamless, two-way customer journeys.
Despite the growth of newer formats, established channels like email and SMS continued to serve as the backbone for peak-season communication. The 32% growth in email volumes highlights its unmatched role for targeted promotional campaigns and detailed communications. SMS maintained its critical position for time-sensitive alerts like authentication codes and delivery notifications, valued for its near-universal reach and reliability.
Daniel Morris, Chief Product Officer at Sinch, attributed the increases to several factors: "The strong increases we're seeing are driven by earlier promotions, longer campaigns, and the growing expectation for real-time delivery updates, order tracking, and customer support." AI powers many of these richer interactions, enabling personalized offers, automated customer service, and intelligent routing within conversational threads. Morris stated, "This year's Black Friday shows that rich AI-powered, conversational experiences are no longer optional, they are the new standard."
The data suggests a winning strategy for businesses is a blended communications approach. They are leveraging the trust and scale of SMS and email while integrating richer, interactive channels like RCS to enhance engagement and provide real-time, transactional support. This hybrid model allows brands to meet customers on their preferred channels with the appropriate level of interactivity for each stage of the shopping journey.
Sinch's data, drawn from over 900 billion annual communications, provides a macro-level validation of trends that are reshaping customer engagement. It signals that the future of commercial communication is conversational, context-aware, and increasingly powered by AI to manage the immense scale and personalization demands of global shopping events.
About Sinch
Sinch's vision is to connect every business with every customer, everywhere in the world. With the industry's most trusted foundation for intelligent customer communications, Sinch powers over 900 billion customer interactions annually for more than 190,000 customers across the globe. Leading global companies, including AI innovators, rely on Sinch to strengthen customer relationships and deliver seamless experiences across messaging, email, and voice. Profitable since its founding in 2008, Sinch generated net sales of USD 3 billion (SEK 28.7 billion) in 2024 and has over 4,000 employees in more than 60 countries, with headquarters in Stockholm.
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