Beyond the discount: Black Friday and Cyber Monday readiness guide 2026

Numbers like that make it tempting to think the formula is simple: discount deeper, sell more. But the retailers who actually grew margin alongside revenue last year were not the ones cutting prices the hardest. They were the ones using incentives more precisely, rewarding the right customers instead of discounting everyone equally, and building for the weeks after Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) rather than just the day itself. 

This guide explores what last year's data actually tells us about shopper behavior, and what that means for how you plan your promotions campaigns this year.

Talon.One’s 2025 Black Friday incentives benchmark report analyzed anonymized data from roughly 300 leading brands across our platform, revealing higher loyalty program enrollment than during the previous Black Friday, as well as the types of incentives that drove the strongest customer engagement.

The following takeaways offer a closer look at shopper behavior during last year’s Black Friday and highlight the trends that shaped customer engagement.

Shoppers spent more, but they spent on their own terms. Average transaction values rose 22 percent compared with a typical Friday, and in-store basket sizes came in 28 percent higher than online. At the same time, basket sizes across the broader holiday period grew 5 percent while the average amount spent per item actually fell, from $47 to $45. 

Put together, this tells a clear story. Shoppers were not simply spending more on impulse. They were buying more items at a better price, which means the promotions that performed best were the ones that rewarded a fuller cart rather than a single discounted item.

Payment behavior shifted fast. Digital wallets accounted for 33 percent of in-store Black Friday revenue, up sharply from 21 percent the year before, and 85 percent of in-store transactions were contactless. Mobile generated a record 56.4 percent of online holiday revenue. 

If your incentive strategy assumes shoppers are checking out the way they did two years ago, it is worth revisiting that assumption now.

AI quietly became part of the shopping journey. Close to 90 percent of shoppers used AI in some form during the holidays last year, with AI-driven traffic (Nov 1–Dec 31, 2025) climbing nearly 700 percent year over year.

Static, one-size-fits-all landing pages and generic promo codes are going to feel increasingly out of step with a shopping journey that is becoming faster and more personalized by default.

Timing broke the old rules entirely. Talon.One’s report shows that in 2024, the sales surge began around November 21. In 2025, influenced revenue (any sale tied to a promotion or discount) started climbing on November 16, nearly two weeks before Black Friday itself. Retailers including Dyson, John Lewis, and Curry's launched deals in the first week of November. 

Singles' Day on November 11, historically an APAC event, saw an 11 percent year over year increase in influenced revenue, with major US and EMEA retailers like ASOS and Levi's joining in. 

Member Weeks, exclusive pre-season events for loyalty members, generated their own demand spikes throughout October and November, before Black Friday even arrived.

Discount rates rose, but not recklessly. Talon.One’s data showed that the global average Black Friday discount climbed from 21 percent in 2024 to 25 percent in 2025, with meaningful regional differences: 35 percent in the US, 24 percent in EMEA, and 18 percent in APAC. That modest uplift, rather than a race to the bottom, suggests retailers responded to shopper demand for value without abandoning margin discipline altogether.

Loyalty became the real gateway to value. Across retailers, daily new loyalty sign-ups rose 50 percent above the typical 30-day average on Black Friday itself, and overall loyalty enrollment doubled compared with the previous year. Shoppers were willing to hand over their data in exchange for better offers, and retailers increasingly used membership as the first filter for their best pricing, early access, and priority perks.

The single biggest change in how top retailers approached BFCM last year was a move away from the old playbook of a single site-wide percentage off. Simple item discounts still made up the bulk of promotions, since they are familiar and fast to communicate, but underneath that foundation there was a clear rise in more structured mechanics designed to protect margin while still lifting basket value.

Retailers layered in tiered and minimum order value incentives to encourage bigger baskets, bundles and buy-one-get-one offers that shift the focus from margin to volume, shipping incentives that remove a common reason for cart abandonment, and member-exclusive pricing that rewards loyalty participation specifically.

This matters because a blanket discount rewards everyone equally, including the customer who would have bought at full price anyway. A targeted incentive, tied to loyalty tier, purchase history, or basket size, lets you spend your promotional budget where it actually changes behavior. 

Buy now, pay later is worth building into that same strategy. BNPL spending reached $20 billion over the last holiday season, with more than a quarter of shoppers planning to use it, and it increasingly influences purchase decisions earlier in the journey rather than showing up only at checkout. Highlighting flexible payment options on product pages and in email campaigns, particularly for higher ticket items, can convert shoppers while they are still weighing whether they can afford something.

None of this works, though, if the underlying systems cannot handle the load. Talon.One processed 2.4 billion API requests during Black Friday week last year, with peak traffic hitting 105,000 requests per second and 1.34 billion rule evaluations. As promotions get more personalized and more deeply woven into the customer journey, the infrastructure behind them needs to be resilient enough to keep up in real time, not just on the day itself but across the entire stretched-out season that now surrounds it.

Use this as a quick gut check before your campaigns go live.