If your Black Friday and Cyber Monday plan starts the week of Thanksgiving, you are already behind. According to Adobe Analytics, US online spending in October 2025 already totaled $88.7 billion, up 8.2% year over year: holiday demand does not wait for Cyber Week, it starts weeks earlier. If your CRM does not have segments and flows ready for that early demand, you are leaving it on the table.
Demand starts in October, not the Friday after Thanksgiving
Adobe projected the full 2025 holiday shopping season would cross $250 billion online, up 5.3% year over year, and that Cyber Week (the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) would drive $44.2 billion, up 7.7%. Cyber Monday itself closed at $14.25 billion, an all-time record for a single day. That volume does not appear overnight: a meaningful share of those shoppers had already been buying early-bird deals since October.
For a business with its own customer base, that changes when the campaign needs to be ready. If the season’s first message goes out the week of Cyber Week, the customer has already seen competitors’ offers for weeks and already decided where to buy.
What needs to be built before Cyber Week starts
- Segment last year’s gift buyers. That history already lives in your CDP or CRM tool: they are the first to get the early offer, not a generic promo blasted to the whole base.
- Build the early-offer flow before October, not during it. Once the season kicks off, the whole category goes out to buy ads during the same fixed calendar week: it is the same mechanic that raises ad costs during Mexico’s Buen Fin, and it hits any brand that only starts designing its campaign once the week is already underway.
- Confirm WhatsApp, SMS, and push can absorb the peak without losing attribution: the highest-volume day of the year is not the time to discover a flow does not fire.
None of this replaces the season’s paid ads. What it does is make sure your own base, the one that already bought before, gets its offer before a competitor decides it for them. It is the work we do with ecommerce brands in the United States: getting automation ready before early demand gets ahead of it on its own.
If your plan still says “we will build it all the week of Thanksgiving,” move the date: the shopper already started in October.