BFCM 2025: How to Win the Shopping Holiday with Conversational AI

The Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend has become a high-stakes moment for Shopify merchants. Pages load, carts fill, and inventory moves. Shoppers arrive with intent, and competition is fierce.

The traffic surges bring opportunity, but also pressure. Stores need to stay fast, accurate, and responsive while handling more customers and promotional activity than at any other time of year.

Conversational AI gives merchants a way to stay in control. It guides product discovery, answers questions instantly, and promotes the right deals at the right time.

This guide covers key BFCM strategies to help you succeed in 2025. It also highlights how Rep AI’s conversational concierge enables you to turn holiday traffic into long-term growth.

Why BFCM 2025 Requires a Smarter Strategy

BFCM continues to break records. In 2024, U.S. shoppers spent over $13.3 billion online on Cyber Monday, exceeding projections and setting a new high. But while sales are growing, the conditions around them are getting tougher.

Shoppers are acting faster. Fewer are taking the time to really browse. They're scanning, quickly comparing, and deciding in seconds. If a product isn’t easy to find or the offer doesn’t hit, they’ll leave.

On the merchant side, operations are under pressure. Marketing is spread across more channels, and support teams are hit with surging ticket volume. It’s harder to keep every part of the experience responsive and consistent.

Conversational AI helps merchants keep up. It allows you to guide shoppers, recommend products based on context, and surface relevant deals, all through fast, natural conversations. It also automates routine support, freeing your team to focus on bigger issues.

The impact is already clear. Online retailers using AI chat tools saw conversion rates increase by 9% during BFCM 2024.

A growing share of shoppers are now using chat to find deals, explore options, and get recommendations. This trend will only grow in 2025.

How Rep AI Helps You Win BFCM

Rep AI is built to help merchants thrive during peak shopping periods. It provides a smarter way to drive conversions and support customers, without adding operational overhead.

Instead of clunky search bars and scattered promotions, Rep delivers personalized, context-aware conversations that help each shopper find the right product, get the right offer, and move to checkout with confidence.

Whether you’re dealing with thousands of SKUs or nonstop support requests, Rep helps your store stay fast, relevant, and capable of handling the holiday surge.

Let’s examine some of the key Rep AI features that support merchants during the crucial BFCM period.

AI-Powered Promotions Management

With Rep, managing deals during BFCM is effortless. You can import discount codes directly from Shopify, create rules for which customer segments will see them, and let AI handle the rest.

Want to show a special offer only to returning buyers? Easy. Want to show visitors a special BFCM intro deal? Done.

Rep AI’s Smart Promotions Management ensures shoppers always see the right deal at the right time, without flooding your site with pop-ups.

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Context-Driven Product Finder 

During BFCM, shoppers move fast. They don’t want to dig through endless search results only to struggle to find what they’re looking for.

Rep AI’s Product Finder guides shoppers through personalized discovery. Instead of relying on outdated search methods, they can simply describe what they’re looking for and receive a curated list of relevant results.

This includes searches that don’t match your catalog items exactly. “I need a gift under $100,” or “Do you have vegan leather bags?” Rep AI understands the request and responds with targeted suggestions.

Behind the scenes, you can customize the Product Finder to prioritize certain products, fine-tune how persuasive the AI is, and steer conversations toward high-value SKUs. It’s like giving every visitor their own sales assistant.

Catalog Management and Product Groups

Managing large catalogs during BFCM is tricky, especially when you need to push some products and hide others.

Rep AI simplifies the process.

With the Catalog feature, you can group products by type, seasonality, bundle, or any other criteria. Each group can have custom visibility rules, and you can disable features like “add to cart” for items that are low on stock or no longer available.

Plus, synonym mapping lets you connect shopper language to your catalog. So if someone asks for “sneakers,” Rep knows to show “trainers,” “running shoes,” or any term you’ve defined as equivalent.

No dead ends, no missed conversions.

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Automated Support Skills

Support gets hammered during BFCM. Questions like “When will this arrive?” and “Where is my order?” become the most common questions, and a time sink for your team.

Rep automates these customer support basics. It can track orders, process cancellations, initiate returns, and answer FAQs 24/7.

You can customize support flows to match your policies and preferred tone. And because support is handled in-chat, shoppers stay on your site instead of bouncing to email or calling your team.

That means fewer support tickets, faster resolution, and happier customers.

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7 Tips to Drive BFCM Success

Ready to make BFCM your biggest event of the year? Here are seven focus areas to help you thrive during the busiest shopping weekend of the season.

1. Provide Early Access to VIP Customers

Early access is one of the most effective ways to generate revenue before the peak rush begins. It allows you to capture early demand, reward loyal customers, and reduce pressure on your main launch window.

Focus on customers with high purchase frequency, strong AOV, or loyalty program participation. These are the people most likely to convert fast and spend more.

Rather than sending a generic early access email, create a dedicated VIP experience. Use personalized links or gated landing pages that open a few days before your public sale. If possible, offer VIP-only pre-sale pricing tiers.

2. Launch Email Campaigns Well Before the Holiday Event

Email still delivers the highest ROI of any marketing channel, but timing and targeting matter more during BFCM.

Don’t wait until the week of the sale to send blanket announcements. Instead, build a sequence that launches at least 2–3 weeks out. Focus on list re-engagement, early access, and teaser offers. You can start by segmenting based on last year’s BFCM behavior.

When the holiday rolls around, your email list should already be primed to convert.

For those not already on your email list, Rep AI can serve as a powerful lead generation tool during the high-traffic holiday season. The AI agent makes it easy to gather subscribers during conversations, and you can seamlessly connect your contacts to leading email software providers like Klaviyo and Mailchimp.

3. Proactively Handle Support Before It Escalates

Spikes in support inquiries are predictable during BFCM. Higher traffic inevitably leads to more product questions, confusion about promotions, and the possibility of fulfillment delays

Waiting to react to this support influx can lead to overwhelmed teams, delayed responses, and future customer churn. Instead, use automation, self-service, and proactive outreach to keep on top of the increased volume.

Prepare detailed, accessible help content focused on BFCM-specific issues. Update product pages and checkout flows with shipping cutoff dates and return windows.

Use AI chatbots like Rep AI to enable seamless workflows for common tasks like order status updates and cancellations.

Being proactive with your communication can prevent tickets and preserve satisfaction during your highest-stakes weekend.

4. Optimize Product Detail Pages

Product detail pages (PDPs) are a key consideration point in the buying decision. During BFCM, some of this consideration gives way to more surface-level scanning. Shoppers are making faster choices, which means they will process your pages differently.

Ensure your PDPs are stripped of distractions and contain essential info: key features, high-quality images, shipping estimates, and availability. If stock is limited or fulfillment times are longer, say so upfront.

Add visual trust elements like review highlights, customer photos, or satisfaction guarantees. Where appropriate, use urgency badges or countdown timers tied to BFCM-only deals. The goal is to accelerate decision-making without creating friction.

The Rep AI chat adds an overlay to complement your product pages. With real-time guidance on specific product questions, this additional support layer helps hesitant shoppers move forward with confidence.

5. Monitor Performance to Understand the Customer Experience

You shouldn’t wait until December to evaluate your holiday campaigns. Every hour during BFCM provides performance data that can improve same-day results. With real-time insight, you can make fast adjustments across promotions, content, and operations.

Carefully review your analytics to track product-level performance, cart activity, exit rates, and support interactions. Watch for patterns: Are certain SKUs getting views but not conversions? Are certain pages generating support tickets?

Use these findings to reprioritize deals, fix messaging gaps, or route traffic to better-performing offers. Even small mid-campaign tweaks can unlock major revenue gains.

6. Personalize the Shopping Journey

Generic sales messaging underperforms during BFCM. Shoppers are being hit with hundreds of emails, ads, and pop-ups. Relevance is the only way to cut through the noise.

Use behavior-based personalization on your site to show different promotions and product recommendations.

Rep AI makes it easy to personalize the experience for each shopper. The AI takes visitor behavior, traffic source, cart contents, and purchase history into account when responding.

It knows when someone is returning, which pages they’ve browsed, and whether they’ve used a discount code before. This allows the AI concierge to fine-tune its recommendations, offers, and tone.

For example, if someone is browsing a product they looked at earlier in the week, the AI can reference it in its message. If they’re a first-time visitor, it can highlight a bestseller to drive trust.

These signals make conversations feel personal, not templated, boosting both satisfaction and conversion rates when it matters most.

7. Ensure Mobile Readiness

Most BFCM site traffic will come from mobile. This applies to sales as well. Last year, 70% of Cyber Week sales were from mobile users.

Test every part of your funnel on mobile: landing pages, product pages, search, cart, and checkout. Make sure loading times are fast, touch targets are large, and forms are prefilled where possible.

Use mobile wallets like Apple Pay or Shop Pay to reduce steps at checkout. If anything requires zooming, scrolling sideways, or extra taps, it’s costing you sales. 

Rep AI simplifies the mobile experience by providing buyers a seamless, guided path from product discovery to checkout. Shoppers can find what they need and complete their purchase with fewer touches and without having to navigate through your entire ecommerce site.

Post-BFCM: How to Review, Learn, and Retain Customers

BFCM may end in a single weekend, but the data, customers, and outcomes from the event should shape your strategy for the year to come.

The highest performing brands treat BFCM as a launchpad for retention. Post-sale analysis and strategic follow-up are critical to turning one-time buyers into long-term customers.

Analyze Chat Data and Promotions Performance

Start by reviewing what drove conversions and what didn’t. Your chat transcripts, email metrics, promo engagement, and product analytics will give you clear signals. Focus on:

• Common Support Issues: Were shoppers confused about shipping, sizing, or returns? If so, that needs to be addressed in your product pages, policies, or FAQs.

• High-Frequency Product Inquiries: Products that generated lots of chat engagement but low conversions may need pricing or presentation adjustments.

• Timing Patterns: When were most people engaged? Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Pre-sales events? Use this to optimize future campaign schedules.

Segment and Retarget Customers

BFCM brings in a wide mix of shoppers: deal hunters, gift buyers, repeat customers, and first-time visitors.

Don’t treat them the same in follow-up campaigns. Use your on-site behavior data, purchase history, and engagement signals to create high-value segments. Some useful post-BFCM segments include:

• First-Time Buyers During BFCM: These are high-priority for retention. Send welcome flows and post-purchase content to build trust and familiarity with your brand.

• Gift Buyers: These may need a different offer cadence than those buying for themselves.

• Repeat Buyers Who Re-engaged During BFCM: Strong candidates for loyalty programs or subscriptions.

• Cart Abandoners: Ideal for retargeting with limited-time offers.

Quick Setup: Launch Rep AI for BFCM in Under an Hour

Whether you're new to Rep or already using it, preparing for BFCM is fast and simple. The following steps will ensure you're ready for the holiday season:

1. Import Discount Codes

Start by adding your BFCM discount codes to the Rep AI Promotion Knowledge Base. This allows the AI to recognize and reference specific deals in chat. You can associate codes with customer segments or UTM parameters.

2. Define Product Groups and Catalog Preferences

Organize your product catalog into logical groups based on category, BFCM relevance, or price range. You can set visibility rules, exclude certain SKUs from recommendations, and add synonyms so chat understands different shopper terms. This keeps product suggestions clean and accurate.

3. Enable Support Skills

Turn on Support Skills automation for the most common BFCM inquiries: order status, returns, and cancellations. These flows reduce pressure on your team and ensure customers get fast answers during peak hours.

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4. Test Chat Flows and Product Finder

Before going live, simulate key shopper scenarios. Ask about product types, request order help, or browse using general terms like “gifts under $50.” This helps confirm that the Product Finder and automated responses are working correctly and aligned with your campaign goals.

With these steps complete, you’ll be ready to handle BFCM traffic with minimal manual effort and maximum return. Setup is quick, but it positions you to operate at full capacity when it matters most.

Make BFCM 2025 Your Most Profitable Ever

Success during BFCM doesn’t happen by accident. Merchants that win are the ones that stay fast, relevant, and ready for scale.

Rep AI gives you full control over how deals are offered, how products are recommended, and how support is handled during peak hours.

When paired with the right campaigns and prep, these features help you capture more revenue while reducing strain on your team.

‍Start your free trial today and get ready to make BFCM 2025 your strongest holiday weekend yet.