Tamara Niesen is the Chief Marketing Officer at Woo. With over 20 years of experience in high-growth B2B SaaS, device, and platform companies, Tamara has led teams focused on brand, go-to-market, demand generation, product marketing, partner marketing, integrated lifecycle marketing, and performance marketing.
She previously led Global Demand Generation and Go-to-Market at Shopify, driving revenue growth and market expansion for Shopify Plus. She has also held marketing leadership roles at Housecall Pro, D2L, and BlackBerry. Tamara resides in Waterloo, Ontario.
After performance optimization, increasing inventory was the second most popular priority, with 32.6% of merchants ranking it as first on the list.
Businesses also aim to keep the customer experience streamlined with express checkout and buy now, pay later (BNPL) options. Nearly half (49.8%) of respondents across the board offer express checkout, but businesses over M in annual revenue were three to four times more likely to offer BNPL than those under a million.
Promotional strategies varied across the board, but product bundles and buy-more-save-more offers were the most popular options:
Businesses under a million in annual revenue typically take less time in the leadup. Of those stores, 22.2% prepare one to three months out, and only 7.9% prepare more than three months ahead of BFCM.
The findings look at how businesses are planning to capitalize on the season and what new tactics they intend to implement. This post is a recap of our report findings, and you can check out our upcoming strategies guide to get ready for your best BFCM yet.
- Introduce or update a subscription service (30%): A few merchants noted new subscription plans, new memberships, and updated options for their existing subscribers.
- Try new promotional strategies (25%): Many new promo strategies are on the horizon for our merchants this year, including new and sale-specific product bundles, earlier sales, strategic email list-building, having a bigger social presence, and brand partnerships.
- Update their infrastructure (12%): Others noted launching an updated website before the busy period — a big project, but one that will likely pay dividends. Hosting upgrades were another popular choice.
And don’t forget to treat yourself this holiday season, too. What are you buying this BFCM? I’m in the market for a new hockey stick and skates (very Canadian of me, I know), and am great at making sauna recommendations if you need one.
Overall, the holiday season (from November 1 to December 31) generated 1.4B in 2024, nearly B more than in 2023.
As we gear up for the busiest shopping season of the year, the message from our survey is clear: WooCommerce merchants are ready to rock BFCM by refining their strategies, investing in inventory and website performance, and leveraging key marketing channels.
Larger businesses start their planning earlier
Tamara Niesen
This year, 42% of merchants are shaking up their approach to BFCM. They’re thinking outside the box, and plan to:
Like last year, this year’s survey found that email marketing (23%) and organic social (21.1%) were the most effective marketing channels during the holiday season.
As I’ve seen from my own holiday receipts, Black Friday Cyber Monday is a huge revenue driver for ecommerce businesses. In 2024, Black Friday alone generated .8B in revenue, up from .8B in 2023. Cyber Monday saw a similar increase as consumers spent .3B in ‘24 — up from .4B in ‘23.
These strategies signal a broader effort to improve the customer experience, and the offers that bring them in. To make these decisions, businesses are taking historical sales data (29.8%), their marketing budgets (22.4%), and industry trends (19.4%) into account.
Welcome to the second edition of our annual Black Friday Cyber Monday Trends Report. Like last year, we conducted a comprehensive survey in July 2025 to understand strategies, challenges, and expectations for the upcoming peak season across merchants and agencies.
These numbers shift as businesses grow larger: Of stores making more than a million in annual revenue, 37.5% start their holiday planning one to three months in advance, and another 25% start planning more than three months ahead.
Of that group, 28% reported that BFCM and the holidays account for 30 to 50% of annual revenue, and 8% of merchants attribute over 50% of revenue to the peak season.
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*Report information is based on 249 survey responses obtained through WooCommerce email outreach, completed in July 2025.
Marketing and sales strategies: What’s the move?
Of the merchants who experience a seasonal lift during the holiday season, 36.4% plan one to four weeks ahead, and 30.9% plan one to three months ahead. The remaining stores are split between no preparation at all (20.6%) and more than three months of preparation (12.1%).
Merchants’ promotional strategies are also changing. In 2024, new products, special discounts, and targeted marketing strategies were at the top of the list. But in 2025 the focus is on subscriptions and product bundles, with many stores offering tiered discounts (buy more, save more) and new subscription models for more accessible gifting.
| Primary promotional strategy | Percentage of respondents |
| Product bundles or buy-more-save-more offers | 27.4% |
| Tiered discounts (e.g., spend $100, get 10% off) | 18.2% |
| Dynamic discounts (based on cart, time, or behavior) | 16.1% |
| Free gifts or add-ons | 14.7% |
| None of the above | 13.9% |
| Special checkout/payment options (e.g., early access, BNPL) | 6.3% |
| Other | 3.4% |
That said, the holiday season still represents a major bump in many merchants’ revenue schedules, with 73% of merchants reporting that this period accounts for over 20% of their annual revenue. This is consistent with the 72% of merchants who reported the same in 2024.
The peak season can be a make-or-break time, but this is shifting for many merchants. Last year, 66% of stores saw a spike in sales from October to December, nine points higher than this year’s 57%. This could indicate that businesses are ramping up promotional efforts throughout the year to reduce reliance on BFCM.
In 2025, the focus on site performance and optimization more than doubled, indicating a focus on customer experience and reducing friction to increase the bottom line. In 2024, only 13% of survey respondents chose website optimization as their top priority — a number that jumped to 33.4% this year.
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In 2025, 33.4% of merchants said that website performance optimization was their top preparation strategy for the holiday peak season. An additional 7.5% will upgrade hosting, which will also improve site performance.
