# Why Black Friday is a retention event

> Black Friday brings you more new customers than any other day of the year, and very few of them come back. Seven insights from three years of Hello Retail's own Black Friday data across the Nordics and Benelux.

Black Friday brings you more new customers than any other day of the year. Very few of them come back.

Get the report Seven insights from three Black Fridays and close to 1.9 million Black Week orders in 2025 alone, across the webshops running Hello Retail in the Nordics and Benelux.

Here is some of what you will take away:

Insight 01

## Only 4% of a store's Black Friday customers also bought there last Black Friday

We took stores that ran Black Friday in both 2024 and 2025 and matched their buyers. Across all stores, about nine in ten of last year's buyers were simply gone.

The discount buys a transaction, not a customer.

Insight 02

## 68% of Black Friday buyers had not bought from the same store in the past year

Counting anyone who bought anything in the previous twelve months as an existing customer, 68% were still completely new, and they brought in 67% of the weekend's revenue.

Black Friday reliably delivers the introduction. It reliably fumbles the relationship.

## Five more in the report

- 03 Two very different shoppers walk into your store
- 04 Returning customers buy baskets. New customers buy items
- 05 Mid-market shops grew. Smaller shops fell behind
- 06 Black Friday has been Black Week for three years running
- 07 Your category decides what "coming back" looks like

Author

## Sarah Miguel Cournane

Data Scientist

As part of the Data Science Team at Hello Retail, Sarah focuses on extracting insights from customer data to uncover new opportunities and drive business value.

Based on Hello Retail's internal analysis of Black Friday data, covering a consistent group of ecommerce websites across 2023, 2024, and 2025. All figures are aggregated and anonymized, and no individual store, brand, or customer can be identified from anything in the report.

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For the full interactive experience, visit [helloretail.com/en/campaigns/black-friday-2026-report](https://helloretail.com/en/campaigns/black-friday-2026-report)

## About Hello Retail

Hello Retail is an AI-powered ecommerce personalization platform based in Copenhagen, Denmark. We help online retailers improve search, recommendations, merchandising, email, and retail media through our proprietary Product Intelligence engine.

- **Website**: [helloretail.com](https://helloretail.com)
- **Demo**: [Book a Demo](https://helloretail.com/en/demo/)
- **AI information**: [helloretail.com/en/ai-info](https://helloretail.com/en/ai-info)

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