Bird's Black Friday by the Numbers: What Nearly 20 Billion Emails Reveals About Peak Performance
Bird
Dec 4, 2025
1 min read
Bird's Black Friday by the Numbers: What Nearly 20 Billion Emails Reveals About Peak Performance
Every Black Friday weekend stress-tests email infrastructure in ways no amount of planning can fully simulate. Volumes spike 300-400% above normal days. Everyone sends at the same time. Major providers experience brief outages. And businesses learn whether their email platform can actually handle peak demand.
This year, Bird processed 19.9 billion emails across the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend, marking a new record and nearly 20% growth year-over-year. But the more telling story isn't just the volume—it's what happened under the hood when systems were pushed to their limits, and what the data reveals about how brands are actually engaging customers during the year's biggest shopping moment.
Every Black Friday weekend stress-tests email infrastructure in ways no amount of planning can fully simulate. Volumes spike 300-400% above normal days. Everyone sends at the same time. Major providers experience brief outages. And businesses learn whether their email platform can actually handle peak demand.
This year, Bird processed 19.9 billion emails across the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend, marking a new record and nearly 20% growth year-over-year. But the more telling story isn't just the volume—it's what happened under the hood when systems were pushed to their limits, and what the data reveals about how brands are actually engaging customers during the year's biggest shopping moment.
Every Black Friday weekend stress-tests email infrastructure in ways no amount of planning can fully simulate. Volumes spike 300-400% above normal days. Everyone sends at the same time. Major providers experience brief outages. And businesses learn whether their email platform can actually handle peak demand.
This year, Bird processed 19.9 billion emails across the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend, marking a new record and nearly 20% growth year-over-year. But the more telling story isn't just the volume—it's what happened under the hood when systems were pushed to their limits, and what the data reveals about how brands are actually engaging customers during the year's biggest shopping moment.
Bird's Black Friday 2025 stats at a glance
Weekend Volume & Growth (Nov 27-Dec 1)
19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend
19.76% year-over-year growth
6.5 billion emails on Black Friday alone (+18.63% YoY)
5.8 billion emails on Cyber Monday (+20.25% YoY)
Infrastructure Performance
Black Friday peak: 347,678 messages per second
P99 performance: 181,118 msg/sec (Black Friday)
Average throughput: 52,000+ messages per second
Delivery Speed (Global)
1.04 seconds average time to first delivery attempt
2.00 seconds at P75
4.29 seconds at P95
Reliability
Zero customer-facing incidents across the entire weekend
Automatic recovery from external provider outages
Weekend Volume & Growth (Nov 27-Dec 1)
19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend
19.76% year-over-year growth
6.5 billion emails on Black Friday alone (+18.63% YoY)
5.8 billion emails on Cyber Monday (+20.25% YoY)
Infrastructure Performance
Black Friday peak: 347,678 messages per second
P99 performance: 181,118 msg/sec (Black Friday)
Average throughput: 52,000+ messages per second
Delivery Speed (Global)
1.04 seconds average time to first delivery attempt
2.00 seconds at P75
4.29 seconds at P95
Reliability
Zero customer-facing incidents across the entire weekend
Automatic recovery from external provider outages
Weekend Volume & Growth (Nov 27-Dec 1)
19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend
19.76% year-over-year growth
6.5 billion emails on Black Friday alone (+18.63% YoY)
5.8 billion emails on Cyber Monday (+20.25% YoY)
Infrastructure Performance
Black Friday peak: 347,678 messages per second
P99 performance: 181,118 msg/sec (Black Friday)
Average throughput: 52,000+ messages per second
Delivery Speed (Global)
1.04 seconds average time to first delivery attempt
2.00 seconds at P75
4.29 seconds at P95
Reliability
Zero customer-facing incidents across the entire weekend
Automatic recovery from external provider outages
Scale that powers the industry
To understand what 19.9 billion emails means operationally, you need to look beyond volume to request rates. Bird's infrastructure handled average throughput of over 52,000 messages per second throughout Black Friday, with the 99th percentile sustaining 181,000 messages per second and peak bursts reaching 347,678 messages per second.
Cyber Monday showed similar performance: 51,780 average messages per second, with P99 at 165,687 and peaks hitting 268,723.
These numbers matter because they represent not just Bird's direct customers, but the infrastructure powering some of the industry's largest marketing platforms. When the world's largest senders trust their own customers' campaigns to your infrastructure, performance isn't optional.
The companies sending through Bird, whether directly or through platform partners, collectively represent some of the world's most sophisticated marketing operations. Their campaigns kept working because the underlying infrastructure scaled seamlessly from normal operations to peak demand without degradation.
To understand what 19.9 billion emails means operationally, you need to look beyond volume to request rates. Bird's infrastructure handled average throughput of over 52,000 messages per second throughout Black Friday, with the 99th percentile sustaining 181,000 messages per second and peak bursts reaching 347,678 messages per second.
Cyber Monday showed similar performance: 51,780 average messages per second, with P99 at 165,687 and peaks hitting 268,723.
These numbers matter because they represent not just Bird's direct customers, but the infrastructure powering some of the industry's largest marketing platforms. When the world's largest senders trust their own customers' campaigns to your infrastructure, performance isn't optional.
The companies sending through Bird, whether directly or through platform partners, collectively represent some of the world's most sophisticated marketing operations. Their campaigns kept working because the underlying infrastructure scaled seamlessly from normal operations to peak demand without degradation.
To understand what 19.9 billion emails means operationally, you need to look beyond volume to request rates. Bird's infrastructure handled average throughput of over 52,000 messages per second throughout Black Friday, with the 99th percentile sustaining 181,000 messages per second and peak bursts reaching 347,678 messages per second.
Cyber Monday showed similar performance: 51,780 average messages per second, with P99 at 165,687 and peaks hitting 268,723.
These numbers matter because they represent not just Bird's direct customers, but the infrastructure powering some of the industry's largest marketing platforms. When the world's largest senders trust their own customers' campaigns to your infrastructure, performance isn't optional.
The companies sending through Bird, whether directly or through platform partners, collectively represent some of the world's most sophisticated marketing operations. Their campaigns kept working because the underlying infrastructure scaled seamlessly from normal operations to peak demand without degradation.
What speed actually means for marketers
Raw throughput tells only half the story. Delivery speed determines whether your Black Friday email reaches customers while they're still shopping or after they've already bought from a competitor.
Bird maintained an average time to first delivery attempt of 1.04 seconds across the BFCM weekend. The 75th percentile hit 2 seconds, and even the 95th percentile—representing the slowest 5% of sends—delivered in 4.29 seconds.
These metrics matter because abandoned cart recovery and flash sale campaigns operate on tight windows. When a customer abandons their cart at 2 PM, sending a recovery email at 2:15 PM captures them while intent is high. Sending that same email at 4 PM because your infrastructure queued for two hours? You've probably lost them.
Consider the practical impact: across 19.9 billion emails, maintaining sub-2-second median delivery times means the difference between reaching customers at the moment of peak intent versus missing the window entirely. For time-sensitive promotions—flash sales ending at midnight, limited inventory alerts, cart abandonment recovery—those seconds compound into millions in potential revenue.
Raw throughput tells only half the story. Delivery speed determines whether your Black Friday email reaches customers while they're still shopping or after they've already bought from a competitor.
Bird maintained an average time to first delivery attempt of 1.04 seconds across the BFCM weekend. The 75th percentile hit 2 seconds, and even the 95th percentile—representing the slowest 5% of sends—delivered in 4.29 seconds.
These metrics matter because abandoned cart recovery and flash sale campaigns operate on tight windows. When a customer abandons their cart at 2 PM, sending a recovery email at 2:15 PM captures them while intent is high. Sending that same email at 4 PM because your infrastructure queued for two hours? You've probably lost them.
Consider the practical impact: across 19.9 billion emails, maintaining sub-2-second median delivery times means the difference between reaching customers at the moment of peak intent versus missing the window entirely. For time-sensitive promotions—flash sales ending at midnight, limited inventory alerts, cart abandonment recovery—those seconds compound into millions in potential revenue.
Raw throughput tells only half the story. Delivery speed determines whether your Black Friday email reaches customers while they're still shopping or after they've already bought from a competitor.
Bird maintained an average time to first delivery attempt of 1.04 seconds across the BFCM weekend. The 75th percentile hit 2 seconds, and even the 95th percentile—representing the slowest 5% of sends—delivered in 4.29 seconds.
These metrics matter because abandoned cart recovery and flash sale campaigns operate on tight windows. When a customer abandons their cart at 2 PM, sending a recovery email at 2:15 PM captures them while intent is high. Sending that same email at 4 PM because your infrastructure queued for two hours? You've probably lost them.
Consider the practical impact: across 19.9 billion emails, maintaining sub-2-second median delivery times means the difference between reaching customers at the moment of peak intent versus missing the window entirely. For time-sensitive promotions—flash sales ending at midnight, limited inventory alerts, cart abandonment recovery—those seconds compound into millions in potential revenue.
When the Internet breaks (and you don’t)
The real infrastructure test during BFCM isn't handling your own volume—it's handling what happens when major providers experience issues.
Both Yahoo and Gmail experienced brief outages during the Black Friday weekend. For brands and platforms, these outages could cascade into customer-facing problems: messages bouncing, campaigns failing, teams scrambling to understand what's happening.
Bird's infrastructure handled these outages without customer impact. When providers came back online, systems detected the recovery within minutes and automatically resumed delivery. Messages that could have been lost were simply queued and sent as soon as providers were ready to receive them.
The result: zero customer-facing incidents across the entire BFCM weekend, despite external provider issues affecting the broader email ecosystem.
The real infrastructure test during BFCM isn't handling your own volume—it's handling what happens when major providers experience issues.
Both Yahoo and Gmail experienced brief outages during the Black Friday weekend. For brands and platforms, these outages could cascade into customer-facing problems: messages bouncing, campaigns failing, teams scrambling to understand what's happening.
Bird's infrastructure handled these outages without customer impact. When providers came back online, systems detected the recovery within minutes and automatically resumed delivery. Messages that could have been lost were simply queued and sent as soon as providers were ready to receive them.
The result: zero customer-facing incidents across the entire BFCM weekend, despite external provider issues affecting the broader email ecosystem.
The real infrastructure test during BFCM isn't handling your own volume—it's handling what happens when major providers experience issues.
Both Yahoo and Gmail experienced brief outages during the Black Friday weekend. For brands and platforms, these outages could cascade into customer-facing problems: messages bouncing, campaigns failing, teams scrambling to understand what's happening.
Bird's infrastructure handled these outages without customer impact. When providers came back online, systems detected the recovery within minutes and automatically resumed delivery. Messages that could have been lost were simply queued and sent as soon as providers were ready to receive them.
The result: zero customer-facing incidents across the entire BFCM weekend, despite external provider issues affecting the broader email ecosystem.
What marketers actually sent (and what worked)
Beyond infrastructure performance, the 19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend reveal compelling patterns in how brands engage customers during peak shopping moments.
In a sample analysis of over 4.2 billion Black Friday emails from nearly 7,000 unique brands, clear patterns emerged about what actually drives performance when everyone is competing for attention.
The winning formula: explicit Black Friday branding + specific discount percentages + urgency signals + strategic emoji use, all kept under 40 characters for mobile visibility.
Key findings from the analysis:
Black Friday branding dominated: Emails with explicit "Black Friday" mentions generated nearly 2x the volume efficiency, accounting for 38% of all Black Friday email volume
50% off was the clear winner: Half-off emerged as the psychological sweet spot across all discount levels tested
Strategic emoji use paid off: The black heart emoji (🖤) became the unofficial symbol of Black Friday 2025, with campaigns using emojis generating 38% of total volume
Urgency multiplied impact: Only 10% of emails used urgency tactics, but they generated 18% of total volume—1.8x higher than average
Mobile-first length won: The optimal subject line length was 21-40 characters, ensuring full visibility on mobile devices
Industry approaches varied significantly. Retail brands deployed aggressive 50-70% discounts with heavy urgency messaging, while SaaS companies focused on annual plan discounts and travel brands emphasized future booking incentives.
Want the complete breakdown? We analyzed every discount strategy, emoji choice, and urgency tactic that drove performance. Read our full analysis of what 4.2 billion Black Friday emails send on Bird reveal about what works.
The data reveals that clarity consistently outperformed cleverness. Straightforward discount messaging combined with Black Friday branding and a single strategic emoji drove the highest volume across nearly every industry segment. For marketers planning 2026 campaigns, these patterns provide a benchmark for what resonates when competition for inbox attention peaks.
Beyond infrastructure performance, the 19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend reveal compelling patterns in how brands engage customers during peak shopping moments.
In a sample analysis of over 4.2 billion Black Friday emails from nearly 7,000 unique brands, clear patterns emerged about what actually drives performance when everyone is competing for attention.
The winning formula: explicit Black Friday branding + specific discount percentages + urgency signals + strategic emoji use, all kept under 40 characters for mobile visibility.
Key findings from the analysis:
Black Friday branding dominated: Emails with explicit "Black Friday" mentions generated nearly 2x the volume efficiency, accounting for 38% of all Black Friday email volume
50% off was the clear winner: Half-off emerged as the psychological sweet spot across all discount levels tested
Strategic emoji use paid off: The black heart emoji (🖤) became the unofficial symbol of Black Friday 2025, with campaigns using emojis generating 38% of total volume
Urgency multiplied impact: Only 10% of emails used urgency tactics, but they generated 18% of total volume—1.8x higher than average
Mobile-first length won: The optimal subject line length was 21-40 characters, ensuring full visibility on mobile devices
Industry approaches varied significantly. Retail brands deployed aggressive 50-70% discounts with heavy urgency messaging, while SaaS companies focused on annual plan discounts and travel brands emphasized future booking incentives.
Want the complete breakdown? We analyzed every discount strategy, emoji choice, and urgency tactic that drove performance. Read our full analysis of what 4.2 billion Black Friday emails send on Bird reveal about what works.
The data reveals that clarity consistently outperformed cleverness. Straightforward discount messaging combined with Black Friday branding and a single strategic emoji drove the highest volume across nearly every industry segment. For marketers planning 2026 campaigns, these patterns provide a benchmark for what resonates when competition for inbox attention peaks.
Beyond infrastructure performance, the 19.9 billion emails processed across BFCM weekend reveal compelling patterns in how brands engage customers during peak shopping moments.
In a sample analysis of over 4.2 billion Black Friday emails from nearly 7,000 unique brands, clear patterns emerged about what actually drives performance when everyone is competing for attention.
The winning formula: explicit Black Friday branding + specific discount percentages + urgency signals + strategic emoji use, all kept under 40 characters for mobile visibility.
Key findings from the analysis:
Black Friday branding dominated: Emails with explicit "Black Friday" mentions generated nearly 2x the volume efficiency, accounting for 38% of all Black Friday email volume
50% off was the clear winner: Half-off emerged as the psychological sweet spot across all discount levels tested
Strategic emoji use paid off: The black heart emoji (🖤) became the unofficial symbol of Black Friday 2025, with campaigns using emojis generating 38% of total volume
Urgency multiplied impact: Only 10% of emails used urgency tactics, but they generated 18% of total volume—1.8x higher than average
Mobile-first length won: The optimal subject line length was 21-40 characters, ensuring full visibility on mobile devices
Industry approaches varied significantly. Retail brands deployed aggressive 50-70% discounts with heavy urgency messaging, while SaaS companies focused on annual plan discounts and travel brands emphasized future booking incentives.
Want the complete breakdown? We analyzed every discount strategy, emoji choice, and urgency tactic that drove performance. Read our full analysis of what 4.2 billion Black Friday emails send on Bird reveal about what works.
The data reveals that clarity consistently outperformed cleverness. Straightforward discount messaging combined with Black Friday branding and a single strategic emoji drove the highest volume across nearly every industry segment. For marketers planning 2026 campaigns, these patterns provide a benchmark for what resonates when competition for inbox attention peaks.
Infrastructure as competitive advantage
Most marketing platforms treat infrastructure as a commodity—something to abstract away or outsource. But BFCM 2025 demonstrated that infrastructure performance directly impacts marketing outcomes.
When your platform can maintain sub-2-second delivery times while processing 347,000 messages per second, your abandoned cart emails reach customers while they're still shopping. When systems automatically handle provider outages without requiring manual intervention, your campaigns run uninterrupted while competitors scramble.
This performance matters equally whether you're a brand sending directly through Bird or a large marketing platform leveraging Bird's infrastructure for your customers. The architectural decisions that enable this scale—distributed systems design, intelligent routing, direct provider relationships—become table stakes for enterprise marketing operations.
Most marketing platforms treat infrastructure as a commodity—something to abstract away or outsource. But BFCM 2025 demonstrated that infrastructure performance directly impacts marketing outcomes.
When your platform can maintain sub-2-second delivery times while processing 347,000 messages per second, your abandoned cart emails reach customers while they're still shopping. When systems automatically handle provider outages without requiring manual intervention, your campaigns run uninterrupted while competitors scramble.
This performance matters equally whether you're a brand sending directly through Bird or a large marketing platform leveraging Bird's infrastructure for your customers. The architectural decisions that enable this scale—distributed systems design, intelligent routing, direct provider relationships—become table stakes for enterprise marketing operations.
Most marketing platforms treat infrastructure as a commodity—something to abstract away or outsource. But BFCM 2025 demonstrated that infrastructure performance directly impacts marketing outcomes.
When your platform can maintain sub-2-second delivery times while processing 347,000 messages per second, your abandoned cart emails reach customers while they're still shopping. When systems automatically handle provider outages without requiring manual intervention, your campaigns run uninterrupted while competitors scramble.
This performance matters equally whether you're a brand sending directly through Bird or a large marketing platform leveraging Bird's infrastructure for your customers. The architectural decisions that enable this scale—distributed systems design, intelligent routing, direct provider relationships—become table stakes for enterprise marketing operations.
What this means for 2026
BFCM 2025 wasn't just about handling record volume—it was about proving that infrastructure performance directly enables marketing effectiveness.
The 19.76% year-over-year growth in email volume reflects both Bird's expanding customer base and the broader shift toward sophisticated lifecycle marketing at scale. As brands continue consolidating their marketing stacks and platforms evaluate their infrastructure partners, performance under peak load becomes a critical evaluation criterion.
The platform that performs well on a Tuesday in March might struggle when Black Friday hits. The difference between "works most of the time" and "works when your business depends on it" is architectural, not incremental.
Bird's record-breaking BFCM performance demonstrated what's possible when infrastructure is purpose-built for scale: 19.9 billion emails, 347,000 messages per second, sub-2-second delivery times, zero incidents—that's not just about handling volume. It's about building systems that work when failure isn't an option.
Want infrastructure that performs when it matters most? Learn how Bird's owned infrastructure powers enterprise-scale customer engagement.
BFCM 2025 wasn't just about handling record volume—it was about proving that infrastructure performance directly enables marketing effectiveness.
The 19.76% year-over-year growth in email volume reflects both Bird's expanding customer base and the broader shift toward sophisticated lifecycle marketing at scale. As brands continue consolidating their marketing stacks and platforms evaluate their infrastructure partners, performance under peak load becomes a critical evaluation criterion.
The platform that performs well on a Tuesday in March might struggle when Black Friday hits. The difference between "works most of the time" and "works when your business depends on it" is architectural, not incremental.
Bird's record-breaking BFCM performance demonstrated what's possible when infrastructure is purpose-built for scale: 19.9 billion emails, 347,000 messages per second, sub-2-second delivery times, zero incidents—that's not just about handling volume. It's about building systems that work when failure isn't an option.
Want infrastructure that performs when it matters most? Learn how Bird's owned infrastructure powers enterprise-scale customer engagement.
BFCM 2025 wasn't just about handling record volume—it was about proving that infrastructure performance directly enables marketing effectiveness.
The 19.76% year-over-year growth in email volume reflects both Bird's expanding customer base and the broader shift toward sophisticated lifecycle marketing at scale. As brands continue consolidating their marketing stacks and platforms evaluate their infrastructure partners, performance under peak load becomes a critical evaluation criterion.
The platform that performs well on a Tuesday in March might struggle when Black Friday hits. The difference between "works most of the time" and "works when your business depends on it" is architectural, not incremental.
Bird's record-breaking BFCM performance demonstrated what's possible when infrastructure is purpose-built for scale: 19.9 billion emails, 347,000 messages per second, sub-2-second delivery times, zero incidents—that's not just about handling volume. It's about building systems that work when failure isn't an option.
Want infrastructure that performs when it matters most? Learn how Bird's owned infrastructure powers enterprise-scale customer engagement.
