10 key steps in building a solid Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy

For consumers, not much compares to kicking off the holiday season by waiting in line at your favorite store.

But these days, the most exciting shopping weekend of the year is digital.

According to Adobe’s Holiday Shopping Trends report, 2023 Black Friday online sales hit a record $9.8 billion—a 7.5% increase from 2022. Meanwhile, shoppers spent $12.4 billion online for Cyber Monday, up 9.6% from 2022.

While these numbers don’t account for inflation, one thing is clear: BFCM is a huge opportunity for retailers to drive online sales.

With so much noise and competition during the busiest shopping weekend of the year, you need a solid email and SMS marketing strategy for BFCM to get ahead of the pack.

Here are 10 key steps to building out your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing strategy this year.

1. Start planning earlier than you think you need to

“Start earlier” may sound like cliché advice for the Black Friday Cyber Monday planner, but it’s useful if you want to decrease your reliance on paid ads and discounts to carry you through the holiday season.

Megan Edwards, email marketing manager at Tecovas, starts her BFCM preparation in July or August. “The sooner we can get things to creative, and the more rounds of edits that they go through—it’s just going to make the campaigns better,” she explains.

In these early stages of planning, Edwards nails down:

• Optimal campaign send times
• Planned campaign cadence
• Segmentation strategy
• Quantity of creative deliverables needed

2. Analyze your past BFCM data

Don’t start from scratch. Look at the data from your previous year’s SMS campaigns and email campaigns to see which products, promotions, and channels drove the most sales and engagement, and iterate on the strategy.

Since BFCM goals typically center on sales and revenue more than engagement or brand awareness, you’ll want to focus on marketing metrics like:

• Revenue per recipient
• Conversion rate
• Placed order rate
• Return on investment (ROI)

Not sure where to start putting your past BFCM data to good use? Take a look at how these successful brands approached learning from their pasts—and drove serious Black Friday season revenue as a result:

• After facing issues with product shortages in previous years, Jones Road Beauty announced their limited Black Friday drop 4 days earlier—and shifted their marketing strategy to better prime their audience base. The result: 167% YoY growth in Klaviyo-attributed BFCM revenue in 2023.
• Early in November 2023, Beekman 1802 was behind revenue goals, and competitor sales were launching left and right. Using historical data from the prior 3 BFCMs, the artisanal beauty brand identified which products and messaging consistently performed best around the holidays and personalized marketing for various segments—driving 49% YoY growth in total BFCM ecomm revenue in 2023.
• POPFLEX’s 2022 BFCM strategy worked well, but for 2023, they wanted to incorporate more SMS and more targeted messaging. By incorporating giveaway-powered personalization, hybrid email and SMS flows, and FOMO messaging around key BFCM moments, the lifestyle brand grew ecomm revenue from their BFCM sale 91% YoY in 2023.

Craving even more ideas? Learn 11 ways to optimize your email campaigns through testing and experimentation, or read tips and tricks from Klaviyo Community Champions on how to audit your Klaviyo account.

3. Decide on your BFCM offers early—and test them

Black Friday Cyber Monday is known for steep discounts, but that doesn’t mean they’re your only option—and remember, higher discounts do not necessarily equate to higher conversions.

To select the right offer, look at your target audience and profitability potential and identify the deals that would appeal to your customers the most without hurting your bottom line. Here are a few BFCM offers to consider:

• Free gift: Move some stock by giving it away for free, either as a free gift with purchase or a BOGO deal. People love a freebie, sometimes even more than a discount.
• Contest: Run some numbers—if you can’t afford a discount, maybe you can afford less than that in the form of a prize value.
• Holiday product launch: If you can’t launch a whole new product, consider releasing a new color or size for an existing product to keep things fresh.
• Dollar-amount discounts: Instead of offering a steep percentage off, offer a specific dollar-amount discount, such as $10, $20, or $50, for items priced $100 or more.
• Free shipping: Offer free shipping for orders over a certain dollar threshold to increase average order value and boost sales.
• Bundle deals: Use these deals for cross-selling or up-selling. Offer discounts when customers buy complementary items together, such as shampoo and conditioner.
• Early-bird deals: Give VIP customers early access to BFCM deals to increase loyalty and reward your best customers.
• Partnership offer: This option requires some planning, but if you can team up with a brand that has a similar audience, you may open yourself up to a new pool of customers for Q4.
• Donation incentive: If it makes sense for your brand, offer a slightly smaller discount but match it with a charity donation. Communicate the impact your customers have had after BFCM is over.

To determine which approach makes the most sense for your brand, start planning your BFCM deals, promotions, and discounts well in advance—ideally the first week of August. Starting this early before the holiday weekend will give you more time to carefully curate your offer and develop your Black Friday marketing strategy.

We recommend choosing a few BFCM promo strategies that might work for your business, and then A/B testing them over Labor Day weekend to see which drive the most engagement and sales.

4. Clean your subscriber lists

Email deliverability is always important, but it’s especially important around BFCM, when your bottom line depends on your messages landing in subscribers’ inboxes.

To avoid bounces and spam complaints and generally keep your email deliverability in tip-top shape heading into the holiday sales season, clean your email and SMS lists and let go of inactive or unengaged subscribers.

In both cases, make sure not to rule out people who bought last BFCM, as they might be seasonal shoppers.

5. Establish good segmentation practices

Your email subscribers aren’t like your children—you’re allowed to have favorites. You’re also expected to treat them differently, so don’t skip out on developing bespoke offers and messages based on the signals people send you.

If you’re able to start planning for Black Friday Cyber Monday in August, you can take steps to segment your overall email list into smaller groups of people most likely to buy during BFCM.

“The one thing I never recommend is blasting folks you haven’t spoken to in years over BFCM,” says Loretta Doria, director of strategy, Ragnarok. “BFCM does present some opportunity to win back more recently churned customers, but I’d still recommend keeping your segments tight so that you don’t end up in a deliverability ditch.”

What does a “tight” segment look like? For Black Friday Cyber Monday, focus on the following 3 segments:

• Engaged segment: If you’re emailing a few times per week, your engaged list is people who have opened or clicked on an email within the last 30–60 days. If you’re only emailing a few times a month, you may want to expand this list to 90–120 days.
• VIP segment: You may define your VIPs based on dollar value, number of purchases, or subscription length, depending on your business model. Every brand defines their VIP list differently, but these are basically your most loyal customers—and note that VIP programs are especially well suited for SMS.
• Previous BFCM purchasers segment: These are people who converted on Black Friday Cyber Monday emails or texts in previous years.
• RFM segment: You can use segments that have recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) properties to target customers of certain groups, such as targeting champion customers with requests for product reviews, or targeting at-risk customers with entry-level or lower-cost items.

6. Plan your marketing creative in advance

From email subject lines to CTA language, here are a few tips to keep in mind as you’re lining up your BFCM marketing creative:

• Email subject lines: Inboxes are particularly crowded over Black Friday weekend. Think about ways to make your emails stand out by using words and phrases that inspire urgency, such as “limited time” or “only a few left.”
• Countdown timers: Instill a sense of FOMO by including a countdown timer that shows how much time remains until the end of your sale.
• GIFs: Use animated GIFs of relevant deals or products to add movement and visual interest to your emails, while making your BFCM offer stand out.
• CTA design: Place your CTAs above the fold so your subscribers don’t have to scroll to see them. Use bold, contrasting colors and large, easy-to-read fonts to make them stand out and entice readers to click on them.
• CTA copy: Make sure your CTA text accurately reflects your BFCM offer—for example, if your promotion includes a freebie, “Claim my gift.” Or, since BFCM offers are frequently time-bound, your CTA might contain phrases like “This weekend only.”
• Personalization: In addition to segmentation, personalize your messages to your audience by using dynamic content blocks or personalized product recommendations.

7. Determine your BFCM message cadence and schedule

Dedicate the first two weeks of September to figuring out the frequency and timing of your BFCM campaigns and building out your calendar.

Remember, too: the question of how often you should email your segments about Black Friday Cyber Monday is at least partially answered by segmentation itself. If you want to isolate people who are most interested in VIP access to your BFCM offer, for example, send your opt-in email as early as mid-October.

With that in mind, here’s a sample cadence you might want to adapt for your business:

• October, week 3: email and SMS BFCM VIP early access opt-in
• October, last week: season kick-off email to highlight discounted overstock
• November, week 1: gift guide email
• November, week 2: free shipping weekend email
• November, week 3: VIP early access to bundle promotion or escalating discount
• Black Friday to Cyber Monday: Black Friday Cyber Monday announcements (but note that many brands are sending these prior to Thanksgiving)
• Tuesday: extended final sale
• December, week 2: last chance for guaranteed holiday delivery

A note on timing: for the weeks before Black Friday Cyber Monday, we recommend emailing your most engaged email lists on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Email your VIPs between Tuesday and Thursday before Black Friday.

Communicate every day between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but not necessarily to your entire list. Use engagement-based data (opens and clicks) to determine how often to send to each group. More engaged means more sends; less engaged means less sends. For campaigns that need to be sent to all recipients, make sure to turn off Smart Sending.

8. Adopt a multi-channel promotion approach

While email and SMS are effective BFCM marketing channels, adopt a multi-channel marketing approach that includes:

• Investing in paid advertising well ahead of BFCM: Leads on platforms like Google Ads and Meta Ads get more expensive the closer you get to BFCM, so it’s worth spending more on paid ads earlier.
• Growing your lists using social: If you already have a big following on social, use lookalike audiences to guide those followers to email and SMS—your owned channels, which give you more control.
• Expanding mobile app usage: If your brand has a mobile app, consider making certain products only available in your app and sharing special offers via push notifications.
• Integrating social proof into your marketing: By incorporating social proof, like product reviews and user-generated content, at the start of a relationship with a buyer, you make community a cornerstone element in the buying process. You might, for example, reward frequent reviewers with discounts and incentives that motivate them to buy and review even more items—and do it via SMS to create urgency.
• Determining and honoring channel preferences: “Track which subscribers are converting from certain channels and base your segmentation strategy on those preferences,” recommends Melissa Matusky, manager and implementation consultant at Klaviyo. “You’ll refine your messaging strategy and save money.”

9. Use AI to streamline processes and personalize experiences

According to Klaviyo’s 2024 AI trends report for ecommerce marketers, AI has helped 44% of ecommerce marketers save time and increase their efficiency.

Here are some ways you can use Klaviyo AI in your BFCM strategy:

• Speed up content creation: Draft effective BFCM email subject lines in no time, generate email content just as easily, and instantly spin up Black Friday SMS campaigns and suggested responses.
• Predict customer behavior: Forecast next order date, customer lifetime value, spending potential, time between orders, churn risk, and more, and use this data to tailor your BFCM marketing tactics to maximize customer retention and revenue.
• Experiment and optimize: With features like forms display optimization and advanced A/B testing, you can learn what works and what doesn’t—and put adjustments on auto-pilot, so your marketing efforts are constantly improving.

Need more ideas? Learn exactly how to use Klaviyo AI this BFCM, with specific use cases and instructions.

10. Prepare for post-BFCM sales and customer retention

Your BFCM marketing strategy doesn’t end on Cyber Monday. Plan for post-BFCM sales and customer retention strategies to keep the momentum going by:

1. Offering post-BFCM deals and promotionsto entice customers who missed out on BFCM deals to purchase.
2. Launching a loyalty program to encourage repeat purchases and turn BFCM shoppers into loyal customers.
3. Sending personalized thank-you messages and offering exclusive discounts or freebies as a token of gratitude to enhance the customer experience and encourage customers to come back.
4. Requesting reviews or user-generated content, or sending surveys to ask for customer feedback—and using the insights to improve your products and services moving forward.
5. Setting up virtual contact cards in your SMS welcome flow so your customers can save your contact on their phone.

Create a successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategy with Klaviyo

With a powerful marketing automation platform like Klaviyo, you can roll out high-converting BFCM campaigns and track their success with ease.

Klaviyo helps you drive success with:

• Powerful segmentation: Group your audience based on demographics, behavior, purchasing habits, and more to send the perfect BFCM offer to the right customers.
• Customizable templates: Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop email builder allows you to create stunning, on-brand BFCM promotion emails. Choose from a rich library of pre-built templates or design your own from scratch using your brand images, colors, and logo.
• In-depth reporting: Access up-to-the-minute data on your BFCM campaign click rates, ROI, average order value, and revenue generated. Monitor and compare data across campaigns to identify areas for improvement and use the data to optimize your future campaigns.
• 350+ integrations: Connect Klaviyo with your ecommerce platform, CRM, social media channels, and other marketing tools to streamline your workflow, track customer data, and send targeted BFCM messages across all customer touchpoints.

Related content

• 2024 Black Friday Cyber Monday SMS marketing guide: 7 steps to success
• 10 digital BFCM tactics we already know customers love
• 10 expert-tested best practices for Black Friday marketing