Black Friday 2025: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Win the Peak Season
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner, marking the peak of the shopping season. For e-commerce businesses, this period can be either a golden opportunity for record sales or a challenging time marked by intense competition.
To truly win this peak season, you need a robust, well-thought-out strategy that goes beyond simple discounts.
We’re looking at key ways to ensure that your brand stands out, connects with customers, and drives revenue.
Identify your website visitors
Understanding your website visitors is an essential part of any Black Friday strategy. You need to fully know who your users are and how they behave, so you can create personalised experiences.
In today’s age, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to pinpoint all users. This is due to a range of factors, including guest checkouts, cookie blockers, and incognito browsers. However, this doesn’t mean that all hope is lost.
With identity resolution, you can link together customer data, including:
- Email address
- Phone number
- Device ID
- Location
- Browser
- Behavioural data (visited pages, browsed items)
- Purchase history
This information is extremely valuable, especially during Black Friday. Identity resolution allows you to form a complete user profile. With this, you can successfully recognise all your website visitors, regardless of whether they are anonymous or not.
Expand your database
Your email and SMS marketing lists are invaluable assets, especially during peak seasons.
Ahead of Black Friday, consumers are researching upcoming deals as early as October. This presents the perfect opportunity to expand your database, as website traffic increases.
The larger and more engaged your database, the wider your reach and the greater your potential for sales.
- Prominent sign-up forms: Create clear and compelling website forms in visible locations - pop-ups, banners, and dedicated landing pages.
- Incentivise subscriptions: Offer an enticing reason for visitors to sign up. This could be a discount for new customers, exclusive access to BFCM offers, or early bird notifications
- Referral programmes: Encourage existing customers to refer friends in exchange for mutual rewards.
Remember, quality over quantity is always better. While growing your list, ensure that you're attracting genuinely interested subscribers.
Warm up your customers
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year, and anticipation is always high. That’s why it’s crucial to lean into the excitement to keep your customers on tenterhooks for what’s to come.
While many retailers begin Black Friday communications around November 1st, there’s no hard or fast rule on what’s considered too early.
Common ways to build Black Friday awareness include:
- Teasers and sneak peeks: Hint at upcoming deals and give just enough information to build excitement.
- Early access offers: Reward your most loyal subscribers with early access to selected deals before the general public. This creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency.
- Customer Testimonials: Share positive reviews and testimonials to build social proof and trust.
Ultimately, the goal is to re-engage your audience and excite them about what's to come. This warm-up period ensures that when Black Friday arrives, your customers are primed and ready to buy.
Leverage data-driven personalisation
In today’s saturated market, generic messages can get lost, especially during Black Friday. This makes personalisation a necessity, and no longer a luxury. By leveraging data to personalise customer interactions, every experience is relevant and engaging.
The more relevant the experience feels to individual customers, the more likely they are to engage and convert.
Dynamic product recommendations
Tailor products based on browsing history, past purchases, and what other customers are buying.
Personalised email content
Use dynamic content within emails to display relevant offers or trending products that other users are purchasing.
Behavioural emails
Set up automated emails based on specific actions, including cart abandonment or browse abandonment.
Segment offers
Don't send the same offer to everyone. Offer an exclusive discount to loyal customers or a specific discount on a product that has been viewed frequently by a customer.
Website personalisation
Display relevant content based on user behaviour to personalise the customer journey.
Create an omnichannel marketing strategy
Modern consumers interact with brands across multiple touchpoints. An effective strategy integrates all your channels to create a consistent user journey.
An omnichannel approach means that no matter how or where a customer interacts with your brand, they receive the same experience. This is crucial for maximising conversions and building long-term customer loyalty.
Consistent Messaging
Ensure that messaging and offers are consistent across your website, email, social media, and physical stores.
Leverage all channels
Your customers are no longer in just one place, so it’s important to meet them where they already are. To maximise every opportunity, communicate across a broad range of channels, including:
Ready to take on Black Friday with confidence? Talk to us today to see how SaleCycle can help you drive more conversions during the peak season.
You can also discover our Black Friday Survival Guide to help you navigate this high stakes period like a pro.
