The RIGHT Way To Run Black Friday & Cyber Monday in 2025

0:00If you [ __ ] up your Black Friday, Cyber Monday strategy, you might as well just [ __ ] up your whole year. This is the most important time of the year. And so today, I'm going to be going through a strategy build out for this random brand. And I'm going to be showing you the exact offer structure, timeline, uh email and SMS execution, going through the whole entire calendar, what emails we're sending, when, what offers we're running, when, and all that good stuff

0:18so that you can apply it to your brand. So, I'm doing this all live kind of just like set this up last minute, but let's do it because I've been doing these non-stop. I work with around a hundred different ecom brands right now. This is all I've been doing is structuring these offers and analyzing what the top brands did last year. So, that is what we are going to be doing. I have this dock here which is the full blueprint uh which I my last video I posted uh was going over this and so I'm going to be referencing a lot of the things from this. But

0:43essentially to summarize Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy, what do we need to do? First thing, send a lot of email and SMS. Ads are going to be super expensive during this time period. Uh which you can see here. You can see CPMs and how it uh rises here through November. And so ads are going to be super expensive. Email and SMS are going to be your main revenue drivers and also your main profit drivers because they're very cheap compared to ads. And it's it's your list of people who already know, like, and trust you. So let's get into this. So as far as offers and

1:09structures, this is what we need to do. The main thing that we need to understand is stacking different offers for Q4. We can't just do like 20% off, run it for a weekend, and run it for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. No, that's boring. People are getting all sorts of different emails. They're getting all sorts of different things. And so what we like to do here is we want to set up and stack different offers for Q4. So we want to have different time periods with different offers. And we want to extend this season instead of just doing like a

1:35weekend thing. We don't want to do that. Let's extend this for about a month. And let's make sure we do it strategically. So the main periods that we want to hit are early access. Um this is how you're going to get your early shoppers. We're going to have a strong offer here, but not as strong as Black Friday, which we're going to run for 4 days. We're

1:49going to start it a little bit early. Um, and I'll go I'll go over this timeline and everything. Cyber Monday, uh, we're going to run that for a couple days and then we're going to go into gift giving and have specific offers for that. And then last chance holiday gifting. These are the main period. This is about a month-long push is which is what I like to do. Some brands will do they'll start on like November 1st. And so, um, it all just depends on like kind of what you're looking for. And so, we're going to go over the offer structures and everything here. Why do

2:11we want different offers? Why not just run the same offer throughout this and do like, hey, our Black Friday or our holiday sale and run it all throughout November and December? That's boring. people are going to be bored. They're looking at all sorts of different stuff. Um, all sorts of different brands are sending them offers. And so when we have different offers, when we do 20% off one week, and then we do a buy 1 get one another week and then we do a bundle offer another week is this keeps our list engaged. It's not like they're going to get bored of the same thing hitting them with the same stuff. This

2:37going to keep them engaged. It's going to create multiple different urgency peaks. If we run the same thing for a month, then we only get one chance to be like last chance. But if we have four different offers in one month, then every week we can have last chance, urgency, best deal ever, go. That's going to get a lot more sales. Uh, reactivate the buyers who didn't convert the first time. They don't like that offer, they can get another offer because different offers um for different consumer preferences. Some

2:58people convert better off percent off. Some like bundle offers, some like all this different stuff. And so we want to be able to get everybody's preferences. It's going to drive more repeat purchases. You're not going to get many repeat purchases if you just do 20% off the whole month. Somebody's like, "Oh, I already bought off 20% off. I'm not going to buy again." Whereas if you do different offers, somebody could buy the first week of November um on like a bundle offer and then you run another offer for Cyber Monday where it's like up to 50% off and that person's like,

3:21"Holy [ __ ] this is such a good deal. I'm going to buy again." So that's what we want to do and it lets you test the angles and test so you can learn for next year what your best performing ones are. Um so that's kind of what we want to do. So what we are doing is we are building this strategy for this random brand. I have no connection to them. Um I think it's pronounced OC OA maybe OC but essentially um kind of like just uh clean skincare. Um and they have all

3:44sorts of different products right here. They have tons of products um sustainability first, all that good stuff. So let's go through the offer structure and what I would do here for this brand when I'm building out the strategy. So right here we look at their products. They definitely do a lot of bundling and it looks like this is like these are strong. Like you look at the reviews, these are like big for them is doing bundles. So, we're definitely going to be doing some bundle deals for them. Um, you can see like how many how many of the bundle deals and this is what they push and like a lot of their

4:10ads are these bundles. Um, so it's definitely going to be something that we want to hit on. So, love that. We can go to their current email strategy. You can see like right now they're doing uh four free gifts and so they do tiered um tiered gifts. So, spend X amount, you get this free gift. Spend another, you get this free gift. Spend right here, you get another. I love this. Probably

4:29going to recreate this for Black Friday. This is my favorite offer structure um for the year for 2025 right now is increased gifts uh with your uh with your orders, but we'll talk about that here in a second. Um and they also have subscription which they push as well. So um let's get into it. So early access, I'm going to follow my exact guide um for the dates right here. We're going to do November 13th through 24th right here. And then uh we're going to do November 26th through 30th for Black

4:58Friday. And Cyber Monday, we're going to do these dates. And then gifting, we'll just run this whole period. So we'll do December 5th through the 21st. I'm not going to split those up. We're going to keep it just like this. Okay. So let's rock and roll. Early access. I like to do this very similar to our Black Friday offer, but let's determine our Black Friday offer first. I probably want to do a similar thing to what they just did right here and then do an added discount on top of this. So something like um so this is

5:30obviously something that's good. Bundling is good. People are buying multiple products. That's awesome. This is just proven right here with this. So what I want to do is something like this. Free gifts plus a discount for early access. So maybe early access or for Black Friday. So let's do something like 20% off plus free gifts. Um stacked free gifts. So, we're going to do spend X get X gift and then

6:00X get X gift plus Y gift. Same sort of thing here plus Y gift plus Z gift. So, something like that is what we are going to do here. So, do this discount plus these stacked free gifts gets people to place multiple orders yada yada. I won't go over the free gifts, but I think that that's a very strong structure. It's what we're running for a lot of our replenishable brands as well. And so, um, I love this. That's going to perform really well. So, now let's do the early access. So, for early access, what we want to do here is we want to do something similar to Black Friday. Um,

6:34that's what I like to do. Um, and then really hit on exclusive and early access. So, I'm actually going to copy and paste here. Push the benefit of guaranteed shipping, guaranteed stock. We will sell out. So, that's what we want to do here. Let's look at some of the other offers or let me strategize a little bit with maybe what I want to do here. Okay, I actually changed my mind because they have different offers. They have different markdowns on the site here. So, instead of doing 20% off, what I'm going to do is up to like 50% off um and then do sitewide markdowns rather

7:08than doing any discount code. I want to keep this as simple as possible for customers. Um so, we're going to do up to 50% off sitewide markdowns. And so it forces people to go to the website and go shop. And then also you have the stacked free gifts which will automatically apply as well at checkout. So I think that this is really really strong. And then for Cyber Monday we can do something similar as well. Um I will probably do let's do this. Let's do up to 50% off sitewide markdowns. We're going to keep something similar. Plus, plus why can't I do plus extra plus extra 15% off and use a discount

7:46code with code cyber. So, we're giving an even bigger discount and then maybe we get rid of this and for this period we can do something cool. Um, what kind of offer do we want to do? Maybe we'll do introduce gifting bundles. I love doing gifting bundles. We can look at like for example what Dr. Squatch did something like this. So Christmas holiday gifting bundles. I would create custom bundles and a custom landing page and collection with these sort of bundles with like clear like save x amount x amount and have a custom landing page for that. So we're going to do 50% off sitewide markdowns plus extra 15% off with code

8:24cyber. So you go to the website, you get an extra 15% off on top of this. We get rid of the gifts, but we introduce gifting bundles with uh custom discounts on each. And then ideally add holiday branding. So that's what we're going to do there um for Cyber Monday. And then gifting. What we're going to do is push gifting bundles that expire on the 21st. And we're just going to have these custom offers on the bundles on the 21st. Um, and we'll get to I'm probably going to do some sort of free shipping offer for the shipping deadlines as well, but we'll get to that

9:01in a second. Early access. So, this is what we have here. We do extra and we change these extra incentives. So, now we have bundles. And then right here, we have these gifts. So, early access. What do we want to do here? I saw that they have this loyalty program. They have this rewards program. So, I want to do something here with I want to add as an

9:19added bonus at 2x loyalty points. 2x loyalty points. until the 24th. So, what we're going to do here, we're also going to start So, we want to tease this early November third November 1st through 13th. Sign up for rewards to get 2x rewards. No 13 to 24. So, we're going to do that to try to get these people into the reward program. We're going to do 2x loyalty points. We're going to hit on this benefit of uh being early, guaranteed shipping, all that good

10:02stuff. Now, what offer do we want to do? Let's make it sort of custom right here. Do they ever do BOGO deals or anything like that? They have they do a lot of free gifts. They do these this subscription stuff. Um, and then we're going to do probably I think I probably want to do a subscription offer. Start off with something strong to get people to subscribe. So, what's a subscription offer that we can do? Um, let me think about this for a second. I love this. I want to make this like loyalty focused. So, subscribe and do extra points. You're getting double points. And then show the value of what

10:42the points are. So, I want to do 20% off subscriptions at least. Is that I want to do 20% off. I want to do 20% off subscriptions for life. So, let's do that. 20% off subscription for life. Best offer on subscription ever. So, we'll do that. Um, and then really hit on loyalty points during this period. So, at first we try to get as many people to buy on subscription and then if people don't convert off subscription during early access, then we have Black Friday for the onetime purchases and Cyber Monday as well. Love it. Perfect. This is awesome. I'm loving it. Now, I want to go to these key dates

11:21for shipping timelines. So, we have cut off right here. We are going to do add these cut off for standard shipping. So, we are going to do I want to do a free shipping offer. free shipping. Um, and do this from the 14th to the 15th. Free shipping standard. And then let's do another one. Let's do free shipping 20th through 21st for Express for the last minute shoppers. So then we'll have these custom gifting bundles. Then also what I want to do is 10% off with code

12:06GIFs. Perfect. I like this. We have a little bit of variability throughout. We have all sorts of fun stuff. I'm happy with this. I think that this is a good offer structure. We have lots of fun stuff. We're using what they've kind of done before, but upgrading it. Um, now let's get into the actual calendar and how this looks. All right. I'm going to map this out and put in like the main key dates um into these dates so that then we can build the email and SMS uh

12:32calendar. All righty, let's get to work. I put all the key dates based on our offers in here just highlighted in red. So, we have early access open. We have all this good stuff. Let me actually add the gifting period as well. Gifting open. Um and we will run that. But you can see all the key dates are right here. Now, we can start adding our emails. So,

12:54let's start off with the early access. So, 20% off subscription for life. Best offer on subscription ever. Maybe even do 30% based on I'd have to look a little bit more into the brand, but overall it's going to be a percent off subscription for life. Um, so then also double the loyalty points. Um, and so we want to get as many people into the loyalty program as possible. So, that's what we want to do leading up to this period. So, I will do an email every other day um for leading up to this uh this early access open. Um so, what I'm going to do here, I'm going to go

13:30I'm going to do email one or maybe just like email. I'm going to send an email here teasing the offer. Um email right here. last chance or it's just going to be sign up for loyalty. I'm going to do another here tease holiday offers plus sign up. And then over here, I'm just going to do some I'm going to do one more. I'm going

14:05to do just an email right here. email sign up loyalty right here. And actually what we can do here is we can adjust the messaging to be like sign up loyalty to get access to BFCM. And so that's the that's the wording we're going to say. If you want access to the best deals that we're ever going to do, got to be signed up for our loyalty program. So, push as many people to sign up to the loyalty program as possible, but we're just going to open it up to everybody. Um, and so 2x loyalty points. So, I'm going to say um I'm going to write that down at

14:47um sign up for loyalty program to get access to early access and BFCM. We're going to push that messaging, but everybody will get access to try to get as many people as possible. So, that's what we're going to do. We're going to start teasing the offers. We're going to send these emails. We're just

15:08going to do a non-discount email here. Uh, email every other day. That's usually the cadence that I like to go with. We're going to go email, email. I'm going to move this actually to right here. And then boom, we're all good. This text size is pissing me off, but I will adjust that. Okay. Now, we are going to do now we do our early access push. I'm just going to do an email

15:27every other day. Email early access. We're gonna do just EA email. We're just going to send an email every other day. I'm going to clean this up to make sure it's pretty for you in a second. Uh we're going to go here, here, and then we'll go back to back to back to end it off. And then we're all set

15:50right here. Um I like this. I'm a fan. Actually, if we want to do every other day, you should actually be here. Okay, cool. Then we just end with back toback. Perfect. Love it. Um, so we're all good here and then we go into Black Friday where I'm going to do a Black Friday teaser. We're sending a lot of emails, guys. We need to Everybody's sending a [ __ ] ton of emails in this period. If we don't send a lot of emails, we're going to be buried and people aren't going to see our messaging. So, that's what we want to do

16:21here. We Black Friday open right here. We're going to do two emails on Black Friday open. This is still going to be a busy day cuz people are still sending emails here. We're going to do one email, a Thanksgiving based email. Um, and it is going to be also highlighting the offer, but like, hey, thanks, yada yada yada. Black Friday, we're sending three emails. We're going to send three emails on Small Business Thursday and then three emails again on the Black Friday

16:49close. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. During any other time of the year, you can send an email at 9:00 a.m. and you're going to get people at 5:00 pm who are going to open that email. However, in Black Friday, you send an email at 9:00 a.m. By 11:00 a.m. that email is buried because there every brand is sending emails, a [ __ ] ton of emails, and so your stuff's just going to get completely buried. And so, I like to be super aggressive. So, that's what we're going to do here. Um, and then we're going to do two emails for the

17:14Cyber Monday period every single day. And then we're all set here. Boom. All good to go. And then we have the gifting open period. These are these are the same days. This is how our November looks like. I'm happy with it. The frequency of emails. This is my favorite. Frequency of emails. I'm going to clean this up so it's a little bit pretty. So, a little bit prettier. All right. I made it a little bit prettier. So, you can see like these little email things right here. But essentially, [ __ ] ton of emails right here. And as far as creatives, what we're doing here, um

17:41we're going to be doing uh obviously for the holiday theme stuff, I like to add a little holiday theme. Um you can add do like AI imagery um to put these like you know in snow something like that. You can use AI for this. Um you can do we can do that. Uh but for Black Friday um and what that looks like. I like to have this dark theme right here. So we can go down right through here. Sort of like dark theme stuff like this. Um this is probably what we want to do to match it to the theme here. And then Cyber Monday have like a little bit of a cyber theme

18:10here to make the emails feel special. Um it does does work. I actually AB tested this. makes it feel a little bit more special. So, that's something that we want to do. And then also, we're going to mix in a [ __ ] ton of textbased emails. So, the text based emails are the plain emails that just come, they look at text. Uh they look like text, they show up native in the inbox, in the inbox of the consumer, comes from a person. These just stand out so much. If you can send messages from the founder, they just stand out. So, you have it be from Aaron from Breeze. Um and that just

18:38stands out in the inbox rather than coming from like this corporate brand where everybody's receiving so many graphics. You can see Breeze, they crushed last year. They're one of the fastest growing brands right now. During this period, they did 11 graphic based emails and eight plain text emails. That should show you how effective they are. And our best sellers last year were these textbased emails. They stand out

18:56more. You're going to get higher opens. And it's just super simple and clear uh what the button is and how to click it. Also, design-wise, so much less bandwidth. You don't got to design. Um so, it frees up uh uh bandwidth on your team. So, we'd probably do around 60% graphic based and then about 40% uh this text based right here. So, this is what we're looking like. Now, let's go into December. I need to paste these over. Um and I will do that real quick. All right, perfect. This is what we got. Um we have our free shipping cuto offs right here. We have free shipping cut

19:27off here. Uh we have another free shipping offer that we do right here. And then we have Christmas. Um and then we have um another shipping cutoff in this time period which we'll definitely want to hit on. So, I'm actually going to add those in. Now, I'm going to go um when is the shipping cut off? So, we have the where the the hell am I? 14th to 15th and the 20th to 21st. And so, this is going to be free shipping. So, this is going to be shipping cutoff email priority shipping cutoff and it's also free shipping. So, we're highlighting

20:03that. And then also, I can't type priority shipping cutoff. And then also, we're going to have a standard shipping cutoff. And these emails are going to be absolute last chance. If you want to get these in time with standard shipping, you got to order here. Then we're going to have also one more. What's the name

20:25of the other forget what it's called? Priority on the 19th. And so, we're going to have a last little push here. Here. We'll do it on the 18th just to spread this out. Um we'll do um a what was it again? Priority priority. Oh my goodness. Then this is express. Okay, perfect. So, we

20:46have those. Those are the main events. Um this is perfect. Now, let's build like the gifting emails. I'm not going to overthink it. I'm going to again with these gifting bundles send a gifting email every other day. And we're running this until the 21st. So, this is also going to be, you know, plus last chance holiday bundles. And so, we're actually going to be pushing this in all of these emails as well. Last chance, yada yada yada. We're going to send shipping

21:16emails on this free shipping flash sale.

21:24We're going to exclude anybody who bought from these further ones. And so I'm gonna go here. Free shipping flash sale. Open. And then we're looking good here. Now we're just going to do a gifting email every other day. No need to over complicate it. I'll probably do another one here. Can't really over send during this period. That's at least my belief. We're going to get some unsubscribes, but I don't care. I'd rather really make the most out of this season. So boom. We're all set here. Um, and so now we have just like this back half here. Let's see. Do they have gift cards? Digital gift cards

22:05that we can that we can push. Um, gift cards. If you have digital gift cards, um, perfect. Let's do digital gift card push. Um, for the last couple days here. Going to do digital gift card push. Something that you could do optionally is um you could do a discount on it. Um do like 10% off. So spend $90, give a $100 um gift card to somebody. So we're going to do a last minute digital gift card push. A couple emails right here and then we're all good. And then

22:41we're going to keep things easy. Oopsies. We're going to keep things easy after Christmas and everything here. Uh maybe we'll say something like happy holidays or whatever. U but probably not. We're just going to go back to our nondisount emails with angles like new year, new you. Focus on your health in 2025. Um 2020 or 2026. 2026 is the year

23:02of you. So, we're just going to do this. And we're going to do this every other day, which is my normal cadence for emails, non-discount emails right here. And boom. That is our calendar. We are all set. That is what we're rolling with. That is our offer structure. Hopefully, that was helpful. One other thing that we do need to touch on is updating pop-ups and flows. So, what we're going to be doing here as well, let me scroll down here, is updating pop-ups for our Black Friday, Cyber Monday offers. So, let's look at their popup right now, actually, and then I'll

23:32walk you through what I would change. All right, so they have this super simple 10% off pop-up form. And so, literally all that we need to do during these periods is we want to update these pop-ups for um for just to highlight the offer. So, the reason that we do this is you're going to be getting a [ __ ] ton of traffic and this is a massive opportunity to grow your email list and you're not going to have the 10% off popup on your website because you're already giving massive discounts for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, right? And so, what we want to do is we just want

23:59to create a popup highlighting the offer and ask for their email address. So, we can keep the same popup right here, but just adjust the wording to be like Black Friday sale and then highlight the offer and then just ask for their email address. Obviously, they don't need to enter their email address to get the sale, but you're going to get such high optins because people are like, "Oh, I don't want to miss the sale. Here's my email." And then you're just massively

24:19growing your email list at this time. Then also, you're going to be able to send all the emails that we scheduled on planning out there. And so, that's what we want to do. Um, so we're going to have a different popup for the different offers. So, we're going to have an early access popup where we talk about 20 sign up for 20% off subscriptions, um, plus 2x loyalty points. That's just what this is going to say. and we ask for the email address. Then for Black Friday, we're going to say sign up for up to 50% off plus three free gifts or whatever the gift offer is. Then for Cyber

24:48Monday, we're going to change the copy again. And then boom. Then also during these periods, we need to update the flows. So for these periods, this is the flow strategy that we are rolling out. So rather than having our basic flows that we've done all year, we want to slightly update these flows. We want to tighten the time frames to really promote impulse purchases. Um, and then also just like super brief, we don't need to have super long emails of four super long flows of like four or five emails because we're sending three

25:14emails a day sometimes in this period. And so we really don't need long flows here. So what we're doing is with the with the welcome flow when people sign up for like the Black Friday offer, we need to slightly adjust our email to be like, "Hey, this is the offer." And give a little bit of info on the brand. And then same as abandonments, we want to talk about the offer, be like, "Hey, this is the best best sale you're ever going to get. Our Cyber Monday deal is x% off, yada yada yada." So, we want to update these flows and have two two emails just like literally you can see

25:37wait 20 minutes and then wait two hours and then a post purchase immediate upsell. We're going to need to slightly adjust these emails for the different offers. So, early access you're going to build out these flows and then for Black Friday you're going to pretty much do the same same layout. You're just going to change the copy and just change the discount code. No need to change the whole strategy or anything. Just change the code. So, you can see like this is what a welcome email, Black Friday welcome email would look like. Black Friday deal right here. Claim deal. It's right here. uh right at the top of the

26:01email and then a little bit of information about the brand in case they're new. Shop Black Friday. So then for Cyber Monday, literally all we're changing is this copy, Cyber Monday deal, and then just list the Cyber Monday deal and then change this copy down here to shop Cyber Monday. Same thing for abandonments right here. Forgetting something, use this code, whatever it is, Black Friday offer, and then your save safe cart. We're going to change that for uh the different periods. And so um that's really that's the whole strategy. That's everything that we're doing. If you want this doc breaking everything down, just go to

26:29wellcopy.net. /bfcm. Uh, if you go right here, then just enter your email address and then I will send you this Black Friday guide with a ton of good stuff breaking down top brands and everything. So, hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions and if you want me if you want my team to fully execute everything for you. Then you can sign up with a link in the description. Um, there's going to be a link to book a call. I'll build out this whole strategy for you. If you're an ecom brand and you book a call with us, I will build out this whole strategy

26:55for you uh for free completely. So, uh, make sure that you book a call if you're interested.