The 2025 holiday season is expected to be more competitive than ever, making Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) the defining moment for many ecommerce brands. With shoppers eager for deals and brands vying for attention, having an airtight email and SMS marketing strategy is essential.
In this blog, Anthony Gonzalez, Lifecycle and Email Marketing Manager explore actionable strategies, quick tips, and hacks to help you maximize conversions and revenue to hit your holiday marketing goals. Plus, we’ll show how Ignite Visibility’s Lifecycle Marketing Managed Services can support your brand through this busy time.
What You’ll Learn
What is BFCM?
What is BFCM, exactly? What does BFCM stand for?
BFCM, or BF/CM, is the marketing acronym for Black Friday Cyber Monday. BFCM’s meaning goes beyond a simple acronym, representing two critical holidays for businesses across all industries. It’s one of the biggest shopping seasons of the year, which is why so many brands put so much emphasis on their holiday marketing campaigns.
My Expert Opinion on BFCM Marketing
While Black Friday is just one day out of the year, it can be the jumpstart you need to funnel a ton of high-quality leads into your sales funnel. In order to do this though, you have to think beyond tried-and-true Black Friday tips. You have to consider the entire customer journey.
That’s where lifecycle marketing comes in. Black Friday is a great gateway but the value really lies in where your customer’s journey takes them next. When you’re crafting your Black Friday emails, don’t focus on just making that one sale. Focus on building a relationship with your contacts so that they continue to come back to you over and over again!
Pro Tip: Revisit your 2024 holiday marketing strategy. Are you too focused on BFCM? Are you pushing sales, sales, and more sales? Instead of focusing so much on your sales revenue for this one season, reframe your marketing so that the goal is to create long-term, loyal fans of your brand – on Black Friday and beyond!
According to TapCart, 63% of consumers are more likely to pay attention to marketing messages surrounding BFCM than any other time of the year. It’s an important time of year to get your messaging right and capitalize on the season.
However, don’t over do it! According to that same survey, 62% of consumers will unsubscribe from brand messages if they feel like they are getting too many. You have to get your marketing right for BFCM, meaning that finding that perfect balance between getting your message across without overdoing it is going to help you make the most of your upcoming 2025 holiday marketing campaigns.
By taking the right approach to BFCM marketing, you can maximize sales around the holiday season, boosting year-end revenue annually as you keep up with changing trends in your industry and among your audience.
Your Black Friday Checklist for Marketing Success
Don’t let planning out your holiday marketing strategy get too overwhelming. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you map out your messaging for the next few months.
1. Pre-BFCM Planning: Set Yourself Up for Success
Preparation is everything when it comes to BFCM marketing. The groundwork you lay in the months leading up to the holiday season will determine your success. Here are essential pre-BFCM tactics to ensure you’re ready to capitalize on the season:
- Audit Your Automations: Make sure automated email and SMS flows—such as welcome sequences, cart abandonment, and post-purchase—are optimized to handle higher traffic during the holidays. These flows will catch potential customers at key moments in their journey, especially during the 2024 holiday marketing season.
- List Growth and SMS Sign-Ups: Build your email and SMS lists early by offering enticing incentives such as early access to sales or exclusive discounts. Use pop-ups, exit-intent forms, and sign-up incentives to convert visitors into subscribers before the holiday rush.
- Start Spending Early: Push acquisition efforts in October and early November, even if ROAS seems lower than normal. Building your audience early means you can remarket during the higher traffic BFCM days when competition and CPMs spike.
2. VIP and Early Access Tactics: Reward Your Best Customers
One of the most effective ways to create excitement and drive early revenue is through exclusive offers for your VIP customers:
- Exclusive Early Access: Reward your VIPs by tying exclusive early access deals into your BCFM email marketing content. Studies show this not only increases customer loyalty but also drives high early sales. Ensure your messaging makes them feel special and part of an elite group of shoppers.
- Wishlist Incentives: Encourage customers to create wishlists ahead of the holiday season. Not only does this give you valuable data about their interests to improve your target marketing for the holidays, but it also primes them to make purchases once your holiday deals go live.
3. Creative and Personalization Strategies: Stand Out With Smart Messaging
During the BFCM period, the inboxes of consumers will be flooded with promotions. Here’s how to make sure your Black Friday emails and SMS messages stand out:
- Simplify Messaging: During the holiday rush, clear, concise messages perform best. Focus on one main offer per email or SMS to avoid overwhelming your audience. Calls-to-action (CTAs) should be prominent and easy to understand.
- Gift Guides and Personalization: Create targeted gift guides segmented by personas (e.g., gifts for him, gifts for tech lovers, etc.). Personalize your messaging based on customer behavior, such as their past purchases or wishlist items. This adds relevance to your campaigns and boosts engagement.
- Leverage Social Commerce: Integrating social commerce within platforms like Meta and TikTok reduces friction in the purchasing process. Customers can shop directly from the platform, cutting down on the steps needed to complete a purchase.
4. SMS As An Essential Channel: Drive Urgency and Conversions
SMS is becoming a key tool for driving urgency and conversions during BFCM so you should definitely consider incorporating it into your 2024 holiday marketing strategy:
- Last-Minute Reminders: SMS is ideal for sending low-stock alerts, countdown reminders, and last-minute deals. Its immediacy makes it a perfect channel for time-sensitive offers.
- Use Shortcodes for High Volume: If your SMS list is substantial, consider using a shortcode. This allows you to send high-volume messages during peak shopping days without worrying about deliverability issues.
5. Avoid Promo Fatigue: Keep Your Audience Engaged
BFCM is a marathon, not a sprint. If you bombard your audience with constant sales emails, they may unsubscribe or stop engaging. Here’s how to avoid promo fatigue without damping the excitement over your BFCM marketing strategy:
- Mix Up Your Content: Alternate between promotional content and more value-driven messages such as gift guides, customer testimonials, and UGC (user-generated content) to keep your audience engaged without overwhelming them.
- Segment by Engagement: Target customers based on their recent engagement. For example, prioritize customers who have interacted with your emails in the last 48 hours to boost your results while avoiding the risk of unsubscribes.
6. Post-BFCM Retention Strategies: Turn New Customers Into Loyal Fans
BFCM brings in a lot of new customers, but the real value lies in turning those first-time buyers into repeat customers:
- Post-Purchase Nurture: After BFCM, set up post-purchase flows to thank customers and offer personalized recommendations for future purchases. Use these flows to build long-term relationships with your new customers.
- Reduce Cadence in January: After the 2024 holiday marketing rush, ease back on your email and SMS sends to prevent an uptick in unsubscribes.
7. Omnichannel BFCM Marketing Approach: Connect With Audiences at All Critical Touchpoints
In maximizing BFCM sales, take advantage of all major channels that your target audience uses to extend your outreach and maintain consistent communications.
- Use a Strong Marketing Media Mix: There are plenty of channels you could use, from BFCM email marketing and SMS text messaging to social media and mobile apps. However, you must ensure you’re targeting only the channels that your audience actively uses to get the most from your BFCM strategies. For example, you could use emails and SMS texts to send abandoned cart reminders to shoppers to complete their purchase, creating a sense of urgency by letting them know the offer won’t last. Meanwhile, social media ads could make personalized offers targeting each audience segment.
- Create a Frictionless and Cohesive Customer Experience: In developing your omnichannel BFCM marketing strategy, make sure the customer experience is cohesive across all touchpoints. Your brand identity, including your voice and visuals, should be recognizably yours while creating a seamless experience for customers that leads to more sales.
- Incorporate Influencer Marketing and UGC: Also, in getting the most from social media and other channels, you may want to implement influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC) to optimize your BFCM strategies. Influencer partnerships could connect you with popular personalities in your niche, while unboxings, social media contests, and other strategies could produce UGC that you could then repurpose for other strategies. Also, consider working with micro-influencers who establish a stronger and more personal connection with audiences.
Bonus: Quick Tips & Hacks
- A/B Test Early: Run A/B tests in October to determine which subject lines, designs, and offers work best before the holiday rush.
- Turn Off Smart Sending: During BFCM, disable your smart sending limits to ensure your customers receive all of your promotional messages without throttling.
- Data-Driven Personalization: Use insights from your customers’ wishlist building, browsing behavior, and past purchases to tailor your emails and SMS messages for maximum impact.
BFCM Email Marketing Best Practices
If you want to learn how to retain BFCM shoppers and inspire more sales, email marketing remains one of the most essential tools.
Here are some BFCM email marketing best practices to optimize your strategy:
Personalize Your Emails
Ensure every new or existing customer receives personalized correspondence from your business. You can do so by segmenting your target audience into different groups and creating unique audience personas for each one.
Additionally, certain emails could address customers by name in the subject line and body text, further giving your emails a personal touch.
Optimize Send Times and Frequency
Choose the right send times for each email in your campaign, which will depend on when your audience is most active and likely to check their email.
Additionally, you should choose the right frequency for sending emails. Ideally, you would send about two to five emails every week to recipients. For instance, you might send a thank you email for people who sign up, along with an order confirmation email, one abandoned cart email, and another email making personalized product recommendations.
The key is to keep your audience engaged with your brand without irritating them to the point of abandonment.
With some experimentation with various emails and send frequencies, you can pinpoint how to retain BFCM shoppers more efficiently.
Ensure Deliverability and Avoid Spam Filters
You also want to maximize your emails’ deliverability by:
- Cleaning Your Email List: Make sure your BF/CM contact lists are consistently updated with accurate emails, and make it easy for people to unsubscribe if they want.
- Authenticating Your Domain: Prevent potential spoofing and other issues by verifying your domain using DKIM, SPF, or DMARC.
- Sending Valuable Emails: One fast way to end up out of people’s inboxes is by sending generic, uninteresting, or seemingly spammy emails with generic subject lines and low-quality content, which is why you should try to ensure your emails are engaging while creating a good customer experience.
- Maintaining Compliance: To further avoid issues with spam, comply with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) regulations in the US and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU.
Measuring BFCM Campaign Success
To figure out how to retain BFCM shoppers and fully optimize your campaigns, it’s important to know how to measure your BFCM strategies.
Some key metrics to monitor include:
- Revenue metrics like return on investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS), and average order value (AOV).
- User behavior metrics, from website traffic and conversion rates to average session duration and cart abandonment rates.
- Engagement and retention metrics, such as customer lifetime value (CLV), new vs. returning customer ratios, and customer satisfaction scores.
- Bounce rates, click-through rates, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) based on your goals and the platforms you use.
Using these and other metrics you track, you can identify what’s working and what needs some improvement for optimized performance.
Continually refine your strategies with A/B testing, which can run two versions of the same content piece with one differentiating element between them. Based on which performs best, you can decide on which piece to use in your official campaigns, potentially guiding the next year’s BFCM marketing efforts.
Accelerate Your 2025 BFCM Marketing With Lifecycle Marketing Managed Services
If generating captivating BFCM email marketing ideas and managing all email and SMS marketing delivery sounds overwhelming, let Ignite Visibility’s Lifecycle Marketing Managed Services take the load off your shoulders.
With our help, you’ll be able to:
- Identify and segment your target audiences
- Develop high-quality BFCM sale content for your brand
- Take full advantage of an omnichannel strategy that boosts sales
- Continually measure and optimize campaigns based on your goals
- And more!
From segmentation and automation to personalized messaging, our team can help your brand run high-performing campaigns that maximize revenue and long-term loyalty during the holiday season.
Interested in learning more or having our team of email and SMS experts conduct a complimentary audit of your program? Shoot us a message here. Let’s get your brand ready for BFCM and beyond!
