Between rising customer acquisition costs and growing competition for online attention, your offer, more than ever, will determine how effective your marketing campaigns are this Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).
The good news is you don’t need to plan months in advance or slash your prices to have a successful BFCM. With this guide you can execute a profitable and creative promotion this holiday shopping season.
15 Black Friday promotional marketing ideas for your store
- Make long-distance gifting easier
- Offer a gift card with a purchase
- Curate a bundle of your products
- Gamify your Black Friday promotions
- Build Black Friday excitement with daily deals
- Offer a free gift with every purchase
- Partner with influencers to promote sales
- Donate to a cause with every purchase
- Email exclusive Black Friday promotions
- Offer referral rewards to loyal customers
- Create unique and helpful gift guides
- Create Black Friday and Cyber Monday collections
- Offer a Black Friday promotional coupon at checkout
- Use countdown timers
- Offer free shipping
Running a successful sale involves more than just planning around store traffic and profit margins. Your performance will also be determined by how creative your offer is and how you market it to potential customers.
Taking the time to execute effective Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns can be worthwhile. Just ask any of the more than 55,000 Shopify merchants who had their highest selling day ever during BFCM 2023.
While coming up with a unique sale will require some brainstorming, here are Black Friday marketing ideas you can use for inspiration.
1. Make long-distance gifting easier
The holiday season is a time for giving gifts to friends, family, and coworkers, even those who don't live nearby. More people are buying gifts online and having them shipped directly to friends and family. In fact, cross border orders represented 15% of all global orders made on Shopify stores during BFCM 2023.
You can make long-distance gifting easier for new and existing customers with gift-related upselling and cross-selling, offering gift wrapping services, personalized cards and messages, and the option to select a target delivery date for the gift to arrive.
There are several Shopify apps that can help you incorporate gifting options into your checkout flow, such as Super.
2. Offer a gift card with a purchase
One smart way to leverage gift cards is as an incentive in a promotion. When a customer purchases a certain product or makes an order above a certain threshold, they could get a free gift card for a future purchase. If you’re on Shopify, gift card support is available on all plans.
Since gift cards are only redeemed when they are used, this approach creates a win-win situation. You either get a repeat customer down the road or a new customer if the gift card is given to a friend or family member.
When shoppers do redeem the gift card, they'll likely spend more than the card's value. According to a survey by Capital One Shopping Research, 61% of consumers tend to spend an average $31.75 more than the gift card value.
3. Curate a bundle of your products
Bundling products is one of the easiest ways to provide more value to customers while increasing your store’s average order value. This is a key way to retain a healthy profit margin for your business.
You can take this idea even further with a mystery bundle containing some of your best products offered at a significant discount for those willing to buy everything. This has the added benefit of helping you clear old, or underperforming inventory.
To make the offers even more enticing, you can create tiers of bundles, like Nguyen Coffee Supply does. Offering multiple bundles and various price points could help you connect with customers who have different budgets.
You can also keep some of the items in the bundle a “mystery” and slowly reveal them on each day of the sale. By revealing the items one at a time, you can appeal to a different segment of your customers each day and drive consistent traffic and revenue throughout your entire sale period.
4. Gamify your Black Friday promotions
By incorporating gamification into your online store you can get more engagement from your BFCM campaign. Gamification comes in many forms, but there are a few approaches you can set up and easily try using Shopify apps.
Wheelio is an app that turns email collection into a fun game of chance. Your customers spin a wheel or can play a slot-machine-style game and hope to land on a big discount, for example: 30% off orders over a predetermined amount, a free gift with purchase, etc.
The game is meant to increase email and SMS opt-in rates for new visitors and re-engage your existing customers by offering a new way to save on their favorite products.
5. Build Black Friday excitement with daily deals
Keeping the momentum and excitement throughout your entire sale period is one of the most challenging aspects of an extended BFCM campaign. Successfully engaging new shoppers during a four-, five-, or even seven-day period may require you to create exclusive single-day sales for specific products.
Daily Deals, available in the Shopify App Store, can help you execute on these time-sensitive promos. You can add countdown bars to create urgency and set up a single page on your website where all your live deals can live.
If you sell several categories of products, this type of promotion creates opportunities to focus on individual segments of your customer base. Having a daily (or even nightly) deal may also improve email open rates, since each day you can send a new message that features fresh content and a limited-time offer.
6. Offer a free gift with every purchase
Even though BFCM is perhaps the most socially accepted time to put your products on sale, many brands still fear losing their luxury appeal by discounting their merchandise. An alternative way to take advantage of the holiday rush without slashing prices is to offer a gift with purchase.
Our Place was able to maintain its luxury appeal for its cookware by offering customers a mystery gift if they spent over a certain amount on their order. This helped to increase average order value, unload inventory, and engage customers who might have been on the fence about making a purchase.
A typical “gift” usually consists of a free low-cost item with every sale. You also may want to consider offering a free high-value or limited edition item with a minimum spend, which can help make your gift stand-out amidst a sea of other offers. Whatever gift or bonus you decide on, aim to create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to take advantage of the deal before it’s gone.
7. Partner with influencers to promote sales
Partnering with influencers to promote your product can be an effective way to build widespread brand awareness and trust. Done the right way, influencer marketing can also drive direct sales during your seasonal campaigns.
The key to setting up a successful influencer promotion is knowing in advance how your product resonates with their audience. Look amongst those who you’ve had some success with in the past and choose your top-performing influencer partners to promote your sale.
Creating an exclusive discount code or deal that is catered to an influencer’s followers will help personalize the offer. Additionally, having the influencer curate a bundle of their favorite products builds a more authentic connection to the products they’re promoting.
8. Donate to a cause with every purchase
Some brands choose to not run any traditional BFCM promotions at all. Instead, many of these companies publicize donating a portion or even all of their proceeds to a charity. This approach not only appeals to shoppers who don’t want to participate in the seasonal frenzy but can strengthen your messaging around corporate social responsibility.
A 2022 Shopify survey focused on BFCM trends revealed that 40% of shoppers are willing to pay extra for climate-conscious products and are even more likely to buy from brands who use sustainable practices.
The movement toward socially conscious commerce has taken off so much that it now has its own day of celebration, known online as Giving Tuesday. The Give & Grow app makes it easy to personalize donations from within a customer’s cart or on the checkout page. For example, hat maker Brixton offers customers the chance to donate to Rollin’ From the Heart, an organization that supports mentorship for at-risk and disadvantaged youth.
9. Email exclusive Black Friday promotions
People on your email list are already invested in your brand and what you have to offer. Secure a few sales ahead of Black Friday by sending out an exclusive BFCM email campaign just for your subscribers. This type of exclusive promotion incentivizes customer loyalty and provides a direct channel to reach interested shoppers.
You can offer an extra discount to your email list or give them early access to deals before your offers go out to the wider public.
Offering exclusive first-look access is a great way to create a sense of urgency and ensure valued customers feel looked after. Yolélé, which sells ready-to-cook fonio (one of West Africa’s oldest cereal grains) to wide audiences, explicitly calls out this first-chance opportunity in its email. By referring to those not on their email list as “everyone else,” Yolélé makes its customers feel exclusive.
10. Offer referral rewards to loyal customers
Word-of-mouth marketing is still a powerful way to get more business. Use this to your advantage during BFCM by rewarding loyal customers for promoting your business. For every new customer they refer, offer a reward like money off, a coupon, or points they can redeem at a later date. By incentivizing customers to refer their friends and family, you can drive sales, expand your customer base, and increase brand awareness.
This tactic also helps secure long-term customers rather than one-time sales, increasing retention rates across the board.
Learn more: What is a Loyalty Program? 4 Best Examples
11. Create unique and helpful gift guides
Creating a collection of gift guides can help shoppers find the perfect gifts, saving them time and effort while also showcasing a larger chunk of your product catalog.
Use target persona research to create gift guides for different customer segments—for example, you can create gift guides by interest, personality type, or activity. You can take it one step further and feature discounted items or bundled goods to drive sales and capitalize on holiday shopping. Luxury fashion house Chanel has product guides bundled by unique personas, for example.
12. Create Black Friday and Cyber Monday collections
Sometimes shoppers know exactly what they’re looking for on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and sometimes they need a little inspiration. By grouping together relevant items, you can highlight your best deals, attract customers, and increase sales. You can base your collections on similar items or a specific theme, or align them with your existing gift guides.
These collections tap into the excitement of BFCM and can drive impulse purchases by encouraging customers to take advantage of limited-time offers.
Art of Play combined multiple tactics with its mystery playing card collection. Not only does putting together a collection entice curious shoppers to buy, but it also introduces them to a wider selection of the brand’s product range. In addition, putting a 24-hour time limit on it creates a sense of urgency.
13. Offer a Black Friday promotional coupon at checkout
Reward customers who make it all the way to checkout with a coupon they can use to unlock even more discounts. This will give on-the-fence shoppers the nudge they need to finish their purchase and give them a little surprise at the same time.
By offering coupons that can be applied at checkout, you can entice new customers with extra savings and ensure they make it all the way to checkout. This strategy increases the perceived value of your deals and can lead to higher conversion rates.
14. Use countdown timers
Countdown timers create a sense of urgency—perfect for a limited-time event like a Black Friday sale. This sense of urgency can encourage impulse purchases and get on-the-fence shoppers across the checkout line.
Flavored water retailer Hint put a countdown on its promotion of its Cyber Monday sale. It sent a clear message to its customers: Buy now or miss out on the discounts we are offering you.
15. Offer free shipping
Shipping fees can be make or break for a new customer. In fact, many consumers expect free shipping, especially if they place an order over a certain value.
Consider offering free shipping during your BFCM sales to incentivize shoppers to buy. Alternatively, you can offer free shipping on orders over a certain value to encourage customers to add more items to their cart and boost the average order value, like clothing retailer Anthropologie does.
Plan for profit this Black Friday Cyber Monday
Deep discounts and blanket sales aren’t the only ways to motivate shoppers this BFCM.
Planning your Black Friday marketing strategy shouldn’t take as much time as you might think, as long as you’re asking yourself the right questions and setting smart, achievable goals. A successful BFCM campaign involves coming up with a standout offer and executing it in a creative way.
Taking the right steps on both of these fronts, as we’ve outlined here, will help you sell your best this holiday shopping season.
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Black Friday promotions FAQ
How do you promote a deal on Black Friday?
There are many ways to promote deals on Black Friday, including:
- Offering a free gift or gift card with each purchase
- Curating product bundles
- Gamifying your offers
- Breaking products down into daily deals
- Partnering with influencers
- Donating to a good cause
- Emailing exclusive offers
- Offering referral rewards
- Creating a gift guide
- Creating BFCM collections
- Offering a coupon at checkout
- Including countdown timers
- Offering free shipping
What are some promotional ideas for BFCM?
BFCM promotions aim to create awareness and urgency among your customers. You can:
- Offer discounts on product bundles to introduce customers to your entire product catalog
- Provide unique coupons at checkout to push on-the-fence shoppers across the finish line
- Reward customers who promote your sales to their friends and family
- Offer free shipping to customers who place an order over a certain value
- Include countdown timers to create a sense of urgency
- Partner with relevant influencers to spread the word about your promotion
