Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2026 is won in summer, not November.
The brands that come out ahead aren't the ones that hustle hardest in the final two weeks. They're the ones that spend late summer building connected infrastructure across email, mobile, social, and customer service, so that by the time Black Friday arrives, the work is already done.
In my role as senior account manager at Melusine Studio, a Klaviyo Platinum Master Partner agency, my team and I work across Klaviyo's full feature set for our clients. This is the BFCM checklist we actually follow, organized into 5 phases in the order you'd work through them.
Phase 1 (July–August): Diagnose
Know where you stand before you build anything. Every strategic decision that follows should be grounded in what your data already shows.
Audit your list and flow health
- Audit suppression rates, bounce rates, and engagement tiers. Build your engaged and unengaged segments now, before the season adds noise.
- Review every active flow that will fire during peak season. Flag flows with high volume but low revenue, and optimize open, click, and conversion rates before things get busy.
Define your performance benchmarks
- Use Marketing Analytics to pull revenue per recipient (RPR) by segment and by channel, plus top-selling products and categories via Catalog Insights. Build your BFCM strategy around what already converts, not assumptions.
- Pull your 2025 BFCM benchmarks: RPR, open rates, click rates, conversion rates, and total revenue. You can't measure improvement without a baseline.
Phase 2 (August–October): Build your audience infrastructure
Every subscriber you add now is a subscriber you own on Black Friday. This phase is about growing and qualifying your lists across every channel and touchpoint before peak season begins.
Choose your mobile channels wisely
Mobile isn't one size fits all. The right channel depends on where your customers are and how they prefer to communicate.
Broadly, consider using:
- SMS: This channel is great for short, direct messages that drive immediate action, like early access alerts, limited-time offers, shipping updates, and last-chance reminders. Use it in markets like the US and the UK.
- RCS: This channel is image-rich and allows you to insert products directly into messages, and it doesn't require an app install. Use it in Android-heavy markets. If you're going this route, start brand verification and sender ID registration now. The process takes 6–8 weeks.
- WhatsApp: This channel is great for conversational, relationship-led messaging, from early access and personalised recommendations to order support and post-purchase follow-ups. Use it in markets where text message engagement is lower, including MENA, Southeast Asia, and parts of Europe.
If you're running multiple mobile channels, use AI-powered channel affinity to route messages to the channel each individual subscriber is most likely to engage with next.
Collect channel-specific mobile consent and channel preferences
- Run a BFCM-specific preference update in August and September campaigns for subscribers who’ve already opted in on specific mobile channels Frame it as, "Tell us how you want to hear about our BFCM deals." Let subscribers declare a preference for email, text messaging, WhatsApp, mobile push, or a combination, tag responses as a custom profile property, and use them to build your channel routing segments.
- For subscribers who haven't declared a preference, use channel affinity as the tiebreaker.
- In August and September campaigns, show a mobile consent dynamic block exclusively to email subscribers who haven’t yet opted in to text messaging, WhatsApp, or mobile push. Combine a utility hook (track your order) with a seasonal one (early BFCM access) to keep friction low.
- Use Klaviyo Customer Hub to show a sign-up prompt to email subscribers who haven't yet opted into text messaging, WhatsApp, or mobile push. The simplest approach is the show/hide block strategy: surface a sign-up block to those who aren't yet subscribed. For teams with developer resources, it's also possible to build a one-click sign-up using integrated automations and webhooks, so that cookied visitors get added to the list without typing in their email address. But the plain old sign-up form works too. Don't let perfect get in the way of done.
Convert social engagement into owned subscribers
Klaviyo Social makes it possible to grow your owned list directly from Instagram. Here's how we use it:
- Starting in October, run BFCM teaser content featuring upcoming products, hints at the offer, and "Something big is coming" messaging. Use a single CTA on every post and story: “Join the early access list.”
- Set up Instagram auto-replies. When someone comments on a post, Klaviyo sends a DM automatically, captures consent in that first conversation, and adds them to a dedicated BFCM early access list separate from your main list. Keeping it separate makes your metrics clean and your targeting precise.
Treat social opt-ins differently: earlier access, shorter copy, more exclusive framing.
The organic-to-owned loop in practice:
- Organic social posts drive comments.
- Auto-reply DM captures consent in the first message.
- Email welcome flow nurtures.
- After purchase, customer joins a social retargeting exclusion list.
You can also build lookalike audiences from your highest-value Klaviyo segments and run pre-season paid acquisition campaigns on social platforms that feed back into owned list growth.
Phase 3 (September–October): Set up your platform infrastructure
This is the engine room. Everything you configure here runs automatically during BFCM: segmentation, personalization, flow logic, and even customer service. Build it before peak so it works without you.
Configure Klaviyo Service before October
- Train K:AI Customer Agent on BFCM-specific scenarios before October 15: shipping cutoffs, discount code issues, return windows, and product FAQs. If you configure it in November, it's learning while your inbox is at its busiest.
- Build a triage system in Klaviyo Helpdesk with BFCM-specific ticket tags so your team can prioritize faster.
- Configure Customer Hub as a personalized touchpoint throughout BFCM, not just a support page. Here’s how:
- Before purchase: Surface product FAQs, shipping timelines, and return policy details using dynamic content blocks.
- After purchase: Swap those blocks for care instructions and usage recommendations specific to what the customer bought.
- For incentivized buyers: Surface the customer's active BFCM discount code so they can always find it without contacting support.
- For loyalty members: Show current points balance post-purchase.
One feature we're particularly excited to use this season is the ability to add a personalized top banner on the website via Customer Hub. You can show different banners to different segments using show/hide logic, and make sure one person never sees multiple banners. For example:
- VIPs see an early-access banner.
- At-risk segments see an exclusive discount code.
- Loyalty tier segments see offers tailored to their status.
Build your segmentation architecture
- Build and validate all RFM segments before October, not on the morning of Black Friday.
- “Champions” and “Loyalists” are your early-access segments. Exclude them from paid retargeting entirely. You're already reaching them through owned channels.
- “Needs attention” and “At risk” segments represent your best re-engagement opportunity of the year. Use a single CTA and a stronger incentive, with no full campaign cadence. Sync both segments to Meta for matched advertising in October so they have brand recall before peak season.
- Build a segment of customers with an active open customer service ticket and exclude them from all promotional sends during BFCM. A customer waiting on a response should never receive "Cyber Monday ends tonight."
Configure your automated flows
- Shorten the timing of your first abandoned cart message to send after 1–2 hours. Send the second message after 6–8 hours. During BFCM, buying decisions happen in hours, not days.
- Shorten the time window for your post-purchase up-sell. The sale is still live and intent is at its annual peak. Try messaging like "Here's what people who bought this also picked up," and use Marketing Analytics to include the next best product recommendation dynamic block.
- QA every flow that will fire during peak. Check filters, discount code application, and Smart Sending settings. Do this in October, not on Black Friday morning.
Phase 4 (October–November): Implement
Your infrastructure is in place. This phase is the tactical implementation layer: campaign sequencing, personalization in sends, and post-purchase conversion.
Map out your pre-BFCM send sequence
2–3 weeks before, send your VIP early-access email and SMS, plus a wishlist nudge and a DM to your social early-access list. Frame the VIP send as a reward. They get it first because they've earned it.
Personalize with loyalty data and dynamic blocks
In BFCM campaigns, use show/hide blocks keyed to loyalty membership status:
- Enrolled members: Show current points balance, member benefits, and the BFCM offer with exclusive benefits.
- Non-members: Show a loyalty sign-up block alongside the offer, highlighting what they get by joining.
Surface personalized product recommendation blocks in emails and Customer Hub:
- Champions: new arrivals
- Re-engagement segments: products similar to previous purchases
- New social subscribers: highest-converting entry-point products
Go live BFCM weekend
- Black Friday: Send simultaneous email and SMS messaging to engaged segments, using RCS or WhatsApp for international segments.
- Cyber Monday: Use a fresh angle with a variation of whatever discount you ran, shaped around a specific goal. If you want to grow average order value, for example, consider product bundles. The biggest mistake is treating Cyber Monday like a repeat of Friday or “Our sale has been extended.”
Phase 5 (November–December): Measure
Before the season started, you defined your benchmarks. Now you’ll know in advance what numbers trigger a mid-season adjustment.
Monitor these metrics in real time during BFCM
- List growth
- RPR
- Click rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- SMS opt-out rate
- Helpdesk ticket volume
Take stock post-BFCM (30 days out)
The post-BFCM period shapes your January strategy. Track:
- New customer conversion rate
- New customer retention rate
- Repeat purchase rate
- Channel contribution breakdown: email vs. SMS vs. WhatsApp vs. RCS
A few quick retention moves worth prioritizing:
- Send a new customer welcome flow variant specifically for BFCM first-time buyers.
- Request reviews at 7–10 days post-delivery.
- For first-time BFCM buyers who aren't loyalty members, send an enrollment push in early December framed around the gifting season. They just experienced your brand at its most generous. The window to convert that into a long-term relationship is 2–3 weeks.
Start building your structural BFCM advantage in the summer
Klaviyo's newest capabilities (Customer Agent, K:Social, RCS, WhatsApp, predictive channel affinity, RFM segmentation) aren’t add-ons to an email strategy. When you use Klaviyo’s newest capabilities together, BFCM becomes an implementation exercise, not a scramble.
The checklist above is how you use Klaviyo to get there before November.
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