Black Friday Cyber Monday is the biggest sales period of the year, and somehow, it still manages to feel like a fire drill every single time.
But a lot of that chaos is preventable. With the right prep and the right tools, BFCM can be the period where everything you've built throughout the year actually pays off. That’s how my team at Sticky Digital, Shopify’s premier retention marketing agency, approaches it.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
1. Start earlier than you think you need to
The biggest mistake brands make is treating BFCM as a November problem. By then, you're already behind.
Confirm your promotion in September so there's enough time to build everything out properly. The goal is to have automated flows, pop-ups, and send logic ready by November 1. Think about it: you’ll inevitably need to make last-minute changes, and you want room to absorb those without scrambling.
Think of November 1 as your buffer, not your finish line. You're not saying you're done working on BFCM by November 1. You're saying: let's work together to get everything done with a few weeks to spare, so you can all breathe, re-check everything, and be in good shape when it actually matters.
2. Update every flow to match your promotion
Once you know what the promotion is, that offer needs to show up everywhere, not just in your campaign sends.
Update your welcome and abandonment flows so that anyone who signs up during BFCM gets the same promotion as everyone else. If someone opts in on Black Friday and gets a generic welcome email with no mention of the sale, that’s a disconnect. No one should feel like they're missing out on something they could have gotten from the sale itself.
Pop-ups get the same treatment. You can now schedule pop-ups to go live or turn off with a date and time setting, so you're not relying on someone to flip a switch at midnight.
3. Use Labor Day to prime your list
Here's a segmentation strategy most brands aren't running that makes a real difference come November.
During your Labor Day weekend sale, send to a larger audience than you would for a normal promotion. Yes, it will hurt deliverability in the short term. That's intentional. The goal is to get inactive subscribers to engage (to open, click, or buy) so they move into your active segments before BFCM arrives.
Someone who was sitting in a "purchased in the last two years" segment and clicks on your Labor Day email is now in an active 3-month segment by the time Black Friday rolls around. That means they'll receive more of your BFCM campaign, because they're actually considered active.
Then, spend the weeks between Labor Day and BFCM rebuilding deliverability, sending to engaged segments, and keeping your sending reputation healthy, so you're in good shape when it matters most. You want to reach as many people as you can, safely.
When BFCM actually launches, don't send messaging to your maximum list right away. If your biggest segment is active one-year subscribers who've purchased in the past two years, launch to active 6-month subscribers who've purchased in the past year instead.
Save the broadest send for the last day of BFCM. And in between, consider excluding people who've already purchased. It protects deliverability before that final send.
4. Use Klaviyo Customer Hub to reduce message fatigue
One of the real challenges with BFCM is how repetitive it starts to feel. Brands are emailing and texting constantly, showing the same products, reminding people of the same sale. Shoppers are getting slammed with the same message over and over, which makes it easy to disengage.
Klaviyo Customer Hub addresses this by giving shoppers a single place to pick up where they left off. When it's enabled, shoppers can log in and see what they've already been browsing. If someone only shops on sale, they might browse a site earlier in the year, think something's really cute, and then decide to wait. When BFCM arrives and they go back, it's already there waiting for them.
That's a more thoughtful experience. Instead of trying to push those products in every message, let Customer Hub do that work. Marketers know how well recently browsed products convert, and Customer Hub matters even more when a lot of time has passed since someone last visited.
One thing to note: shoppers do need to be signed in for Customer Hub to work, and browsing history won't persist indefinitely. If you're not sure how long the cookie window is for your set-up, confirm with your team before the sale starts.
“To prime people for the Customer Hub experience, especially if it’s one just enabled, it’s good practice to include a blurb about it in your welcome flow,” says Stefan Milicevic, strategy director at Underground Ecom, the UK’s biggest retention marketing agency.
“You can also send a series of educational campaigns to your most engaged customers on how to get the most functionality when they’re on your site,” Milicevic adds. “This will set you up for a trained, excited audience when the BFCM rush hits.”
Include a blurb about Customer Hub in your welcome flow.
5. Use K:AI Customer Agent to get support-ready before volume spikes
The same customer questions come up every BFCM. They're predictable, and that means you can prepare for them.
Look at the questions that came in most frequently last year, and build out pre-written responses for those scenarios before the season starts. That way, your team can get through the high-volume, straightforward tickets quickly and save their energy for more complex issues that actually need a person.
“Customer Agent is a very powerful, instant cross-selling and up-selling tool which you can use to maximize profits during BFCM,” says Milicevic. “Any type of sizing, returns, or color- and style-based questions open up possibilities for recommendations instead of a plain yes or no.”
Customer Agent is a very powerful, instant cross-selling and up-selling tool which you can use to maximize profits during BFCM.
For example, a shopper may ask, “Do you have this shirt in orange?” “Customer Agent can answer, 'No, but we have these two in orange, and they go well with your recent purchase event,” Milicevic explains.
It also helps that when everything is in one place, support agents can see what marketing messages a customer has received and what they've looked at on-site before they even have to answer a question. They can enter the customer experience before they respond, which makes a real difference.
Pro tip: Use Customer Agent to deliver consistent, on-brand support experiences.
6. Use Klaviyo Composer to make quick edits without pulling in design
Design teams are the potential bottleneck during BFCM. After all, designing everything takes time, and they're handling a lot at once. A small change, under normal circumstances, can interrupt their whole flow.
Composer, Klaviyo’s built-in AI marketing agent, makes it possible to make quick copy and content edits without routing everything back through creative. It won't replace a full redesign, but for minor updates like a headline, an offer, or a CTA, it means you're not waiting on a revision cycle to get something live.
That may sound small, but during BFCM, it makes a real difference.
“Take it a step further and ask Composer to draft iterations of previously top-performing subject and preview lines for your offer, so you’re more than ready to get those campaigns scheduled,” suggests Jemma Sears, digital marketing manager at Kulani Kinis, an Australian-based swimwear and clothing brand.
Ask Composer to draft iterations of previously top-performing subject and preview lines for your offer, so you're more than ready to get those campaigns scheduled.
“You can also use Composer to audit your browse, cart, and check-out abandonment flows to find any gaps before your sale goes live,” Sears says. “It may spot minor filtering and timing tweaks that you may have missed with your head down in sale prep.”
BFCM doesn't have to feel like a scramble. The brands that come out of it in good shape are the ones that start planning in September, built in room for last-minute changes, and made sure every part of the experience (flows, segmentation, support, creative) was working together. That's the work.
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