6 ways to use Klaviyo Marketing Analytics for smarter BFCM strategies

Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) presents a massive opportunity for ecommerce brands. But with so much competition for shoppers’ attention, how do you make sure your campaigns drive meaningful results instead of just adding to the noise?

The answer lies in Klaviyo Marketing Analytics. This add-on helps brands elevate their marketing with more advanced, powerful insights.
With Klaviyo Marketing Analytics, data becomes actionable insights that can transform your BFCM strategy from generic blasts into hyper-personalized campaigns that resonate with each customer segment.

As director of email marketing at SmartSites, a digital marketing agency based in the NYC metropolitan area, I began using Klaviyo Marketing Analytics with my team during BFCM 2024, with undeniable results.

Here are 6 proven ways I and other marketing leaders around the world have been using Marketing Analytics to help brands maximize their performance all year long.

1. Exclude champions during sales periods to protect profit

Your champion customers—those who purchase frequently, recently, and spend the most—don’t need additional discounts to convert.

Champions are typically customers who would’ve purchased without an incentive. They’re already loyal, they purchase at full price regularly, and they don’t necessarily need further incentive to continue doing business with your brand.

During BFCM, excluding these customers from your main discount campaigns can help prevent over-discounting. Instead of offering them the same 30% off you’re giving everyone else, consider:

• Early-access campaigns: Give champions first access to new products or limited inventory.
• Exclusive experiences: Offer behind-the-scenes content or VIP customer service.
• Value-added perks: Offer free shipping, extended returns, or gifts with purchase.

BFCM strategy pro tip: Before we started using Marketing Analytics, we had to manually create VIP customer segments and guess who to exclude. Now, RFM groups give us much more accurate data to leverage this opportunity without leaving money on the table.

Of course, there are different schools of thought here. If your brand prioritizes rewarding loyal customers over maximizing profit margins, you might take the opposite approach and give champions even better deals.

“We offer VIP discounts to loyal customers,” says Rowan Ahluwalia, head of growth and partner at Spring Media, Inc., a full-stack growth partner based in Denver, Colorado. “We also offer early deals to lapsed customers, especially those who accounted for a significant portion of BFCM revenue the year before.”

The key is to be intentional about your strategy rather than treating all customers the same.

2. Optimize your upsell flow timing based on common purchase patterns

One of the most powerful applications of Klaviyo Marketing Analytics is understanding optimal timing for up- and cross-sell campaigns. Instead of guessing when customers are ready to buy again, you can use actual purchase data to send messages at exactly the right moment.

So, if you already have an upsell flow planned, this is a great way to make sure you time it correctly over the big weekend.

A cosmetics brand SmartSites manages was selling $2 product samples so that customers could test shade ranges before committing to the full-size product. Initially, they were giving customers 30 days to use the product before sending an up-sell email.

Using Klaviyo’s product insights, we discovered that customers who purchased the full-size product typically came back within 15 days—not 30. We were missing a crucial two-week window when customers had already decided on their shade and were ready to purchase.

Product insights shows you:

• Purchase patterns: when customers typically buy again after specific products
• Product affinity: which items are most commonly purchased together
• Sequential purchases: what customers buy next after each product
• Average order value: how much customers spend when specific items are in their cart

BFCM strategy pro tip: This feature is relatively new from Klaviyo—it wasn’t in wide use for BFCM 2024. Make sure you get familiar ahead of BFCM so it can help you convert new holiday shoppers into repeat customers.

3. Use predictive timing to automate cross-sell flows

Another way Marketing Analytics really shines when cross-selling: the product analysis dashboard automatically creates two predictive profile properties for customers, including best cross-sell date and next best product.

This means that, instead of manually setting up complex conditional splits for every product category, you can now create automated flows that adapt to each customer’s behavior.

Here’s how it works: someone places an order, and instead of waiting a predetermined number of days to send a cross-sell email, Klaviyo determines the optimal timing based on:

• Individual customer behavior
• Similar customer patterns
• Product-specific purchase cycles
• Seasonal trends

The system then automatically sends personalized product recommendations at exactly the right moment for each customer.

This feature is great for triggering net new flows that you didn’t have running before.

For example, if two customers both purchase a product on Black Friday, but one typically buys skincare products and the other prefers eye makeup, they’ll receive different emails at different times. The first might get a moisturizer recommendation 15 days later, while the second gets an eyeshadow suggestion after just 5 days—all based on predictive analytics, rather than guesswork.

The automation handles complexity that used to require hours of manual set-up and constant optimization.

4. Use Marketing Analytics to engineer repeat purchases during BFCM

Of course, BFCM is the biggest shopping weekend of the year for lots of companies. But the groundwork you lay over the big weekend can also help you strengthen your customer retention in the long term.

“The insights from product timing data become even more powerful when you shift your BFCM strategy entirely,” says George Rodríguez, founder of A-Game Digital. “Most brands make a critical mistake during BFCM: they focus solely on one-time purchases instead of engineering repeat sales within the same period.”

“We advise brands to treat a first-time buyer as a lead rather than a customer,” Rodríguez explains. “You haven’t really converted them to a customer until they’ve bought for the second time. The first time they transacted with you, it might be because of a particular offer or a product.”

This shift in mindset can dramatically impact your BFCM results. Instead of celebrating just the initial sale volume, focus on creating opportunities for customers to make a second purchase during the same promotional period.

Rodríguez recommends using the natural urgency of the sales period to compress typical purchase cycles.

“Instead of that 30-day period where that second purchase may happen naturally, now we have 4 days,” Rodríguez explains. “So we’re compressing it, and we’re saying, ‘Hey, if this is something you’re going to buy again anyway, why not buy it now?'”

How to execute this strategy:

1. Use Marketing Analytics to identify products with high repurchase or cross-sell probability.
2. Create urgency messaging around the limited-time nature of BFCM deals.
3. Leverage Cyber Monday as a natural deadline to bookend the buying opportunity.
4. Focus on complementary products that naturally pair with initial purchases.

5. Create at-risk VIP rescue campaigns with emotional messaging

Not all VIP customers are created equal. Some have high monetary value but haven’t purchased recently or frequently. Marketing Analytics gives you the ability to segment these people incredibly specifically, and to discover groups like “Needs Attention” customers. And BFCM is the perfect opportunity to win them back.

These customers represent huge potential because they’ve proven they’re willing to spend significant amounts with your brand. They just need the right nudge to re-engage.

Rodríguez emphasizes the importance of emotional messaging for these high-value lapsed customers: “Be thoughtful about where they are in the customer journey and how you should speak to them,” he says. “Use all the available data and don’t be afraid to lean on generative AI to help you come up with creative, emotional messaging to re-engage them.”

An effective at-risk VIP campaign might include:

• Personalized product recommendations based on their purchase history
• Exclusive offers that feel special, not generic
• Social proof showing what other similar customers are buying
• Emotional messaging that acknowledges their VIP status and previous relationship with your brand

The key is acknowledging their VIP status while addressing why they might have drifted away. Maybe your product line has evolved, or they’ve had a life change that affects their shopping habits. Your messaging should feel like a personal invitation back rather than a desperate sales pitch.

“Emotion beats rationality every time,” Rodríguez notes. “People will buy based on emotion, and then, they’ll back it up with rational decision-making.”

6. Personalize landing pages according to RFM segments

While most brands focus on using RFM data to segment their email and SMS campaigns, forward-thinking agencies are taking personalization a step further by extending these insights to the post-click experience.

Instead of sending all customers to the same generic landing page, savvy marketers are creating personalized landing pages that speak directly to each customer segment’s unique needs and motivations.

Chip Moloney, partner at The Maze Group, a full creative strategy agency, explains how his agency approaches this advanced personalization strategy: “With RFM analysis, we identify key segments. A one-time wellness buyer slipping away needs a different landing page than a loyal high-LTV customer—and our strategy reflects that, so that they get different landing page experiences.”

First, Moloney’s team creates detailed customer profiles by analyzing review data, conducting segment analysis, and mapping customer benefits and pain points. For a single-SKU product, they might develop as many as 9 distinct personas, while multi-product brands typically focus on 2–3 core personas per product collection.

The magic happens when these personas intersect with RFM data. “We create unique landing pages so that instead of saying, ‘Hey, here’s all our offers on one landing page,’ we’re able to show offers that are relevant to a particular shopper,” Moloney says.

For BFCM, this means your VIP customers might land on a page highlighting exclusive early access or premium bundles, while at-risk customers see messaging focused on addressing their hesitations—perhaps featuring more social proof, satisfaction guarantees, or special comeback offers.

The approach requires upfront planning but delivers significant results. “We find that these types of personalized landing pages that are persona-specific can increase conversion rate by 50%,” Moloney says.

For brands new to this approach, Moloney recommends a focused roll-out strategy. “Pick the highest-value shoppers—they have the most potential value. ‘At-risk’ would be shoppers that would provide a lot of value if you bring them back.”

Moloney recommends brands start by creating 3 targeted landing pages: one for VIPs, one for at-risk customers, and one for your largest customer segment. Test these against your standard landing page experience, then gradually expand as you prove the concept works.

The long-term vision involves automation and dynamic content blocks, reducing the manual effort required to maintain multiple landing page experiences. But even the initial manual approach can deliver substantial improvements to your BFCM performance by ensuring every customer feels like your Black Friday offers were designed specifically for them.

Looking beyond BFCM

BFCM isn’t just about one weekend of sales—it’s a critical opportunity to build your retention strategy for the entire year ahead. With so many new customers discovering your brand through external marketing and increased traffic, what happens post-purchase becomes crucial for converting first-time buyers into loyal customers and brand advocates.

The data you collect during BFCM becomes the foundation for more sophisticated segmentation throughout the year.

Rodríguez reinforces this long-term thinking: “With BFCM, there are always a lot of high-fives around how many sales you got during that timeframe, but the larger goal should really be around getting two or more sales during that timeframe. How can you work that idea into your BFCM strategy?”

By implementing these strategies with Klaviyo Marketing Analytics, you’ll not only maximize your BFCM performance—you’ll also set the foundation for stronger customer relationships that drive revenue throughout the year.

Below is a list of each capability and how you can use it.