With just a few weeks until Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), digital marketers should be finalizing plans to maximize the year’s biggest online spending season.
Here are three must-haves for BFCM to focus on right now:
1. Lock in Your Website & User Journey
Focus on stability and speed right now, rather than adding new features. A small technical issue can lead to significant lost sales.
Since over 50% of Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) traffic comes from mobile devices, start by checking your mobile site speed. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to evaluate it. To avoid crashes during busy periods, check with your hosting provider to ensure your server can handle 3 to 5 times your usual peak traffic without issues.
Your main banners and important product images should be optimized, and you should remove unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files to reduce code size. Also, enable browser caching for returning visitors.
Next, go through the entire user journey and checkout process. Test it on both desktop and mobile as a new customer using guest checkout, and as a logged-in VIP. Look for any technical problems or copy issues that might create friction or slow down the checkout process.
If you sell products, verify all discount codes and shipping offers (such as “Free shipping over $50”) to make sure they’re working. Also, review all of the payment options your store accepts (such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and BNPL) to verify that they are functioning correctly.
Finally, confirm that your conversion pixels (Meta, Google, TikTok) are firing properly and verify that the links in your main navigation and product pages are functional, as well as your ad and email links. Ensure they direct users to the correct BFCM landing pages.
2. Optimize Email & SMS Campaigns
Your owned channels are your best and most affordable way to drive conversions during high-CPM periods.
Even though time is short, you can still schedule early access messages, which are often the most effective BFCM emails.
However, avoid sending the same message to everyone. Update the first email in your Welcome Flow to highlight the BFCM sale and create a sense of urgency. Also, make sure to adjust your Abandoned Cart flow to promote the BFCM deal instead of ongoing discounts.
Build, test, and schedule your entire promotional sequence — including teasers, launch day, last chance, and Cyber Monday — now based on audience segments that you finalize.
Run quick A/B tests on subject lines to find out which one performs best for your primary launch email.
If you are using SMS, prepare short and urgent messages for key moments, like “The sale is LIVE!” or “Last 3 Hours!” SMS has high open rates and effectively cuts through the Black Friday email noise.
3. Finalize Ad Creative & Prepare Your Budget
Media buying is about to become extremely competitive. Be ready to scale and pivot quickly.
All of your ad creatives — videos, images, banners — should be uploaded to your preferred platforms and approved already. Focus on creative that emphasizes urgency and the value of the discount.
Remember, acquisition costs will be too high to rely solely on cold traffic. Dedicate a significant portion of your budget to retargeting warm audiences that have visited your site in the last 30-90 days.
Plan for potential throttling or exhaustion of daily budgets due to hyper-inflated CPMs on Black Friday morning. Have a clear, monitored plan for budget increases for your top-performing campaigns to ensure they don't stop running during peak hours.
Finally, review your thank-you page and post-purchase confirmation emails, and incorporate one-click upsells or referral programs to increase the Average Order Value (AOV) of new BFCM customers.
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