Shopify merchants sold a record $14.6 billion over BFCM 2025. Yet every year, we see store owners finish the weekend with less than they expected.
Some get tough competition from bigger brands. Others sell plenty and still lose money once discounts, ad costs, and shipping come out.
The difference is usually the Black Friday strategy behind it: who you reach before the rush, what you can afford to offer, and how quickly your store turns a visit into an order.
Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27, so there's still time. Here are the 9 proven strategies we have implemented for BFCM every year, plus a last-minute plan if you're starting late.
What Does a Good Black Friday Strategy Look Like in 2026?
A BFCM strategy is your plan for the whole Black Friday Cyber Monday window: The offers you'll run, how you'll bring shoppers in, and how your store will convert them once they land.
Your Black Friday marketing strategy (ads, email, SMS, and social) is one part of it. Store speed, checkout, support, and follow-up are the rest.
Three shifts shape every Black Friday strategy for retailers this year:
- Shoppers start early. 84% of US consumers had started holiday shopping by Thanksgiving weekend 2025.
- Mobile is the default. 70% of online orders during Cyber Week 2025 were placed on mobile devices (Salesforce).
- AI is now a shopping channel. AI and agents influenced 20% of global Cyber Week orders in 2025 (Salesforce), and Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites to grow another 130% this season.
Best Black Friday Strategies for Merchants in 2026
1. Let Your Audience Know You Before the Rush
Is your audience familiar with your brand or your products? On Black Friday, shoppers compare dozens of offers in a few hours. If they've never heard of you, a discount alone rarely wins them over.
So use October and early November to show people why your products matter to them: short demos, customer stories, creator content, and behind-the-scenes posts. Social now drives real sales, too. Social media's share of Cyber Monday revenue jumped 56.5% year over year in 2025 (Adobe).
2. Get Your Sales and Ads Campaigns Ready by Early November
The Black Friday advertising strategies we trust all start before ad costs peak. Triple Whale's BFCM 2025 data put Meta CPMs at $22.26, up about 7.8%.
That's why we build audiences in October and save peak-week budget for retargeting warm shoppers.
Here's how we would set it up:
- October: Run awareness campaigns to build warm audiences (video viewers, engaged followers, and site visitors).
- Early November: Launch an early-access waitlist to collect emails and phone numbers.
- Black Friday week: Shift most of your budget to conversion campaigns that retarget those warm audiences.
Send every click to a matching page. An ad for a jacket at 25% off should open that jacket, not your homepage.
3. Build Offers That Protect Your Margins
Deeper discounts aren't the only way to win Black Friday. Adobe expects peak discounts of up to 30% off during Cyber Week 2026, up to 21% just before Thanksgiving, and up to 14% in early November.
You don't need to match that on every product.
Do the math before you lock your offer. If a $100 product costs you $50 to make and ship, a 25% discount leaves $25. Spend $20 on ads to win that order, and you keep $5.
Offers that lift order value without gutting your margin:
- Tiered discounts: 10% off over $75, 20% off over $150.
- Free gift with purchase above a set spend.
- Bundles that pair a best-seller with a slower mover.
- A free shipping threshold set just above your average order value. For reference, the average BFCM 2025 cart on Shopify was $114.70.
4. Win Customers Back With Email and SMS
Email marketing will never go out of style, and it works best alongside SMS.
Your list is the one channel where you don't pay for every impression during BFCM week:
- Segment first. Past buyers, VIPs, new subscribers, and cart abandoners each get a different message.
- Give VIPs early access 24 to 48 hours before the public sale.
- Plan three core sends: an announcement, a reminder, and a last-chance email before Cyber Monday ends.
- Switch on abandoned cart flows before the traffic arrives, not during it.
- Put the discount code in the message so nobody has to hunt for it.
- Schedule sends for the hours your customers actually buy.
How One Stat Changed Our Client's Black Friday Plan
During BFCM 2025, we worked with a Shopify store owner who sells skincare, mostly to US shoppers. Her plan was to launch the sale at midnight and send her main Black Friday email on Friday evening, when she assumed people would be free to shop.
Then we showed her one line from Shopify's BFCM Recap for the year before that. Sales across Shopify stores peaked at $4.6 million per minute at 12:01 p.m. EST on Black Friday.
That one stat flipped her plan. She moved the main email to 9 a.m. EST, had her cart offers and free shipping bar live before 10 a.m., and froze all theme edits from Thursday night, so her store was ready when the midday rush hit instead of after it.
Shopify's 2025 numbers later showed the same pattern, with sales peaking at $5.1 million per minute, again at 12:01 p.m. EST. Now, the first thing we check with any client is when last year's orders actually came in, using hourly sales in Shopify Analytics.
5. Turn Product Pages Into Sales
Your product page should give shoppers enough confidence to buy. Add high-quality images, clear descriptions, customer reviews, and answers to common questions.
You can also use Shopify apps to add features like size guides, product recommendations, and videos to help increase conversions.
In 2026, your product page also has to work for AI shopping assistants. Shopify's Agentic Storefronts make products discoverable in ChatGPT by default, and thousands of merchants already sell through Microsoft Copilot.
These tools read your titles, specs, FAQs, and policies, so clear product data now helps you get found as well as convert.
What makes a good product page for your online store?
- A clear, SEO-friendly product title with the details shoppers search for (material, size, or model)
- Sharp product images and at least one short product video
- A detailed product description with real specs
- Call-to-action buttons (Add to Cart and dynamic checkout)
- Visible shipping costs, delivery dates, and return policy
- Customer reviews, ideally with photos
- An FAQ section that answers real buying questions
- Similar product recommendations and bundles
6. Save Your Buyer's Time As Much As You Can
When did you last check your website speed?
Test it regularly, and always after you change your store or customize your theme. On Black Friday, a slow page loses shoppers before they even see your offer.
Aim for a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds, which is Google's "good" threshold for Core Web Vitals. Test on mobile first, since that's where most BFCM orders happen. Here are the tools we use:
- Shopify's built-in Web performance dashboard in your admin
- PageSpeed Insights by Google
- GTmetrix
- WebPageTest by Catchpoint
- Pingdom Website Speed Test
Each report shows where to improve. If your store is slow, Shopify speed optimization is worth doing in October, not Black Friday week.
By adding dynamic checkout buttons to your store, you give shoppers who know what they want an express lane. Shopify supports options like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal, or you can keep it simple with "Buy it now."
Shop Pay handled 32% of orders on Shopify during BFCM 2025, and US shoppers spent $1.03 billion with buy now, pay later on Cyber Monday 2025 alone (Adobe). Make both easy to find on mobile.
7. Fix Your Cart Before Shoppers Walk Away
Roughly 70% of online carts get abandoned, according to Baymard Institute, and unexpected extra costs like shipping are the top reason. Here's what we fix first:
- Show shipping costs early, ideally right in the cart.
- Add a free shipping progress bar so shoppers can see how close they are.
- Use a slide-out cart drawer so shoppers stay on the product page.
- Offer one relevant add-on in the cart, not five.
Let your Black Friday discount apply automatically. Every shopper who leaves the cart to search for a code in their inbox is a sale you might lose.
Use Shopify's automatic discounts, or put shareable discount links in your emails and ads so the code is already applied at checkout.
8. Build Trust With Faster Customer Support
To gain more sales, your customers need to stay doubt-free while shopping on your site. Add live chat with the free Shopify Inbox app, or an AI chatbot trained on your shipping, returns, and sizing info.
Shoppers expect fast answers now: Salesforce saw customer service conversations handled by AI agents jump 55% week over week during Cyber Week 2025. The faster you clear their doubts, the more likely you are to secure the sale.
9. Plan for the Days After Cyber Monday
Your Black Friday strategy shouldn't end on November 30. BFCM brings in plenty of first-time buyers, and the real profit comes when they buy again.
Send a thank-you email with order tracking, ask for a review once the order arrives, and offer a reason to come back in December.
Best Last-Minute Black Friday Marketing Strategies
Starting late? If you have less than two weeks, skip new channels and big creative projects.
These are the best last-minute Black Friday marketing strategies I'd focus on:
- Pick one simple offer and show it in a site-wide announcement bar and pop-up.
- Email your existing list three times: announcement, reminder, and last chance.
- Turn on an abandoned cart email if you don't have one yet.
- Retarget recent visitors and past buyers instead of chasing cold audiences at peak CPMs.
- Freeze your theme a few days before Black Friday so nothing breaks under traffic.
- Run your sale through Cyber Monday, the year's biggest online shopping day ($14.25 billion in US online spend in 2025, per Adobe).
Implement these strategies ASAP
Black Friday rewards the stores that are ready before the first shopper arrives. Discounts get attention, but readiness gets the order.
Before November 27, answer these five questions honestly:
- Does my audience already know my brand?
- Does my offer still make a profit after ad costs and shipping?
- Can a shopper go from ad to paid order on a phone in under a minute?
- Will my main email land before the midday peak?
- Can I answer a customer’s question in minutes, not hours?
Every “no” is where your Black Friday strategy starts. Fix those first.
Read more BFCM guides
- Black Friday Ideas for Small Businesses
- Cyber Monday vs. Black Friday: Which is Better for Shopify Stores?
- Best Black Friday Landing Page Examples for Better Conversions
FAQs
1. What are some creative Black Friday marketing strategies?
Give shoppers a reason to pick you beyond a bigger percentage off. A mystery discount revealed at checkout, a free gift above a spend threshold or a BFCM-only bundle stands out in a crowded inbox and protects your margin better than a deeper cut.
2. What are some Black Friday advertising strategies that work best?
Build warm audiences in October with video and creator content, then move most of your budget to retargeting in Black Friday week. With Meta CPMs at $22.26 during BFCM 2025 (Triple Whale), send every click to the exact product the ad shows.
3. What are the best last-minute Black Friday marketing strategies that get results?
Stick to channels you already own: one clear offer in your announcement bar, three emails to your list, and an abandoned cart flow. Then keep the sale running through Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of 2025 with $14.25 billion in US spend (Adobe).
4. What are some of the best Black Friday strategies for retailers?
Protect your margin with tiered discounts, bundles, or gifts instead of deep sitewide cuts, and make mobile checkout fast, since 70% of online Cyber Week 2025 orders came from mobile devices. If you also sell in-store, run Shopify POS on the same inventory as your online store and offer in-store pickup.
About the author
Sagarika Das
Sagarika Das is a content writer with a passion for the ecommerce world. She crafts engaging, SEO-friendly content that helps online businesses connect with customers and grow.