Every year, your inbox turns into the same loud, crowded mess around late November.
“50% off everything.” “Lowest prices of the year.” “Last chance!”
If you’re an ecommerce marketer, you already know how hard it is to stand out when every brand is shouting the same thing. And shoppers? They tune most of it out.
So the brands that win Black Friday aren’t always the ones with the steepest discounts. They’re the ones with smarter Black Friday marketing strategies.
Today, I’ll walk you through 9 of my favorite Black Friday marketing strategies, with real examples from ecommerce brands, and break down exactly what makes each one work (and how you can borrow it this year).
What Are Black Friday Marketing Strategies?
Black Friday marketing strategies are the tactics ecommerce brands use to attract, engage, and convert shoppers during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend.
They go beyond slashing prices. The best ones focus on growing your audience before the sale, standing out during it, and keeping the momentum going long after the weekend ends.
Done right, they turn one busy shopping weekend into your most profitable stretch of the year.
1. Build Your Black Friday Email List Early
You already know email is one of your most reliable channels for Black Friday sales. But email only works if you’ve got a list of people who actually want your offers.
So start weeks before the big day. Launch a popup that invites new visitors onto a VIP list for early access to your Black Friday deals, like the one above.
Notice the sense of exclusivity and the benefit-driven CTA button: “Unlock Early Access.” It’s not asking for a signup. It’s promising a reward.
Want to convert even more visitors? Sweeten the deal with an extra discount, free shipping, or a small gift, depending on your margins.
Then, as Black Friday gets closer, reward those early subscribers with genuine VIP access, like Buffy does here.
Buffy warns early subscribers that bestselling colors and sizes are already going, then hands them a “Shop Early Access” button before the public sale. Scarcity plus exclusivity is a powerful combination.
With Drip, you can capture those leads with onsite popups (powered by Sleeknote technology, included on every plan) and drop them straight into a workflow that emails them before, during, and after Black Friday. The list you build now is the revenue you bank later.
2. Schedule Your Popups for Every Goal
If you read this blog often, you’ve heard me say it before. But I’ll say it again: popups are for so much more than collecting emails.
Want to guide visitors to your best deals? Reduce cart abandonment? Flag your shipping cutoff dates? There’s a popup for each of those jobs, and you can schedule them all in advance.
Look at the popup above. It puts the offer (“Buy 3 and Pay for 2”) and the code front and center the moment visitors land, so nobody misses the deal.
Shoppers have too many options and too little patience during Black Friday. Well-timed popups get your most important message in front of the right person at the right moment. Set them up now, and they run on autopilot all weekend.
3. Experiment With Your Timing
Thousands of stores fight for attention on Black Friday. And after the hundredth “50% off” email, shoppers go numb.
So this year, try shifting your timing, slightly or dramatically, so your message doesn’t get buried.
How early or late should you go? That’s up to you.
There are creative ways to reach customers before the ecommerce giants exhaust them. And Wool and the Gang knows this better than anyone.
Instead of waiting for Friday, they kick off their sale on Thursday and own the day by calling it “Black Thursday.” That gives them a head start in inboxes (and wallets).
Most Black Friday emails are just a sale announcement and a scarcity CTA. Wool and the Gang goes further in the rest of the email.
They recommend specific products that are on sale, so you know exactly where to start. It’s a smart way to convert subscribers who don’t know what to buy.
Kate Spade is another early bird worth studying.
Sent from the playful sender name “kate spade surprise,” they trigger your impatience by launching a surprise sale before Black Friday even starts.
With the value-driven CTA “Shop Gifts $100 and Under,” they pull you to the site, where they can cross-sell and upsell you later. Smart, given that Black Friday shoppers are hunting for a bargain.
4. Make Your Sale Memorable
Your store might have the best deals and the fastest shipping. But so does every competitor claiming the same thing.
Black Friday makes that noise even louder. Shoppers have to compare stores, build wishlists, and race to buy before items sell out.
That’s your opening to be the brand they remember. See how Glossier does it.
Before Black Friday, they send subscribers an email that helps them “be prepared.” On top of listing the sale’s start date and time, they give you an “Add to Cal” button.
Tap it, and the event lands right in your calendar, complete with a link back to their site so you don’t have to think twice.
With one helpful-looking email, Glossier stays top of mind during the busiest weekend of the year. It’s simple, and any brand can do it.
5. Use the Element of Surprise
Surprises are fun. They’re also a powerful marketing tool when you use them well.
While most stores kill the surprise by stuffing their discount into the subject line, a few smart brands do the opposite. Happy Socks is one of the best.
Instead of telling you the exact percentage off, they tease the offer and ask you to get excited because a discount is coming.
Numbers usually perform well in subject lines. But hiding them can be the smarter play on Black Friday, because curiosity is what gets the open.
Open it up, and you find out you’re getting 40% off plus free shipping.
Death Wish Coffee uses surprise too, but takes it a step further.
They send a curiosity-packed email that reads “Here’s your random gift code.” You get a unique code, but you only learn what it’s worth at checkout.
So you click through, add products to your cart, and head to checkout just to see your surprise. It’s a clever way to lift opens, clicks, and visits all at once.
6. Offer More Than a Discount
You might think Black Friday is all about discounting. You’re partly right.
Shoppers do expect a real deal during the weekend. But a discount isn’t the only thing you can give them.
Black Friday is a great time to add free shipping, easy returns, or bonuses on top of the sale. Estée Lauder does this well.
They pair their Black Friday deals with their loyalty program and hand out 2x points on purchases. That grows their loyalty membership and their sales at once. (And it costs them next to nothing.)
Shinesty takes a different angle and rewards Black Friday purchases with free gifts.
Rather than gifting everyone the same thing, they scale the free gift to how much you spend, and attach a dollar value to make it feel real.
It’s a brilliant way to lift average order value during Black Friday without eating into your margins.
7. Make Your Subject Line Stand Out
Black Friday isn’t a battle of discounts. It’s a battle of attention.
And to win it, your first job is simply getting noticed in a crowded inbox. That starts with the subject line.
While a typical Black Friday inbox looks like the screenshot above, smart brands play a different game.
Here’s the twist: you can stand out even if you’re not running a Black Friday sale at all. Look at this subject line from Away.
Positioning their products as better than a Black Friday markdown, Away hints that they’re skipping the sale.
Subscribers expect a sale announcement, so Away surprises them by explaining why they don’t discount. That makes their pricing feel intentional, and ties good prices to high quality all year long, not just one day.
8. Redefine Black Friday
Most brands run Black Friday the same way. Discount the products, send a promo email, wait for sales.
But the brands that win redefine the weekend entirely. They turn it into something that’s unmistakably theirs.
Death Wish Coffee is a great example. Instead of a generic last-day email, they rename the close of their sale “Cyber Mug Day.”
The subject line and the playful “Hey procrastinator, we see you” copy turn a tired last-chance email into something fun. They even throw in a free heat-reactive mug on orders over $75, which nudges average order value up.
Your brand voice doesn’t have to be that cheeky to pull this off. Black Goat Cashmere proves it with a quieter twist.
They rename Black Friday “Black Goat Day,” a simple play on words that ties the sale straight to their brand. The subject line earns the open, and the deal runs across four days, not one.
Whichever route you take, the lesson is the same: give the day your own spin, and you stop competing on discount alone.
9. Tease Your Next Campaign
Black Friday starts long before Friday. And it doesn’t end on Friday either.
To get the most from the holiday shopping season, tease your next big day the moment Black Friday wraps. Cyber Monday, Christmas, a local holiday, whatever’s next.
Man Crates does exactly that. When Black Friday ends, they tease their Cyber Monday sale with a funny, can’t-miss tone, letting you know they’ve extended the deals into “the” online shopping day of the year.
That converts the prospects they couldn’t close on Friday, and lifts their total weekend revenue.
Madsen Cycles takes the same idea in a different direction.
Instead of jumping on the Cyber Monday bandwagon, they celebrate Small Business Saturday, which fits their brand better. They tell you that even if you missed the Black Friday sale, you’re still in luck, then introduce the family behind the business.
Whatever your next campaign is, tease it after Black Friday so you can win back the shoppers who didn’t buy. Just don’t overdo it. Stretch a sale too far and you’ll lose credibility.
Wrapping Up
The brands that win Black Friday rarely have the biggest discount. They have the smartest Black Friday marketing strategies, built around standing out, adding value, and showing up at the right moment.
Pick a few of these to test this year. Build your list early, get creative with timing, surprise your subscribers, and keep the momentum going past the weekend.
Just remember: trigger urgency and scarcity, but don’t push your shoppers into panic mode like everyone else does.
Ready to put this into action?
Drip makes it easy to grow your list with onsite popups, then turn those subscribers into buyers with email workflows that run before, during, and after Black Friday. Start your 14-day free trial today, no credit card required.
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