616: The Black Friday Playbook We’re Using This Year

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:26 — 58.0MB)

The Black Friday ecommerce playbook that actually protects margins for a small brand looks almost nothing like what the big retailers are running. Instead of stacking 40 percent off sitewide with expensive top-of-funnel ads, the winning move for most independent stores is a shorter sale window, single-item flash discounts, bundles that lift average order value, free gift-with-purchase, and a live selling event to earn attention without cutting price. That is what my co-host Toni Anderson and I are running across our stores this year, and in podcast episode 616 we walked through every piece of it.

Toni runs marketing at a homeschool curriculum brand and I run Bumblebee Linens, so between us we cover a giftable ecommerce business and a non-giftable one. Both play Black Friday differently, and the contrast is where the useful lessons live.

Below is the full breakdown of what we are doing this year, what we are intentionally avoiding, and the math behind why deep discounts crush most ecommerce brands.

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Key takeaways

• Black Friday is no longer one day. Sales start in early November and stretch through Cyber Monday, so a small brand should stagger, not stack.
• Every percentage point of discount has to be paid back in incremental sales. A 25 percent discount usually needs sales to nearly double just to break even after rising ad costs.
• Black Friday customers acquired via ads are typically less sticky, so you cannot lean on lifetime value to justify losing money on the first order.
• Bundles, free gift-with-purchase, and flash free shipping windows lift AOV and engagement without cheapening the brand.
• A one-time live selling event with the owner on camera can drive Black Friday sales while feeding the ad algorithm and email list at the same time.
• Keep coupon codes stupid-simple (“ADD10”, “FREE”) because customers cannot spell “MOTHER25” on a phone at 11pm.

Why the traditional Black Friday ecommerce playbook is broken

The traditional Black Friday ecommerce playbook broke because the whole calendar got pulled forward. Retailers now start pushing holiday promotions in early November, Amazon runs Prime Day events in October, and Target and Walmart run competing “days” against Amazon at the same time. By the time the actual Friday after Thanksgiving arrives, shoppers have already been trained to buy for weeks.

Sam’s Club had Christmas decorations up on November 1 this year. That is the new normal.

The consequence for small ecommerce brands is that a single-day 40-percent-off sitewide sale no longer stands out. You are one of 200 emails hitting the inbox that morning, competing with retailers who can lose money on any single SKU because they will make it back on volume.

How much a Black Friday discount really costs your ecommerce margins

A Black Friday discount really costs your ecommerce margins two ways at once: the price cut itself, and a spike in ad costs to acquire the customer you just discounted to. Both hit the same P&L line. When you stack them, a promotion that looks like a revenue win can actually be a profit loss.

Here is the math we run before agreeing to any percentage-off promotion. Assume 60 percent of your customers come from paid ads, which is normal for a lot of ecommerce brands. Your cold-traffic ads on Black Friday cost more because every advertiser is bidding at once.

Now layer on a 25 percent discount. On top-of-funnel ads to new customers, a 2x return on ad spend is a healthy baseline. With a 25 percent discount stacked on top, a 2x ROAS ad set is usually breaking even at best, and often losing money on that first purchase.

That is only fine if the customer comes back. Toni and I both see the same pattern: Black Friday customers acquired through paid ads are often less sticky. They bought a gift for someone else, or they bought because the ad promised a promotion, so they behave less like your core customer and repeat at lower rates.

The rule of thumb: 15 percent discount needs to double sales

The rule of thumb we use is that a 15 to 20 percent Black Friday discount typically has to nearly double sales just to break even once you add rising ad costs and lower repeat rates. If your gross margin is 50 percent, a 20 percent discount can wipe out most of the profit on that order. If your margin is 80 percent, you have more room, which is why paper-based and digital products can afford deeper cuts than physical goods with heavy COGS.

What Steve and Toni are doing differently for Black Friday this year

What Toni and I are doing differently for Black Friday this year is spending most of our energy on tactics that lift order value and engagement rather than tactics that cut price. Discounts are a piece of it, but they are not the headline. The headline is bundles, gifts, live selling, and a shorter, tighter promotional calendar.

Here is what is actually on each of our plans this season.

Toni: 12 Days of Christmas flash sale, bundles, live selling, free gift-with-purchase

Toni’s brand runs a 12 Days of Christmas sale with one heavily discounted flash item each day for 12 days. This year, she pulled last year’s sales data on every item and adjusted this year’s lineup based on what actually converted. The winners get a small pre-sale price increase before the discount, and the losers get rolled into bundles to move inventory and lift AOV.

The other big piece is her monthly “exclusive” free gift-with-purchase, which she now escalates over Black Friday. Every month has a limited free gift you cannot buy anywhere else, and during Black Friday the free gift is stacked with a custom tote bag for orders over 100 dollars. That $100 threshold does the heavy lifting on AOV once everything is discounted.

New this year: a Friday-before-Black-Friday live sale hosted by the brand owner on Facebook and YouTube, with 10 giftable products on a dedicated landing page. More on that below.

Steve: retargeting-only ads, bundles, free shipping flash windows, live-sale test

At Bumblebee Linens I dial down cold ads over the holidays and lean almost entirely on retargeting plus email and SMS. Wedding linens are a one-time purchase for most buyers, so paying a premium for cold Black Friday clicks rarely pencils out.

I stagger promotions across the window instead of running one big sitewide sale. Free shipping flash windows, single-day bundle promos, and one specific email tactic (below) do most of the work. Our biggest discount stays around 15 percent because the math above holds: any deeper and we would be selling more and making less.

I am also going to try a live selling event this year, borrowing directly from what Toni is doing.

Ecommerce bundling strategy: lift AOV and offset weaker margins

An ecommerce bundling strategy lifts average order value and offsets weaker margins by pairing a lower-margin hero product with a high-margin add-on and offering a small discount on the pair. The bundle still feels like a deal to the customer, but the blended margin holds up.

Toni’s brand does this with games. Board games have real COGS (their cost on a board game can run around 9 dollars), while a printed timeline product runs a 98 percent margin. Bundle the two together with a small discount, and the blended margin on the bundle is far healthier than the board game sold alone.

Card games get the same treatment because the components cost 40 to 50 cents to produce. Bundling lets a brand introduce a lower-margin physical product without dragging down the P&L when it inevitably gets discounted.

The other reason bundling works during Black Friday: it changes the frame of reference. Customers are not evaluating whether your 15 percent discount is bigger than the competitor’s 25 percent discount. They are evaluating whether they get more product for the price, which is a comparison you can win without cutting price further.

Free gift-with-purchase: exclusive monthly items that drive repeat orders

Free gift-with-purchase drives repeat orders when the free gift is genuinely exclusive to that month and cannot be bought anywhere else. Toni’s brand caps the cost of each free gift at roughly 20 cents to make and requires it to ship flat so it does not change the shipping box size or postage. Recent examples include a New Year’s Eve countdown pack (balloons, confetti, prompt cards), a gratitude jar kit, lunchbox notes for kids, and a car bingo pack scheduled for spring break.

The gifts work as monthly hooks because customers know they will not see this exact item again. One customer placed 10 separate local-pickup orders to get 10 gratitude packs for family members. That is not the intended behavior, but it is a strong signal that the exclusivity mechanic is working.

Layer the monthly free gift with a $100-threshold tote bag over Black Friday, and you now have two AOV-lifting incentives running at once without discounting the underlying product any further.

Flash free shipping window: the 5-hour email tactic that made $30,000

A flash free shipping window means announcing free shipping for only a few hours in the evening, which creates urgency without cutting product price. Toni tested this earlier in the year with a single email sent around 7 pm saying “free shipping until midnight,” and that single email generated roughly $30,000 in sales.

The reason it works is timing. Most brands blast their Black Friday emails at 6 am, so a 7 pm free shipping email is not competing head-to-head with the same 200 morning senders. The scarcity is real (five hours) so people actually act instead of tabbing it for later.

Free shipping costs you less than a percentage-off discount in most catalogs, and it converts particularly well on the days when open rates are otherwise weak. Bake one or two of these into the sale window instead of adding another sitewide discount day.

Live selling on Black Friday: how a first-time live event actually pays off

Live selling on Black Friday pays off in four ways at once: direct sales from viewers, engagement signal that lifts the Facebook ad algorithm, retargetable traffic to a dedicated sale page, and a video asset that lives on for the rest of the promotion. Toni is running her first live sale event with the brand owner as host on the Friday before Black Friday.

The setup is deliberately minimal for the beta. The owner will go live on Facebook and YouTube from the warehouse, with 10 giftable products physically on the shelves behind her, and speak to each product for about 45 minutes. Viewers click through to a dedicated landing page with those 10 products at Black Friday pricing.

There is no separate coupon code for the live sale in this first version because the team wants to run paid ads to the replay, and time-limited codes complicate ad campaigns. Next iteration will likely test a code so the traffic source is cleanly measurable.

Why the owner on camera matters

The owner on camera matters because it is a trust and disruption move at the same time. In the homeschool and curriculum category, essentially no competitor is running live selling, so being first is the disruption. Kim (the brand owner) is comfortable on camera and can talk through why each product is worth giving, which is very different from a discount email.

One production note that transfers to any live sale in a warehouse: cover or move any shipping boxes labeled “China.” Customers get bent out of shape when they see the country of origin, even if realistically most consumer product boxes come from the same place. Keep the visual behind the host on-brand.

Coupon codes for Black Friday: keep them stupid-simple

Coupon codes for Black Friday should be as short and readable as possible because customers cannot spell them on a phone at 11 pm. Toni’s team went through and simplified everything: 5 percent off is “ADD5,” 10 percent off is “ADD10,” free shipping is “FREE.” No mixed case, no random letters, no ambiguity.

Historic evidence: a coupon code of “MOTHER25” produced a stream of failed checkouts because shoppers typed “MUTHER25,” “MOTHERS25,” and “M-U-T-H-E-R.” Every one of those is a lost sale. In Shopify, wherever possible, use auto-applying discount links so the code is pre-populated at checkout and there is nothing to type.

For the “scarcity code” tactic (email says there are only 22 codes at 30 percent off, six codes at 40 percent off, and so on) the code does need to be enterable, but it should still be as short as you can make it. Expect a handful of complaint emails from customers who try a code that has already run out.

On a 50,000-person segment, Toni sees maybe three complaint emails per campaign. That is an acceptable cost for the click-through and engagement bump the tactic produces.

Email and SMS cadence: how often to text on Black Friday

Email and SMS cadence on Black Friday depends heavily on how giftable your catalog is. Toni’s team currently sends about four SMS messages over nine days during Black Friday, which is aggressive by their historical standard but restrained compared to giftable ecommerce brands that text every day.

At Bumblebee Linens I stay conservative on SMS because our customers skew toward wanting privacy and daily messages annoy them. If we sold consumer giftables, I would text every day of the window, because the shopper mindset during Black Friday is stock-up-and-grab-a-deal, and a daily nudge fits that mindset.

The rule of thumb: match your send frequency to how likely the customer is to buy again this week, not to how aggressive the average Black Friday sender is being.

The “click any of 5 images” email trick (Mr Beast style)

The “click any of 5 images” email trick, borrowed from Mr Beast, is an email with five product images where only one image links to a working discount. Every image is clickable and every image goes to a different page, so click-through rates go up dramatically. Deliverability improves for every subsequent send because ISPs weight engagement.

The softer version, which Toni’s audience prefers, is a “thumbs up / thumbs down” style email that asks a light question and treats both answers as an engagement click, sending both to the same page. Engagement lifts, deliverability improves, and no customer feels tricked.

Either version is best pulled out once during Black Friday, not repeated across the sale. It is a deliverability boost, not an everyday tactic.

Frequently asked questions

Should a small ecommerce brand discount deeply on Black Friday?

Most small ecommerce brands should not discount deeply on Black Friday because the required lift in sales to break even after ad-cost inflation and lower repeat rates is unrealistic. A 15 percent discount already usually requires nearly doubling sales just to break even. Focus first on bundles, free gift-with-purchase, and flash free shipping windows, which raise order value without cutting price.

Is Black Friday still worth it for ecommerce?

Black Friday is still worth it for ecommerce, but the calendar is stretched from early November through Cyber Monday, so the single-day playbook no longer works. The sellers who profit run a staggered promotional window with multiple lower-intensity tactics rather than one massive sitewide sale, and they lean on retargeting and email instead of expensive cold ads.

How do you protect margins on Black Friday?

You protect margins on Black Friday by capping your maximum discount at a percentage your gross margin can absorb (roughly 15 percent for a 50 percent gross margin business, up to 35 percent for an 80 percent gross margin business), running bundles that blend high- and low-margin SKUs, and dialing down cold-traffic paid ads in favor of retargeting, email, and SMS. Free gift-with-purchase and free shipping flash windows lift AOV without cutting product price.

What ad strategy works best for Black Friday?

The best Black Friday ad strategy for most small brands is heavy retargeting plus a light-to-moderate spend on cold prospecting, because cold CPMs spike during the window and Black Friday buyers repeat at lower rates. A 1.5x to 2x ROAS on retargeting is achievable; a 2x ROAS on cold traffic paired with a 25 percent discount is usually breakeven at best.

Does live selling actually work for ecommerce brands outside of clothing?

Live selling can work for ecommerce brands outside of clothing when the owner or a strong on-camera personality hosts and the format is treated as a disruption in a category where nobody else is doing it. Toni’s homeschool-curriculum brand is testing a live sale on the Friday before Black Friday specifically because no direct competitor in the category runs live events, which makes the format attention-earning on its own.

How simple should Black Friday coupon codes be?

Black Friday coupon codes should be as short and unambiguous as possible (“ADD10,” “FREE,” “SAVE20”) because a meaningful percentage of customers fail to type longer codes correctly on mobile at checkout. Wherever the platform allows (for example, Shopify’s auto-apply discount links), pre-populate the code in the URL so the customer never has to type it.

How often should I email or text during Black Friday?

If your catalog is highly giftable, texting daily during the Black Friday window and emailing at least once per day is defensible because shoppers expect deal cadence and are actively stocking up. If your catalog is not giftable, restrain to two to four SMS messages across the entire nine to eleven day window and lean on segmented emails, because your audience is not in a stock-up mindset and daily messages will unsubscribe them.

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