The short version
The best time to send Black Friday emails in Klaviyo is the morning for your sale announcement, booked a few minutes past the hour. After that, follow your order peak through the day.
The advice everyone repeats points every brand at the same hour. On the biggest sales day of the year, the minute you book and the clock you use decide whether your emails land while customers are ready to buy.
It's 8:59 a.m. on Black Friday. Your biggest email of the year is queued for 9:00, and so are a lot of other brands' emails.
In 2024, Klaviyo customers sent more than 420 million messages between 9 and 10 a.m. ET on Black Friday, the busiest hour of the day on the platform. Klaviyo's 2026 Black Friday guide still names 9 to 10 a.m. ET the peak hour, the latest hour-level data Klaviyo has published.
BFCM volume on Klaviyo grew 25% in 2025, to more than 22.7 billion messages. This year's Black Friday, on November 27, is set up to start in the same crowded hour.
Morning is still the right call for the announcement. What gets it there on time is the minute you book, and what makes the rest of the day pay is timing later sends to when your customers place orders.
At Chronos, a Klaviyo Master Elite Partner that has worked with 500+ DTC brands, we plan peak weekend around that minute. The calendar we're running for clients this year keeps every send off the round numbers from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.
It matters past Monday, too. The list you wear out over peak weekend is the same list you need for December's last-shipping-day emails.
What is the best time to send Black Friday emails in Klaviyo?
Send the sale announcement in the morning, then follow your customers' order peak through the day.
Klaviyo's 2024 data is the closest public answer on the best time to send email for Black Friday: orders peaked between noon and 1 p.m. ET, shortly after the busiest send hour.
Shopify's 2025 peak landed in the same window: $5.1 million in sales a minute at 12:01 p.m. ET on Black Friday. Other published answers point to different hours.
| Source | What it recommends | What it's based on |
|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo (Black Friday 2024) | Busiest send hour 9 to 10 a.m. ET; orders peak noon to 1 p.m. ET | Send and order volume across Klaviyo brands |
| Attentive (Cyber Week 2025) | Black Friday email at 8 a.m. for conversions, 8 p.m. for clicks | 2.07 billion email sends from 217 US retail brands |
| Omnisend (2026) | 6 to 9 a.m. and 8 to 10 p.m. outperform midday | Omnisend's own data (sample not published) |
| TargetBay (updated 2026) | 1 p.m. led for inbox placement | Emails from 1,404 brands tracked over 399 days |
So which one is right for your brand?
Each source measures something different, so none of them can tell you when your own customers buy. Across 107 send-time tests we ran for 25 brands in 2024, the winning slot split almost evenly between morning, afternoon and evening.
Start from the hours your customers placed orders last November, then confirm them with a test in October.
Why does a 9:00 a.m. Black Friday send arrive late?
Inbox providers take in a flood of mail on the hour, so a campaign booked for exactly 9:00 waits its turn behind everyone else's.
Autumn Tyr-Salvia, a senior deliverability strategist at Klaviyo, has said service providers' servers "get absolutely hammered at exactly 9 a.m." The fix they suggest is to send big campaigns at 9:15, or at any time that isn't exactly on the hour.
Klaviyo's help docs note that sends "may be slightly slower during peak times (e.g., on the hour, on the half hour)", and Attentive says the same holds for texts.
On peak days, move every email and SMS a few minutes past :00 or :30. It takes seconds per campaign, and outside BFCM week you can go back to round numbers.
Should BFCM emails go out in each customer's local time, or at one time for everyone?
Use each customer's local time for launch announcements, and one clock for anything with a deadline.
Klaviyo can send at the same clock time in every customer's time zone, using its recipient local time option, so a campaign can take close to a full day to reach your whole list. For a launch, that spread works in your favor, because every customer sees it over breakfast.
A sale with a hard end works differently. Say a brand sells in the US and Australia, and its Cyber Monday sale ends at midnight in New York. A "final hours" email sent at 10 p.m. local time reaches Sydney with most of a day still to run, and the urgency falls flat.
Sent at 10 p.m. New York time, the same email reaches Sydney at 2 p.m. the next day, with two hours left to buy in both countries. That's why deadline emails go out at one time for everyone, in your store's main time zone.
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How do you get your biggest BFCM sends out without slowing your site?
Send them to customers who are still engaged, and spread the send out only if your store has slowed under campaign traffic before.
Your site takes two hits in quick succession. In many business inboxes, security software like Microsoft Defender scans your links "prior to message delivery", so your pages take a wave of visits before anyone reads a word, and your customers follow right behind.
Shopify itself handled up to 489 million requests a minute over BFCM 2025, so when a store slows down, the cause is usually the apps and custom pages built around it.
When gradual send is worth it
Couldn't we just spread the send out and take the pressure off the site?
For most Black Friday sale emails, our answer is no. A sale email is time-sensitive, so we keep BFCM simple and send it to everyone at once.
Klaviyo's gradual send releases a campaign in batches of 1% to 50% of your recipients. Since July 2026, those batches can go out every minute as well as every hour.
Pacing also rules out A/B testing and local-time sending. The option to refresh your audience at send time isn't available either, so book it close to the send if you're leaving out people who just bought.
Where it helps is a store that bogs down under campaign traffic. One framing retailer told us its campaign sends were "putting too much pressure on their website".
We moved their email and SMS to hourly batches and kept them there through the run-up to BFCM. After the season, the brand went back to full-list sends so it could A/B test again.
With per-minute batches, pacing no longer costs you the morning. A 10% batch every minute reaches the full list in about ten minutes.
Keep the list engaged at peak volume
Landing in the inbox at that volume comes down to who you send to. When Garvee's Q4 campaign deliveries grew from 425K in 2024 to 4.4M in 2025, revenue per person emailed held flat ($0.091 to $0.090) and the spam rate sat at 0.04%.
Much of that work was in the audience: customers grouped by how recently they'd engaged, with inactive customers left off the list.
Cancelling a send that's gone wrong
Cancel it straight away. In Klaviyo, cancelling "only prevents any remaining messages (ones that are queued but not delivered) from sending".
Anything already delivered stays delivered, so the sooner someone spots a wrong price or a broken link, the more of your list you protect. A paced send gives your team a longer window to catch it.
Not sure which setting a send needs? Run each BFCM email through these three questions.
Want a second pair of eyes on your BFCM calendar before it locks? Pressure-testing these send days is work we do every November as a Klaviyo email marketing agency for 8 to 9 figure brands.
Book a Free Strategy SessionWhat is the best time to send Black Friday SMS?
Send Black Friday texts a few minutes off the hour, and start big lists early enough to finish well before quiet hours, the overnight window when Klaviyo holds texts back.
Phone networks back up on peak days too. Attentive reports that carrier congestion is "typically highest between 10am and 3pm ET on Black Friday and Cyber Monday".
The number you text from sets the pace. Most standard numbers in Klaviyo send 10 to 25 texts a second, and a dedicated short code (the five- or six-digit numbers big retailers text from) can send up to 10 times faster.
Klaviyo SMS campaigns typically time out after around 4 hours, and anyone not reached by then is skipped, so a big list on a slow number can leave customers without the text. If you pace texts with gradual send, keep the whole send inside that window.
Can Klaviyo pick the best time to send email on Black Friday for you?
Not on sale days: Klaviyo has two tools that choose send times, and for a flash sale Klaviyo says to skip both.
| Tool | What it learns from | Use it on Black Friday? |
|---|---|---|
| Smart Send Time | When your customers open | No. Klaviyo advises against testing it around major holidays or using it for flash sales |
| Personalized Send Time | Opens, clicks and orders, with bots filtered out (paid add-on, scheduled a day ahead) | No for flash sales, per Klaviyo |
Opens are a shaky signal, since Apple Mail's privacy setting hides real opens. In the 78 of our 2024 send-time tests that tracked orders, the open-rate winner also won on orders just 40 times.
So are they any use? They earn their place in October, when there's time to test, and what they show you is how to set your Klaviyo Black Friday send times by hand.
What does a BFCM send day in Klaviyo look like, minute by minute?
The best time to send BFCM emails on a peak day is a set of windows, from early access around 7:30 a.m. to a late final call. Below is the Klaviyo BFCM email schedule we use for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, set in each store's main time zone.
| Send | Window | Why this slot |
|---|---|---|
| Early access opens | 7:30 to 8 a.m. | Your best customers get first pick before the main announcement |
| Main sale email | 9 to 10:30 a.m. | Morning reach, ahead of the midday order peak |
| "We're live" SMS | 10 to 11:30 a.m. | Daytime, well clear of quiet hours |
| Midday email | 12:30 to 2 p.m. | A midday reminder close to your order peak |
| Evening email | 7 to 8 p.m. | A second chance for anyone who didn't buy earlier |
| Evening SMS | 8 to 8:30 p.m. | Low stock or final hours reminder |
| Cyber Monday final call | 10 to 10:30 p.m. | Last-hours urgency before the sale closes |
Inside each window, pick a minute nobody else will, like 9:07 or 12:43.
A window can also hold a second send. A beauty brand on our books sent its sale launch twice in one day, with its own theme each time, and the second send became its second-best campaign ever.
Run the same pattern Saturday through Cyber Monday. If spam complaints start to climb, keep the times and send to a smaller group of your most engaged customers.
Does the same timing logic work outside BFCM?
Most of it does. Take a spring launch into the UK and Australia: the announcement goes out in each customer's local morning, while the 48-hour launch discount and its final reminder run on one clock.
For everyday campaigns, our guide to the best time to send email covers how to find your own hours.
Key takeaways
- Send the Black Friday announcement in the morning, then follow your own order peak.
- On peak days, book every email and SMS a few minutes past the hour, never on :00 or :30.
- Use one time zone for deadline sends and recipient local time for launch announcements.
- Set Black Friday times by hand, and use gradual send only if your store slows under load.
Plan your BFCM send calendar with Chronos
For brands that want peak weekend planned to the minute, Chronos Agency is an email, SMS and push retention agency and Klaviyo Master Elite Partner for 8 to 9 figure DTC brands.
Every BFCM, we plan the full calendar across email and SMS, from who hears from you to when each send goes out.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best time to send Black Friday emails?
Send your main Black Friday email in the morning, a few minutes past the hour, then follow your order peak. In Klaviyo's 2024 data, the busiest send hour was 9 to 10 a.m. ET and orders peaked between noon and 1 p.m. ET.
What is the best time to send Cyber Monday emails?
Follow the Black Friday pattern: morning, midday and evening sends plus a late final call before the sale closes, each booked off the hour. Adobe reports that in Cyber Monday 2025's peak hours of 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., consumers spent $16 million every minute.
Should I use Smart Send Time on Black Friday?
No. Klaviyo advises against Smart Send Time testing around major holidays and against using it for time-sensitive content like a flash sale. Test in October, then set your Klaviyo Black Friday send times manually.
Should I use Klaviyo's gradual send for BFCM?
For most time-sensitive BFCM campaigns, send at one fixed time. Gradual send (1% to 50% per batch, every hour or every minute) helps when your site slows under campaign traffic. It can't be used with A/B tests or recipient local time, and "Determine recipients at send time" isn't available with it.
How many emails should I send on Black Friday?
Plan several sends spread across the day. Klaviyo Academy's BFCM daily sending guide suggests three emails and two texts on Black Friday, each to the right segment, with your most engaged customers getting the most. Garvee's final-week plan used a morning offer, an afternoon retarget to openers who didn't click, and an evening plain-text email, and its campaign revenue rose 114.9% on the week before.
What is the best time to send Black Friday SMS?
Send Black Friday SMS a few minutes past the hour during daytime, and start large lists early. Attentive reports carrier congestion is typically highest between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. ET on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and every text has to clear quiet hours.
Why did my Klaviyo SMS campaign stop sending partway?
Klaviyo SMS and MMS campaigns typically time out after around 4 hours, and anyone not reached in that window is skipped. Standard numbers send 10 to 25 messages a second, so large lists may need an earlier start or a short code.
How early should BFCM emails start?
Open early access in mid-November and keep your heaviest volume for Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Klaviyo also suggests emailing VIPs on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before Black Friday.
Ready to get started? Let's discuss how we can help your ecommerce business thrive.
Book a Free Strategy SessionRelated reading
The gradual send screenshot is an illustrative account at 8 to 9 figure scale, with the interface recreated from Klaviyo's campaign scheduling screen.
Sources: Klaviyo, The 2026 Black Friday Email Sending Guide and Black Friday deliverability; Klaviyo newsroom, BFCM 2025 results; Klaviyo Help Center articles on campaign schedule and send options, Smart Send Time, Personalized Send Time, sending SMS campaigns, SMS sending speed, campaign quiet hours and cancelling a campaign; Klaviyo Academy BFCM daily sending guide; Attentive; Omnisend; TargetBay; Microsoft; Shopify on BFCM 2025 infrastructure and BFCM 2025 sales; Adobe.
