Chronos Agency Guide · Updated for BFCM 2026
A dated BFCM calendar, real sale emails and pop-ups, and the offers and deliverability rules that hold up at peak volume. Built from the sale programs we run as a Klaviyo Master Elite Partner that has served 500+ DTC brands.
Thanksgiving
Thu 26 Nov
Black Friday
Fri 27 Nov
Cyber Monday
Mon 30 Nov
Giving Tuesday
Tue 1 Dec
TL;DR
BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) runs from 26 to 30 November in 2026. A BFCM marketing strategy that protects margin starts weeks before that.
Want your plan checked against this guide? Book a free strategy session.
Table of Contents
What Is BFCM in Marketing?
BFCM Calendar 2026
BFCM Offers That Protect Margin
BFCM Customer Segmentation Strategy
BFCM Email Marketing Strategies
BFCM Email Examples
BFCM Pop-up ExamplesBFCM SMS Marketing and Push NotificationsBFCM Email DeliverabilityCyber Monday Strategies
How to Measure BFCM Success
After Cyber MondayBFCM FAQOn this page
Chapter 1BFCM War Plan Workshop · Live on Zoom
Leave 19 Oct with your BFCM decisions made and every email and text ready to build
Bring the plan you have. We build the rest with you, live, from an offer that protects your margin to the plan that brings sale buyers back in January.
Short answer
BFCM stands for Black Friday Cyber Monday, the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. In 2026 that is Thursday 26 November to Monday 30 November, the highest-revenue stretch of the year for most ecommerce brands.
In marketing, the term covers three stretches: the build-up in October and November, the core five days, and the December follow-up that turns first-time buyers into repeat customers.
For an 8 to 9 figure DTC brand, these five days can carry a large share of Q4 revenue. How that revenue is earned decides whether the quarter is profitable.
Three questions that decide BFCM profit
1How deep do the discounts go?
2How much comes from customers you already own?
3How much depends on paid ads bought at peak prices?
“You cannot win the inbox war, so sidestep it.”
Josh Chin, CEO, Chronos Agency, in our BFCM workshop
$44.2B
US online spend across Cyber Week 2025, up 7.7%
Adobe
57.5%
of Cyber Monday 2025 online sales were made on mobile
Adobe
20%
of global Cyber Week orders were influenced by AI and agents
Salesforce
−10%
in average discount depth, while shopper spend rose 11%
Klaviyo
+13.5%
growth in repeat-customer revenue, ahead of new customers
Klaviyo
81M+
shoppers worldwide bought from Shopify merchants, spending $14.6B
Shopify
Smaller discounts won in 2025
Spend went up while average discounts went down, and Klaviyo found the brands with the smallest markdowns grew fastest. The brands that grew fastest kept their headline offer modest.
Repeat customers grew fastest
Repeat-customer revenue grew faster than new-customer revenue. Plan the week around the customers who already trust you enough to buy on the first email.
Chapter 2Short answer
Start BFCM preparation in September with deliverability and segmentation. Send the first teasers from mid-October, open early access to VIPs from 16 November, and run the core sale from 26 to 30 November.
Thanksgiving falls on 26 November in 2026, which leaves 24 shopping days after Cyber Monday before Christmas. Brands that phase the calendar arrive at the peak already knowing who is ready to buy.
| Dates | Phase | What to send | Check before moving on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep to 18 Oct | Protect the sending domain | Regular emails to people who open and click. Send-time and subject line tests, judged on placed orders | SPF, DKIM and DMARC aligned. One-click unsubscribe live. Unengaged subscribers suppressed |
| 19 Oct to 15 Nov | Warm up and grow | Teasers, early-access sign-ups and SMS opt-in pushes. One pre-BFCM sale at most | Segments built: VIPs, repeat buyers, one-time buyers, never purchased |
| 16–25 Nov | VIP early access | Early access for VIPs and SMS subscribers, opened at least a day before the public sale | Sale versions of cart, checkout and browse emails ready |
| 26–30 Nov | Core BFCM | At least one campaign a day to engaged segments, two on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. SMS on both days | Complaint rate checked daily |
| 1–2 Dec | Extension | Extension sends to people who clicked and didn't buy. Giving Tuesday where it fits the brand | Buyers removed from sale emails |
| 3 Dec on | Second purchase | Automated post-purchase emails for first-time buyers. Gift messaging timed to shipping cutoffs | First-time buyers tagged for a January winback |
Save the BFCM Calendar 2026
Download the full-size image or share it with your team.
Case Study
Qure: early access made more than half of October’s email campaign revenue
We started building Qure's VIP list on 23 October 2023 with an early-access pop-up, a thank-you flow, and invite emails and SMS. The two-day early access sale ran on 30 and 31 October, right before the month-long Black Friday sale opened on 1 November. It brought in $89K of October’s $157K email campaign revenue. It averaged a 55% open rate, 2.2% click rate and 0.4% placed-order rate, and email revenue grew 85% from September to October.
How to run BFCM VIP early access: who gets in, how long, how deep →
Case Study
Hisleep: +391% Q4 2025 campaign revenue, year over year
Hisleep ran 10 warm-up campaigns, then only 4 Black Friday campaigns to the people who had shown intent. Those 4 made about as much as all 10 warm-ups.
01
Build the VIP list in October
One brand we work with sent a single VIP sign-up email on 25 October 2025. It made 38% more than the brand's best BFCM 2024 campaign.
02
Keep to one pre-sale
Two back-to-back sales before Black Friday make the main event slump. Pick one early event and hold the best offer for the week itself.
03
Run the sale for a full week
In Tapcart's 2024 survey, 61.3% of shoppers took longer than a week to make a first purchase. A week-long sale gives them time to decide.
▶ Watch: how to run a VIP early access sale (10:45) ▶ Your BFCM timeline from Q3 to December (1:28:13)
Prefer to watch?
Three agency founders cover the whole funnel in one session: retention with Josh from Chronos, Meta ads with Marin from Inspire, and conversion rate with Nico from Bottomless Labs. It was recorded ahead of BFCM 2025.
Chapter 3Short answer
About two-thirds of shoppers need 20 to 35% off to consider a BFCM purchase (Tapcart, 2024). Structure the offer to grow the basket with tiers, bundles or a spend threshold. Give returning customers a different offer from new ones, and give subscribers a better deal than the website.
Sale revenue can look strong on the Monday dashboard while the quarter loses margin. How much of that revenue would have come in anyway, at full price?
01
Flat sitewide discounts
A flat 30% off everything gives away margin on orders that were coming in anyway. Tiers and bundles grow the basket.
02
Emailing the list late
A list that hears nothing until Black Friday is a cold list. Fewer people open and more complain, on the same morning every other brand is sending.
03
Ads at peak prices
On one ad account Marin from Inspire shared in our workshop, the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) rose from $17–20 in October to $20–32 in November.
Aim for 20 to 35% off
About two-thirds of shoppers in Tapcart's 2024 BFCM survey said they need a discount in that range to consider buying. In our experience, deeper offers cost margin without a matching lift.
Combine a discount with a basket builder
Discounts and buy one, get one offers were the two deal types shoppers wanted most. Pair a percentage with a bundle, a tier or a spend threshold to lift order value.
Give returning customers their own offer
Returning customers unsubscribe when the content feels generic. Send them a buy one, get one offer or a curated pick based on their last purchase, and keep the general discount for new customers.
Put free shipping in the cart flow
High shipping costs are the most common reason shoppers abandon a cart. Your abandoned cart email can offer free shipping on top of the sale price, or free shipping over a minimum spend.
Never offer subscribers less than your ads
Match or beat your paid social offer in email and SMS. Subscribers who see a better deal on Instagram stop opening.
Chronos A/B test
Tiered offer vs flat 15% off: +12% revenue per recipient
For a high-end jewelry brand's Prime Day sale, we tested a tiered 10/15/20% offer against a flat 15%, while the site was already running buy one, get one 50% off. The tiered offer won on revenue per recipient, and one campaign drove 2x the revenue and 2x the orders of the flat version.
The winner gave shoppers a reason to add a second and third item. Free shipping moved up to the top tier.
Winner · tiered
Flat 15%
Add a new incentive every few days
A sale that opens with its best offer has nothing left for day four. Stack incentives, such as free shipping before Thanksgiving and a gift with purchase for the final push.
Ella Bella did this in its first Black Friday with us in 2025: +152% store revenue, November vs October, with email driving 47.5% of store revenue. Case study →
Give subscribers a better deal
If the website and the inbox show the same offer, there is no reason to stay subscribed. An extra subscriber-only code rewards the people you most want to keep.
One brand we work with did exactly that in November 2025. Its free-shipping Black Friday email became its best single email ever, 52% above the previous record.
Test the offer before November
Run a smaller version of your Black Friday offer in Q3, for example on Labor Day, so you go into the peak knowing which structure converts. For more, see how 8 to 9 figure brands prepared for Black Friday 2025.
▶ Watch: which BFCM offers protect your margin (42:58) ▶ Which offers to test before Black Friday (1:15:46)
Chapter 4Short answer
Segment BFCM offers by purchase history. VIPs get early access, repeat buyers get tiered offers or bundles, one-time buyers get a reason to come back, and subscribers who have never bought get an entry offer.
Giving everyone the same discount costs the most margin. It pays your best customers to do what they were going to do anyway, and gives first-time buyers no reason to pick you over the brand in the next email.
| Segment | Offer | Timing | Channel |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIPs | Early access, best offer of the season | 16–25 Nov | SMS, then email |
| Repeat buyers | Tiered offer, bundle or buy one, get one | From early access | |
| One-time buyers | Replenish, or complete the set | 26–30 Nov | Email and SMS |
| Never purchased | Entry offer or gift with purchase | 27 and 30 Nov | |
| Lapsed customers | Winback message with a clear return offer | 26–30 Nov |
For one beauty brand's BFCM 2023 launch day, we wrote five versions of the same email, each with its own subject line and opening. Then we retargeted the people who didn't act.
Send 1
Last year's BFCM buyers
Opened on the return of a favorite time of year.
Send 2
VIPs, loyalty points holders and high average order value customers
A VIP-only surprise, in the subject line and the first line.
Send 3
Churn risks and disengaged subscribers
Winback messaging with the deal up front.
Send 4
Engaged customers, last 180 days
A straight announcement: Black Friday is on.
Send 5
Engaged leads who haven't bought
A reason to make the first purchase now.
Retargets
Non-openers and non-buyers
A reminder with a new subject line.
Other ways to segment one send
1New vs returning vs winback vs VIP
2Product interest: ordered, started checkout, viewed or added to cart
3Long-time subscribers vs people who joined during BFCM
4Early access, SMS and VIP subscribers vs the general list
SMS needs fewer versions
For the same brand's SMS, three versions covered it: engaged customers, engaged leads and highly unengaged subscribers. SMS is short, so a separate version per segment is easy to write.
Chapter 5Short answer
The strongest BFCM email programs send more during peak week to engaged segments, personalize by purchase history, and keep flows running with the live offer alongside the campaigns.
Sale emails work as a sequence. Each send has one job, and the job changes as the sale moves from anticipation to urgency.
The 6-step BFCM email sequence
Before the sale · mid-Oct to 25 Nov
1Tease
Hint at the sale and collect early-access sign-ups. No discount yet.
Before the sale
2VIP early access
Open the sale to VIPs and SMS subscribers first, at least a day ahead.
Peak week · 26 to 29 Nov
3Launch
The public opening to your engaged list, with the offer in the first line.
Peak week
4Keep momentum
A new angle each day: a stacked incentive, a bestseller, a gift guide, a low-stock alert.
The close · 30 Nov to 2 Dec
5Last chance
Cyber Monday deadline, with retargets to people who clicked and didn't buy.
The close
6Extension
One or two extension sends, then remove everyone who purchased.
The biggest lifts we saw in 2025 came from brands that sent well above their usual volume to subscribers who had engaged recently.
Save full-list sends for three moments: the early-access invite, day one of the public sale and the last day. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, plan at least two emails each day.
Case Study
Garvee: +1,067% email revenue, Q4 2025 vs Q4 2024
Garvee grouped subscribers by how recently they had opened or clicked, and stopped emailing inactive ones before it raised volume. Campaign deliveries grew from 425K in Q4 2024 to 4.4M in Q4 2025, and revenue per recipient held steady.
Extra sends can cut revenue
One of our brands sent 12 more Q4 campaigns to 11.8% more recipients than the year before, and campaign revenue fell 33%. Each extra send needs a reason: a new offer or a real deadline.
Your flows (automated emails) keep running through the sale. Update at least one email in each of these flows with a BFCM banner showing the offer, the end date and the code:
82%
of one European brand’s BFCM 2024 email revenue came from flows carrying the BFCM offer, against 18% from campaigns
Chronos client, BFCM 2024
71%
of Garvee’s attributed revenue in its extended BFCM 2025 window (4 Nov to 2 Dec) came from flows running alongside the campaigns
Garvee, BFCM 2025
Offers based on past purchases
Replenishment offers for consumables, and complete-the-set offers for anyone who bought one piece of a range.
Dynamic product feeds
Show each person products based on what they browsed or bought. Test the feed in September emails, so you know it lifts clicks before the peak.
Send at each person’s buying time
Send each person at the time they usually buy if you have the data, and schedule every send off the hour, such as 9:07.
Put “Black Friday” in live text
Shoppers search their inbox for "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" to find deals, and text inside images can't be searched. Put the event name in the subject line, the preview text or the body copy.
Schedule sends off the hour
Sends on :00 and :30 collide with other brands at Gmail and other inbox providers. Our Black Friday send-time guide has the data.
Some of the biggest single campaigns of the 2025 season were second sends. One of our brands sent its sale launch twice on the same day with two different themes. For cadence across the season, see our holiday email and SMS frequency guide.
2nd-best
campaign of all time for that brand came from the second same-day send
Chronos client, BFCM 2025
Chapter 6Short answer
The BFCM emails that work lead with one offer and one button, name the deadline, and give VIPs something the public doesn't get. Here are five we built, from the early-access invite to the last call. Scroll inside each email to see the whole design.
VIP early access · opening
Qure
VIP early access · last hours
Qure
VIP list · last call to join
AminoCo
VIP community invite · pre-sale
Feminera
VIP welcome flow
Dreamo
More designs from our team: browse the Chronos email design library.
Chapter 7Short answer
Swap your standard sign-up form for a BFCM pop-up from October. Promise early access or a subscriber-only deal, ask for SMS as well as email, and keep the pop-up on through the sale.
Every subscriber you add before November is someone you can reach at no media cost during the week.
Qure's site pop-up was capturing 17% of visitors in 2025, which Josh called far above average. Ella Bella's dedicated BFCM pop-ups reached a 12.8% submission rate on desktop and 12.2% on mobile, double its standard forms.
Don't switch pop-ups off for the sale
Some brands turn pop-ups off during BFCM to keep the site clean. If you must, keep an exit-intent pop-up and an embedded footer form so new visitors can still join.
Keep the pop-up offer at or below the email offer
A pop-up that offers more than the email trains buyers to skip the email. Keep the pop-up offer at or below what subscribers get, and make sure returning subscribers aren't asked to opt in again.
Chapter 8Watch
Watch Josh fix a $17M Klaviyo account before Black Friday
The six checks we run on every brand before Black Friday, in the order they cost you money: deliverability, pop-ups, segments, flows, SMS and the campaign calendar.
Get the six checks as Claude prompts, plus the cheatsheet: download the free kit →
Short answer
Use SMS for the BFCM moments that need speed: VIP early access, Black Friday morning, Cyber Monday and the last call. Use email to carry the story, the range and the detail.
Customers reached on more than one channel placed 11% more orders during Cyber Week 2025, according to Klaviyo. In Josh's experience across our programs, a text drives 8 to 10 times the clicks of an email per send.
What email does best in Cyber Week
Teasers, gift guides and the full range
Segment-specific offers and personalization
Daily sends to engaged segments in peak week
Plain-text reminders and extension sends
What SMS does best in Cyber Week
VIP early access, sent first
Black Friday opening and Cyber Monday deadline
A subscriber-only code worth opting in for
Twice on the final day, no more
Oct
Grow the SMS list
Ask for a phone number in the BFCM pop-up and promise texts get early access first.
Nov
Send four key texts
Early access, launch, Cyber Monday and the last call. Nothing in between.
Dec
Keep December buyers
Shipping cutoffs, gift cards and product tips. Fewer offers.
Case Study
Olivia Jewelry: 10x SMS revenue, Nov to Dec 2024 vs 2023
Olivia Jewelry treated its SMS subscribers as VIPs, with early access and exclusive deals through the 2024 holiday season.
Add push for younger buyers
Push suits the same fast moments as SMS: the sale opening, back-in-stock alerts and the final hours. Across the push programs we ran in 2025, click-through rates sat at 15 to 22%, well above a typical winning email, and there is no cost per send.
In Tapcart's 2024 survey, 52% of Gen Z shoppers said push notifications motivate them to buy. For Gen X and older shoppers, email is still the lead channel.
One fitness equipment brand we work with rebuilt its flows before Black Friday 2025 so anyone who joined by SMS also entered the email funnel.
+228.8%
automated email deliveries in November 2025, year over year
Chronos client, BFCM 2025
SMS compliance for BFCM 2026
Make sure your texting numbers are registered with US carriers (10DLC), don't text during state quiet hours, and treat any reply that means stop as an opt-out. The FCC's "revoke all" rule has been delayed to 31 January 2027, and opt-out requests still need to be honored now.
See how we run SMS marketing for 8 to 9 figure brands.
Chapter 9Short answer
BFCM 2026 is the first Cyber Week with a full year of Gmail rejecting non-compliant bulk mail, with Yahoo and Microsoft enforcing their own sender rules. Authenticate your domain, keep spam complaints under 0.10% and raise volume over weeks.
Gmail and Yahoo introduced bulk sender rules in February 2024, Microsoft followed in May 2025, and Gmail began rejecting non-compliant mail in November 2025. Emails that land in spam earn no revenue.
Set up in September
Run from late September
01
Raise send volume gradually
If you usually send to 10K people, a 30K Black Friday send can look like a hacked account to Gmail. Grow volume through September and October.
02
Watch Microsoft inboxes
If Outlook and Hotmail addresses drive your complaints, split them out of campaigns, check their revenue, and test sending to them less often.
03
Watch Australian inboxes (Bigpond, Telstra)
For Australian lists, Bigpond and Telstra addresses can need their own welcome flow if they drag down placement.
Case Study
Naturale Bio: email from under 1% to 14.9% of store revenue
Naturale Bio came to us in October 2025 with a weak sender reputation. We warmed up with plain-text emails to its most engaged subscribers before Black Friday, and open rates moved from below the industry average to 268% above it.
Have a kill switch ready
Decide before the sale what happens if spam complaints cross your threshold. Our rule: pull the deepest discount and email only people active in the last six months. For the setup checks behind this, see our BFCM tech checklist.
▶ Watch: how to fix email deliverability before November (26:22)
Chapter 10Short answer
Cyber Monday is the biggest online day of BFCM. Retarget everyone who clicked over the weekend and didn't buy, design for mobile first, give one clear deadline and plan the extension before the day starts.
Cyber Monday 2025 brought in $14.25B in US online sales, according to Adobe, more than Black Friday. It is also the day your weekend clickers make up their minds.
01
Retarget the weekend clickers
Anyone who clicked a sale email and didn't buy is your warmest audience on Monday. Send them a new subject line and a reason to act today.
02
Send three times with three jobs
A morning offer, an afternoon follow-up to people who opened but didn't click, and an evening plain-text email. Garvee's plan for its final days followed this pattern, and campaign revenue that week rose 114.9% on the week before, its strongest week of the year.
03
Design for the phone
Most Cyber Monday sales happen on a phone. Short copy and one offer above the fold.
04
Give an exact deadline
In the experience of Nico at Bottomless Labs, "Offer ends 11:59pm PST on 30 November" converts better than "ends soon". Countdown timers that disagree across email, site and ads destroy trust.
Plan the extension in advance. An extension works when it is announced as a real, short window. One of our brands ran an extended Cyber Monday with plain-text sends and extended free shipping, and its two extension emails were among the strongest of the season.
▶ Watch: how to use urgency without destroying trust (1:11:26) ▶ Above the fold rules (1:23:25)
Chapter 11Short answer
Set a revenue goal from last year's revenue per recipient, then judge BFCM on placed orders and revenue per recipient. Open rates tell you about list health, and they are unreliable for picking winners since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection.
Last year's revenue per recipient
BFCM campaigns only
×
Campaigns you plan to send
this BFCM
×
Average recipients per campaign
from your list size and reach
=
Your BFCM email revenue goal
Aim for more revenue in dollars than last year. The share of store revenue moves with paid spend, so treat it as a secondary check.
Open-rate winners often lose on orders
Across 107 send-time A/B tests for 25 brands in 2024, the open-rate winner also won on order rate in only 40 of the 78 tests that tracked orders. Pick winners on placed orders. See the Black Friday send-time data.
| Metric | What it tells you | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| Placed-order rate | How many recipients bought | The metric to pick test winners on |
| Revenue per recipient | Whether extra volume is paying for itself | If it falls as volume rises, you are over-sending |
| Flow vs campaign share | How revenue splits between automation and sends | The split shifts sharply during the sale. Compare with the same window last year |
| Spam complaint rate | Whether the list can take more volume | Under 0.10%. Check daily in peak week |
| Owned share of store revenue | How much of the sale came from email and SMS | Report it with its date window |
| Open rate | List health | Inflated by Mail Privacy Protection. Never the only metric |
Write a one-page BFCM report within a week. Give the attribution window (the period each sale is credited to an email) about five days to settle. Then put the whole sale on one page: the calendar you ran, the flows you changed, the number of sends, and revenue against the goal. It becomes next year's starting point.
Chapter 12Short answer
The weeks after Cyber Monday decide whether BFCM buyers become repeat customers. Send first-time buyers a post-purchase sequence, time gift messaging to shipping cutoffs and plan December before it arrives.
Repeat-customer revenue grew 13.5% in Cyber Week 2025, according to Klaviyo. Across our programs, we capture an average of 22% extra revenue after BFCM, from the same offers sent at better times.
“Don’t blow it all in four days when you can feed them throughout the month and beyond.”
Josh Chin, CEO, Chronos Agency, in our BFCM workshop
01
Post-purchase sequence
Confidence and product education first, then a relevant second product. No discount in the first email.
02
Shipping cutoffs
Tell customers the last order date for standard and express delivery, then switch to gift cards.
03
January winback
Tag BFCM first-time buyers now, so January can speak to them as customers.
27.14%
Hisleep email share of store revenue, November 2025
Hisleep case study
16.64%
the same share, December 2025
Hisleep case study
Another brand we work with saw repeat-purchase revenue fall by about half from November to December 2025, and unsubscribes rose during a long run of daily promotions. The team's response was fewer, stronger December promotions: one or two core offers a month.
Case Study
EcoTraveller: email from 24% (Nov 2023) to 40% (Nov 2024) of store revenue
Before Black Friday 2024 we added 8 new flow touchpoints and checked every trigger, so the automations were ready to catch new buyers.
For the full December plan, read how to turn your BFCM spike into December revenue.
Proof
Each result is shown with the period it was measured against.
14.9%
Naturale Bio email share of store revenue, up from under 1%, October to November 2025
In our BFCM 2023 review, email and SMS made up an average of 42% of our clients’ store revenue. In BFCM 2024, one Australian brand grew its email and SMS revenue 120% on 2023.
Chapter 13BFCM stands for Black Friday Cyber Monday. It covers the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which in 2026 run from Thursday 26 November to Monday 30 November.
Black Friday is Friday 27 November 2026 and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November 2026. Thanksgiving is Thursday 26 November and Giving Tuesday is Tuesday 1 December.
Start in September with deliverability checks, list cleaning and segmentation. Send teasers and early-access sign-ups from mid-October, open VIP early access from 16 November and run the core sale from 26 to 30 November.
Plan at least one campaign a day during peak week and two on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, sent to engaged segments. Save the full list for the early-access invite, the first day and the last day. Increase volume only while revenue per recipient holds and spam complaints stay under 0.10%.
About two-thirds of shoppers in Tapcart's 2024 survey said they need 20 to 35% off to consider a purchase. Klaviyo's BFCM 2025 data showed the brands with the smallest markdowns growing fastest. Tiered offers, bundles and spend thresholds usually protect the most margin.
One offer and one button above the fold, and the deadline in the headline or a countdown. Add the words "Black Friday" in live text so shoppers can find it by searching their inbox. VIP and subscriber emails should offer something the public doesn't get.
Yes, for the moments that need speed: VIP early access, Black Friday morning, Cyber Monday and the last call. Klaviyo found customers reached on more than one channel placed 11% more orders during Cyber Week 2025. Register for 10DLC and follow quiet-hours rules.
It depends on your list, so test it before November and judge the test on placed orders. Whatever time you choose, schedule sends off the hour, such as 9:07, because sends on :00 and :30 collide with other brands at the inbox providers.
Set a goal from last year's revenue per recipient, then track placed-order rate, revenue per recipient, spam complaint rate and email and SMS share of store revenue. Compare against the same BFCM window last year, since the flow and campaign split shifts sharply during BFCM.
Send BFCM first-time buyers a post-purchase sequence, time gift messaging to shipping cutoffs and tag first-time buyers for a January winback. Keep December to one or two core promotions to protect the list.
A BFCM marketing strategy comes down to five decisions. Start the calendar early, segment the offers and protect deliverability. Send more only to engaged subscribers, and plan the repeat purchase before the sale.
Chronos Agency is an email, SMS and push retention agency and Klaviyo Master Elite Partner for 8 to 9 figure DTC brands. Book a free strategy session and we'll check your calendar and your deliverability against this guide, while there is still time before the peak. See how our ecommerce email marketing agency team runs BFCM programs.
