Fri 9/18 | Ed 418 | Your BFCM plan has a January problem

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Somewhere in your account is a popup that has been offering 10% off since January.

It takes 20 minutes to fix and is quietly costing you money every week between now and Black Friday.

So we went looking for 14 more like it. Small jobs, an afternoon each, each one with a date it needs to be done by.

Not a rebuild, just the stuff that moves the number. 👇

Also inside:
→ $500 off the course ends tonight at midnight
→ The 3 numbers to plan your BFCM around
→ A brand that grew BFCM revenue 77% on email alone
→ Every competitor’s Black Friday email from last year, in 1 place

You've been using AI to write subject lines. That's like hiring a chef to butter your toast.

The expensive job is deciding what to send, to whom, and on what day. Last year's reports already know the answer... you're just not asking them.

✔️ Export 3 things first: campaign performance, flow performance, and orders, all for November 1st to December 5th last year. Strip out names, emails and phone numbers before you paste anything.

👉 Then run this:

You’re a retention strategist planning a BFCM email and SMS calendar. Here are 3 exports from last year: campaigns, flows, orders.

First, show me: the 5 sends with the highest revenue per recipient and what they had in common, the worst performers and whether the offer, segment or timing was to blame, which days and hours actually produced orders, and the split of revenue between flows and campaigns.

Then build this year’s calendar for November 24th to 30th, where Black Friday is the 27th and Cyber Monday is the 30th. For each send: date, channel, segment, the job it does, the offer, and a subject line based on what worked last year.

Rules: max 2 sends per person per day, every segment gets a different angle than the sitewide one, suppress anyone who bought in the last 48 hours. Tell me which sends to cut first if I run out of time.

✅ Why it works: it analyzes before it writes, so the calendar comes out of your numbers instead of a template. Revenue per recipient is the metric that matters, because your biggest send is almost always just your biggest list.

👀 Check the maths before you act on it. AI is confident about arithmetic and not always right.

With BFCM around the corner, the question is not whether to send more. It's about what sends are worth building.

One brand on Omnisend grew BFCM revenue 77% year over year, with email driving 48.1% of total store revenue over the period. Another gets 39% of its email revenue from automated sends that make up 1.22% of what it sends.

That gap is the whole argument for spending October on your flows instead of your calendar.

Email, SMS and push run in 1 automation, the segments build off order value and frequency, and the templates are already there for the campaigns you do send.

→ Build your BFCM flows on Omnisend

*Sponsored

Black Friday is November 27th. That's 10 weeks from today, which is plenty of time to fix things and nowhere near enough to rebuild anything.

So relax.

None of this is a strategy overhaul.

It's 15 moves you can knock out in an afternoon each, roughly in the order we would do them.

Weeks 1 to 4 are list and flow work. Weeks 5 to 8 are offer and site. The last 2 weeks are execution only, so if it is not live by November 13th, it is next year’s problem.

1. Retire that poor 10% popup

Your “10% off your first order” popup has been on duty since January. Everybody who wanted it has taken it. So let's just let it rest shall we?

Do this:

• Swap the offer to early access instead of money off. “Get our Black Friday deals 24 hours early” costs you nothing and sounds like a club.

• Turn on SMS capture in the same popup. Ask for email first, phone second, and you get both without tanking your signup rate.

• Have it live by November 1st so the list has 4 weeks to fill up before you need it.

2. Make signing up a bit of fun

Every brand on earth is asking for an email address in November. A spin-to-win or a scratch-to-reveal at least feels like a game instead of a toll booth.

Do this:

• Test it against your normal form for 2 weeks in October, so you have real numbers before the traffic shows up.

• Cap the prizes so even your best outcome is still profitable. Free shipping and a $10 credit do the job. 40% off does not.

3. Strip the site back

Your shopper has 10 tabs open, a toddler yelling somewhere, and a dog barking at the Amazon delivery man. If they can't tell what's on sale in 3 seconds, trust us... they're gone.

Do this:

• 1 banner, 1 offer, 1 button. “Shop Black Friday deals.” That is the whole homepage.

• Put your shipping cutoff where people can see it, not 4 clicks deep in the FAQ. For most carriers you are looking at December 18th for standard ground.

• Pull your site up on your own phone on 4G. If the deal is not visible before you scroll, fix that before anything else on this list.

4. Rewrite the abandonment flows for November

Right now your cart email says “still thinking it over?” That is a lovely sentence in July. During a sale with a deadline it is a shrug.

Do this:

• Build a November version with the deadline in the copy. “Your Black Friday price ends Monday at midnight.”

• Add stock or shipping urgency wherever it is actually true. Do not invent it, people can smell it.

• Shorten the delays. A 4-hour first send beats 24 hours when the offer dies in 3 days.

With AI: paste in your current cart emails and ask for a BFCM version of each that keeps the bones and swaps the urgency. You are editing, not writing. Much faster.

5. Wake up the dead list now, not in November

Emailing 6 months of cold subscribers during peak week is how you land in spam on the most expensive weekend of the year. Do it in October while nobody is watching.

Do this:

• Pull everyone who has not opened in 180 days. Send 2 emails, 5 days apart, asking if they want in on the biggest sale of the year.

• Suppress whoever ignores both, before November 1st, and leave them suppressed. You will live.

• Keep an eye on complaints. Above 0.1% and you are sending too hard.

6. Check your automations are not fighting each other

Someone signs up on Black Friday, gets your welcome flow’s 15% code, then gets the sitewide 25% an hour later. Congratulations, your best offer now looks like your second-best offer.

Do this:

• List every automation with a discount code in it. Welcome, cart, browse, win-back, post-purchase. All of them.

• Decide which ones pause during the sale and which ones switch to the sale offer.

• Put the dates in a calendar today: pause November 24th, resume December 2nd. Otherwise you will forget, and it will be January before anyone notices.

7. Make gifting painless

Half your BFCM buyers are shopping for somebody else, and they are stuck on 2 things: what to pick, and how to keep it a surprise.

Do this:

• Build 3 gift guides by price. Under $50, under $100, and the fancy one.

• Add a ship-later option or a gift card so nothing lands on the doormat 3 weeks early.

• Put “arrives by” dates on product pages. “3 to 5 day shipping” makes people do maths they do not want to do.

8. Refresh the photos people actually see

Your hero shots have been the same white-background product photos all year. Fine in March. In peak week, when everyone is scrolling at speed, they do not stop anyone.

Do this:

• Replace the first image on your top 10 products with a lifestyle shot or somebody using the thing.

• Add 1 real customer photo per product page.

• Grab your 5 best customer clips and use them as the creative in emails and texts.

9. Recycle your winners, shamelessly

Your best email of the year already exists. So does your best ad. Nobody is giving out points for starting from scratch.

Do this:

• Pull your top 3 campaigns by revenue since June and rebuild them with a Black Friday headline.

• Keep whatever worked. Change the offer and the deadline. That is it.

• Use the traffic bump to test 1 thing. A subject line or a button. Not both, or you learn nothing.

10. You do not need to go that deep

Going from 25% to 40% off does not move revenue the way people assume. Moderate offers in the 10% to 25% range convert close to the big ones and leave you with margin to show for it.

Do this:

• Lead with your best offer on day 1. If something better appears on Sunday, everyone who bought Friday feels like a mug.

• Try a bundle or a gift with purchase before you hand over another 10 points.

• Know your break-even discount per product before you pick the sitewide number. Yes, that is a spreadsheet. Do it anyway.

11. Sort out returns before December does it for you

More sales means more returns, in December, from people who only just met you.

Do this:

• Put the returns window and the process on the product page, in words a human would use.

• Turn on self-service returns so your support inbox does not become a full-time job.

• Offer store credit with a sweetener. Spend $100, get $110 back in credit, and the money stays with you.

• Extend the window to January 31st for anything bought as a gift, and say so loudly.

12. Go buy something from your own store

Quickest way to find what is broken. Be the customer for an hour.

Do this:

• Place a real order on your phone this week with a fresh email address.

• Save every message you get for 14 days. Receipts, shipping updates, texts, the whole welcome flow.

• Note every moment you hesitated, even slightly. That is your fix list, already in priority order.

13. Book your TikTok creators in October

Last year TikTok Shop did more than $500 million in US sales over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, with nearly 50% more shoppers buying than the year before. Creator calendars are full by early November, so a clip that takes off over Cyber Weekend only happens if somebody made it in October.

Do this:

• Find 5 creators already posting about your category and message them this month.

• Get whitelisting rights so you can run their content as ads, not just hope the algorithm is feeling generous.

• Ask for unboxing and honest-review formats. Polished spots do not land during BFCM.

14. Save SMS for the deadlines

Inboxes are unreadable that weekend. Texts get read, which is exactly why you should not send 6 of them.

Do this:

• Plan 4 texts for the whole weekend. VIP early access, Black Friday morning, Sunday nudge, Cyber Monday last call.

• Keep each one under 160 characters with the deadline in the first line. Nobody reads a text twice.

• Suppress anyone who has already bought. Chasing a new customer for a sale they just took is a great way to lose them.

15. Let AI do the first draft

You have roughly 40 sends to write between now and December 1st. You do not have to write all of them yourself, and honestly, you will not.

Do this:

• Feed an AI tool 3 of your best-performing emails and have it learn your voice before you ask it for anything.

• Put it to work on subject line variants, trimming SMS to 160 characters, and turning 1 email into 3 formats.

• Keep the last pass human. Read it out loud. If it sounds like a press release, rewrite the first line yourself.

The 10-week version

• By October 15th: popups swapped, dead list re-engaged and suppressed, creators booked.

• By November 1st: automations audited, cart flows rewritten, gift guides live, photos refreshed.

• By November 13th: offers locked, site stripped back, returns sorted, full journey tested.

• November 24th to 30th: send. Nothing new gets built. Hands off the site.

Pick the 3 you are worst at and put them in the calendar today. Doing 3 properly beats doing 15 in a panic the week before.

Annnnd that’s a wrap for this edition!

Thanks for hanging with us today. If this gave you an idea for your next send, share ecomemailmarketer.com with your favorite DTC marketer.

Remember: Do shit you love.

🤘 Jimmy Kim & Chase Dimond

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