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SMS is one of the most direct and highest-converting channels available to CPG brands during Black Friday/Cyber Monday BFCM. Many brands make the mistake of copying their email campaigns for SMS, treating it as a smaller version of email. But it’s actually a different channel that should be treated with different approaches.

Tips for Successful SMS Campaigns for BFCM

Here is what Barrel took away from K:BOS 2026, and what it means for CPG brands building their digital ecosystem on Shopify.

Insights from K:BOS 2026 for CPG Brands: AI, Agents, and the End of the Siloed Customer Journey

Your site is your digital flagship, and during Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), mobile is where that flagship gets tested. A fast, friction-free experience is what separates a bounce from a conversion.

Make Your Mobile Site Holiday-Ready

Campaign Ideas That Cut Through BFCM Inbox Noise

Stop Batch-and-Blast: A Segmentation Framework for Holiday Email

Bundling is one of the highest-impact strategies available to CPG brands during Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), and it's often underused. Last holiday season, brands using bundles saw average order value (AOV) increases of 20% to 30% or more. Bundling doesn't just grow cart size. It cuts through decision fatigue, making the path to purchase easier and more rewarding.

Make Bundling Your BFCM Advantage

As we wrote earlier this year, category leaders get a default advantage when AI assistants make recommendations, but that advantage still has to be earned with the right content. Cabot's ongoing retainer with Barrel gave us the opportunity to test that thesis directly.

How We Helped Cabot Creamery Build AI Authority in a Competitive Category

Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) inboxes are noisy. The brands that break through aren't the ones yelling louder; rather they're the ones that make each customer feel like the message was made specifically for them, even at scale. Here's how we've seen top CPG brands in food & beverage, beauty & skincare, healthy & wellness, and home, family, & pet leverage personalization across every major channel.

Personalization at Scale: Email, SMS, Push, and Onsite

A strong gift guide can solve that problem directly, turning a crowded catalog into a handful of clear, confident choices. Last Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) season, 73% of shoppers said they welcome inspiration from retailers when planning gift purchases.

Gift Guides for BFCM: Guiding Shoppers Through the Holiday Rush

Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a carefully timed rollout, and the brands that come out ahead are the ones that structure their marketing planning across the months leading up to the most important sales season of the year. Here's how we recommend breaking down the work, phase by phase.

Your BFCM Roadmap: What to Do in August, September, October, and November

What We Ask in Every UX Audit

Beyond the Discount: Building a BFCM Campaign That Reflects Your Brand Story

If you want subscribers who convert during Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), the incentive to sign-up needs to be clear, exclusive, and tied to something tangible. Here are the acquisition tactics we see working for CPG brands right now.

Lead Magnets, Quizzes, and Gated Content: Smarter List Growth for CPG Brands

Why We're Auditing One CPG Site Live Before BFCM

Eighteen months ago, Sidekick was a new feature. At Shopify's DotDev conference, Shopify's Head of Partnerships, Atlee Clark, presented it as a platform in its own right, and the numbers behind it are worth sitting with: 32 million analytics reports generated, 25 million flows built, 3.4 million customer segments created, and 600K flow automations now running every single day.

What Shopify's Sidekick Data Tells Us About the Future of Ecommerce Operations

The Shopify Toolkit for AI-Ready CPG Stores

Mack Weldon built its business on modern menswear essentials, underwear, undershirts, and everyday basics engineered with proprietary fabrics for comfort and durability. That product mix brings two different shoppers to the same product listing page (PLP): loyal customers who already know what they want and are moving quickly to restock, and new customers who are still comparing colors, fabrics, and fits for the first time. Designing navigation, filtering, and product-browsing tools that work for both audiences at once became the focus of our conversion rate optimization (CRO) testing program on Mack Weldon's PLPs.

How Hiding Filters Helped Mack Weldon Lift Conversion Rate by 6.06%

The collections overhaul announced at Shopify's DotDev developer conference on July 21 is not an incremental platform update. Shopify's Head of Partnerships, Atlee Clark, called it the biggest update to collections in ten years, and for CPG brands managing complex product lines, that is not an exaggeration.

Shopify's Latest Collections Update: What It Means for CPG Catalogs

Most brands treat customer service and customer experience (CX) as a cost center: a queue to clear, a ticket count to reduce. Good Protein treats it as one of the most valuable data sources in the business, and that decision is now paying off in an unexpected place: AI search visibility.

Turning Your CX Team Into a Content Engine

Agentic Checkout Is Already Converting. Is Your Catalog Ready?

Elvie UK Migration to Shopify Plus

On May 27, Barrel hosted a live webinar with partners from Shopify and Good Protein to talk through what it actually takes to get cited by AI search tools. One example from that conversation captures the reality of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): picture a blogger in Nebraska, with no meaningful following, who writes a single post comparing protein powders. That post could end up cited constantly by AI assistants, sometimes ahead of the brands it reviews. It's a small, specific scenario, but it's playing out across categories right now.

Why a Blogger in Nebraska Might Outrank Your CPG Brand

Barrel has been named a Shopify Platinum Partner, the top tier of Shopify's partner program. The designation recognizes agencies that have delivered sustained, high-impact results for Shopify merchants, and it's one Barrel has been working toward for years.

Barrel Is Now a Platinum Shopify Partner

From Color Schemes to Color Palettes: What Shopify's Update Means for Your Brand

How We Evolved Wamsutta’s Digital Experience to Support Their Retail Launch

As part of our ongoing partnership with Cabot, we designed a new category landing page template designed for both traditional SEO and AI search optimization.

Designing a Category Page Template Built for AI Search Optimization

As part of our ongoing partnership, we optimized Cabot’s website navigation to improve product discoverability across both traditional and AI-powered search.

Optimizing Cabot Creamery’s Navigation for Search Discoverability

What CPG brands need to know about AI-driven discovery

What CPG brands need to know about AI-driven discovery

Turning Shoppers Into Creators for the New InstantChill™ Product Launch

See how McCormick, Barrel, and Zest created a modern gifting experience, unlocking a new channel while enhancing the customer journey.

Bringing Modern Gifting to a 135-Year-Old Brand