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.
Start by learning from last year. Review what worked, align on this year's goals and key segments, and audit your lifecycle flows for broken logic or outdated messaging. This is also the month to launch re-engagement campaigns for cold subscribers and start building new lead-capture assets like landing pages and quizzes.
Finalize and QA your welcome flows, abandon flows, and post-purchase journeys. Set up tagging and automation based on subscriber activity, and test email and SMS delivery, subject lines, and send cadence. Lock in creative production for emails, banners, and SMS templates so nothing is left to finish in November.
Turn up the energy, but keep it controlled. Launch early-access signups, run a referral campaign for VIPs, and roll out "BFCM preview" flows for your most engaged segments. This is also when CX planning and inventory forecasts should be finalized with your operations team.
By November, the work shifts to watching, adjusting, and maximizing. Schedule final QA on all major sends, launch pre-sale access for VIP segments a few days early, and prep customer support scripts for the volume spike. Monitor performance in real time and adjust segmentation as behavior changes.
A phased CRM calendar assumes your site can support everything you're planning to send traffic to. If your product pages, checkout, or navigation have friction that predates BFCM, no amount of email sequencing will fix it in November.
That's why we're running a live site audit ahead of the code freeze. Val Geisler, our Director of Strategy, and Christine Carforo, our Director of Design, will review one submitted brand's site live on September 23rd. Every brand that submits has the chance to win one of five Nintendo Switch 2s and a discounted UX Audit and BFCM Roadmap.
Submissions close September 16th. Submit your site for a teardown.
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