Black Friday rewards the brands that did the boring work in September. At Money Clothing we posted record Black Friday numbers four years running, and none of those records came from a clever subject line on the day. They came from having the list, the offer, the creative and the stock sorted weeks before the first email went out.
This is the Black Friday marketing strategy DTC brands can actually run. It's written for small teams with real budgets, real targets and not much spare time.
Start in September, not November
Most Black Friday problems are planning problems that show up late. The offer gets decided in the second week of November, the creative is rushed, and the hero product sells out on Friday afternoon while the ads are still running.
Work backwards from the date. A rough timeline I'd use:
- September: decide the offer, agree hero products and confirm stock depth with whoever runs buying and operations.
- Early October: brief creative, write the email sequence, build landing pages.
- Late October: launch an early access sign-up and start capturing intent.
- First half of November: warm up audiences, test creative, load everything into the platforms.
- Black Friday week: execute, monitor, adjust.
Put it on one page with dates and owners. If a task doesn't have a name next to it, assume nobody is doing it.
Stock deserves its own conversation. Pick three to five hero products you'll push hardest and make sure there's enough depth to carry a full week of demand. Selling out is not a good problem when you're paying for traffic to a page that says "out of stock".
Pick an offer you can afford
Record revenue means nothing if you lose money on every order. Before you settle on a discount, work out contribution margin per order: price after discount, minus product cost, shipping, packaging, payment fees, an allowance for returns and your expected ad cost per order. Do this for your hero products, not just the average.
A rule of thumb I use. If the offer only works at a ROAS you've never hit, the offer is wrong. Change the discount, change the products in it, or change the mechanic.
You have more options than a flat percentage off:
- Sitewide discount. Simple, easy to communicate, converts well. Hardest on margin.
- Tiered spend-and-save. Spend £75, save 15%. Spend £150, save 25%. Good for lifting order value.
- Gift with purchase. Protects price perception and works well for premium brands.
- Bundles. Move slower lines alongside bestsellers.
My opinion: one clear offer beats five clever ones. People skim during Black Friday. If they need to read a paragraph to understand your deal, you've lost them to someone who just says "30% off everything".
If you want an escalation, plan it. A stronger offer or a final-chance message on Cyber Monday works when it's scheduled from the start. Panic-discounting on Saturday because Friday was slow trains customers to wait, and they remember.
Build the list before you need it
Email and SMS are the cheapest revenue you'll get all week. When ad auctions get expensive, the people who already gave you their details are the audience you can reach without paying for every click.
When I joined Money Clothing there was no email marketing at all, and I built every Klaviyo flow from scratch. That experience is why I'd put list building ahead of almost anything else on this plan. You can't build an engaged list in the last fortnight of November.
Practical steps for this autumn:
Switch your sign-up pop-up from a generic welcome discount to Black Friday early access from late October. People are happy to hand over an email for first dibs on a sale they were going to shop anyway.
Segment before you send. Engaged subscribers (opened or clicked in the last 60-90 days) can take a daily email during Black Friday week. Lapsed subscribers can't, and blasting them will hurt your deliverability right when you need inbox placement most. Send them fewer, better emails, or suppress them.
Update your automated flows. Welcome, abandoned basket, browse abandonment and post-purchase flows should all reflect the offer during the sale window. An abandoned basket email promising 10% off when the site is showing 30% off looks careless.
If your list has grown a lot, warm up sending volume over October rather than doubling your send size overnight.
Paid media: scale what works, don't test in peak
Ad costs climb through November as every brand bids for the same people. That's the worst possible time to find out your new creative doesn't work.
At Money Clothing paid spend normally sat around £10-20k a month and went to six figures in peak sales months, with ROAS running at 5-6x during sales periods. The reason spend can scale that hard is that conversion rates rise when there's a strong offer. That only holds if the creative and audiences going into peak are already proven.
So do your testing in October. Find the two or three ads that win, then build Black Friday versions of those. Same angle, same format, with the offer layered on.
A few rules I'd stick to:
Pace the budget across the week. Spend is usually heaviest from Thursday evening through to Cyber Monday. Don't blow half your budget on the Monday before because a pre-sale teaser looked promising.
Weight towards warm audiences. Site visitors, email engagers and past customers convert at much better rates when costs are high. Prospecting still matters, but make sure retargeting is fully funded.
Protect your brand search terms. Competitors and resellers will bid on your name. Make sure your brand campaigns have the budget to show up every time.
Brief affiliates early. Voucher and cashback partners plan their placements weeks ahead. If you want featured slots, get the offer to them in October.
Watch blended numbers, not just platform ROAS. Total revenue divided by total marketing spend, checked daily, tells you more than five ad platforms each claiming credit for the same sale. Agree a floor before the week starts, the number at which you'd pull back spend, so nobody is making that call emotionally at 11pm on Friday.
Get the site and operations ready
You can do everything above perfectly and still lose the week on the website. Run through this a fortnight before launch:
Make the offer obvious on every page, not just the homepage. Product pages, collection pages and the basket should all show it.
Apply discounts automatically where your platform allows it. Codes create friction and customer service tickets.
Test checkout on a phone, start to finish, with a real card. Then get someone outside the team to do it.
Publish clear delivery cut-offs and an extended returns window for Christmas gifting. Both reduce hesitation.
Check page speed with the sale banners and extra scripts in place. Promotional apps have a habit of slowing everything down.
Talk to the warehouse. If they can pick and pack a set number of orders a day, you need to know that before you sell three days' worth in an afternoon. Write customer service macros for the obvious questions: delivery dates, discount not applying, order changes.
Run the week, then keep going
During the week, set a daily rhythm. Morning: check yesterday's revenue, spend, blended return and stock on hero products. Midday: shift budget towards what's working and pause anything that's out of stock. Evening: send the planned email and check it landed properly.
Keep a shared note of what happened each day. It'll be the most useful document you have next September.
Then don't switch off on Tuesday. The customers you acquired at a discount are only worth it if some of them come back at full price. Post-purchase flows matter more after Black Friday than at any other point in the year. Thank them, help them get the most from what they bought, and introduce the rest of the range before Christmas.
Move your messaging to gifting and delivery deadlines, and avoid snapping straight back to full price with nothing in between. A gift guide or a free delivery threshold eases the transition.
Within a week, run a debrief. What sold, what didn't, where the money went, what broke. Write it down while it's fresh.
FAQ
When should DTC brands start planning Black Friday?
September at the latest. The offer and stock decisions need to be made early because creative, email and landing pages all depend on them. Late October is when you should be capturing early access sign-ups, not still deciding what the deal is.
How much should I discount on Black Friday?
As much as your margins can carry after product cost, shipping, fees, returns and ad cost per order, and no more. Work out contribution margin on your hero products first. If a deep discount doesn't stack up, a tiered offer, bundle or gift with purchase can be just as effective.
Should I increase ad spend for Black Friday?
Usually yes, because conversion rates rise with a strong offer and that can justify higher costs. The condition is that your creative and audiences are already proven before peak. Set a minimum blended return in advance and pull back if you drop below it.
If you want someone who has done this for real to run your next peak, I'm open to Head of Marketing and Head of Growth roles, with DTC and consumer brands first, and I take on consulting work too. Get in touch via the contact link on tomosborne.me.