Black Friday is here. All the planning and building pays off now, but launch isn’t just about hitting ‘schedule’ or ‘send’. It’s about staying agile, monitoring closely, nurturing the new customers you’ve gained, and capturing learnings to fuel next year’s success.
This post is the third and final part of my Black Friday Success Series. If you missed the other parts, you can check them out here:
If you’re already up to date, let’s get started !👇
Here’s how to manage your BFCM launch (and follow-up):
1. Launch readiness checklist
Unlike the QA process in Part 2, this checklist is about operational readiness across the business. Before you press go on your BFCM launch, make sure you’ve ticked these off:
✅ Website & landing pages: Double-check load speed, forms and submission (if applicable) and messaging is consistent across channels.
✅ Promotional codes & offer redemption: Be sure to create coupon codes ahead of time but only activate close to launch to avoid leaks.
✅ Test orders: Run through different purchase scenarios to validate redemption, terms and conditions like minimum spend rules.
✅ Stock visibility: Confirm stock levels for agreed promotions and stay close to your Operations/Commercial teams.
✅ Customer comms clarity: Make sure delivery timelines, returns policies and FAQs are up to date and visible on site. Linking to these pages from your emails and other channels helps create a smoother customer experience.
✅ Customer service briefing: Share previews of all your marketing comms (not just email). Equip the service team with offer details, FAQs and pain points so they can support customers confidently.
✅ Automations adapted: Tailor your welcome, abandon basket and post-purchase flows for BFCM and plan when you’ll revert them.
✅ Ready your reports: Build dashboards/spreadsheets in advance. Platforms like Braze and Marketing Cloud let you tag campaigns so you can pull reports daily. Extend this thinking to other teams too, so everyone has what they need. More on this in the next section.
✅ Back-up plan: As mentioned in Part 1, make sure your fallback strategy is agreed and co-ordinated. That might be a simplified offer, a sitewide discount, or a different hero product if stock or competitor activity forces a pivot. I cover this in more detail below too.
✅ Communication schedule: Agree in advance how often you’ll regroup across teams and update each other. Ideas on what to cover and structure below.
This isn’t a one-and-done exercise, it should be revisited throughout the sales period.
2. Reporting and monitoring
Reporting can sometimes be pushed aside until the end, overlooked due to lack of internal resources or simply forgotten in the fast pace of getting a never-ending cycle of email campaigns. However, if I could give you only one recommendation it would be: don’t leave reporting until the end.
Real-time visibility is crucial. Always do a topline check on the day of send to make sure there are no glaring issues like low delivered rates, high bounces, unsubscribes or complaints. For deeper insights, such as conversion trends or changes in average order value, you’ll usually want to wait at least a few days before drawing conclusions.
At a minimum, keep reporting on your core email metrics (opens, clicks, CTOR, conversions etc) alongside those quick checks. If you have the resources, go further and look at the wider picture:
- Revenue vs. forecast: Is there a huge difference?
- Average order value (AOV): Has spend shifted, especially if you’re trying to push higher baskets?
- Number of orders: Are they in line with expectations?
- Offer redemptions: Are codes/freebies being used as planned?
- List growth & churn: Does anything look unusual compared to BAU?
- A/B test results: Can you uncover any trends to adapt future campaigns?
- Cross-channel performance: SMS, WhatsApp, push or on-site activity can add useful context.
- Website drop-off points: Where are customers abandoning the journey? (Often flagged by your ecommerce/data team, but useful context for email.)
3. Regular check-ins
Once your BFCM offers are live, things move fast. Stock levels fluctuate, customer queries spike and offers may need tweaking on the fly. Even with the best preparation, unforeseen challenges may still crop up (and in my experience they usually do!).
That’s why regular check-ins are vital. Allocate a main stakeholder from each function (marketing, ecommerce, commercial, tech, service, operations) and set a schedule that works for your business. For ecommerce, daily stand-ups are usually best – short, sharp updates where each stakeholder shares what’s happening in their area.
These check-ins are also the perfect time to share topline results from your reporting. Whether that’s performance insights, offer redemptions, or early signs from an A/B test, it gives the wider team visibility and helps shape decisions in real time.
- Service might flag a surge in delivery-related queries → marketing can update messaging.
- Operations might flag low stock → campaigns can pivot before disappointment.
- Marketing might share performance insights → helping other teams forecast demand.
If daily feels too much, you could share topline reports every other day and focus calls on the key blockers. Either way, supplement meetings with a dedicated Slack/Teams/Chat channel for in-the-moment updates. It keeps everyone connected and able to react at pace.
4. When to activate your back-up plan
In Part 1, we talked about planning for the unexpected. Now’s the time to put that into action.
Even with the best preparation, things can (and often do) go wrong during BFCM. That’s why it pays to have a fallback plan ready to go, so you’re not scrambling under pressure.
Here are some of the most common scenarios where a back-up plan is essential:
- Stock runs low/out: Have a “last chance” message or alternative product ready to promote.
- Coupon codes fail: Customers can’t redeem, or terms aren’t applying correctly.
- Website issues: Slow load times or outages put conversions at risk.
- Offer underperforms: If uptake is low, you may need to pivot to a more compelling promotion.
- Competitor pressure: Aggressive offers elsewhere might mean you adjust your positioning.
- Customer feedback: Negative sentiment on social media around weak offers, order placement troubles or slow delivery.
- Email issues: Wrong segment, broken link or incorrect code requiring a corrective “sorry” send.
Not every pivot has to be a big one. Sometimes it’s as simple as clarifying delivery times or sending a “sorry email”. Other times it could mean rolling out a whole new fallback offer, such as a sitewide discount.
The key is to prepare for both:
- Have a decision process in place: Who signs off changes, who builds the campaign, who hits send? (if you have the resource, you could even build some fallback offers out in your ESP saving time to launch)
- Keep competitor monitoring active: Not to copy, but to understand how your offer stacks up.
- Stick to your QA process: Even under time pressure, run checks before sending anything new, rushing increases the risk of further errors.
Above all: Stay calm. Customers don’t expect perfection, but they do expect honesty and quick action. A fast, transparent response builds far more trust than silence.
5. Manage email deliverability post BFCM
As your BFCM sales period comes to an end, don’t simply switch back to your regular email marketing volumes, frequency and cadence – this could do more harm than good. Inbox Providers are on the lookout for spikes in sender volume that might indicate a spam mailer. Therefore, it’s best to play it safe and plan a gradual cool down to return to your BAU email marketing activity. Think of it almost like a “reverse IP warm up” that helps to protect your sender reputation, inbox placement and deliverability. Depending on how much you increased sends this could take a couple of weeks to complete, so make sure you’ve factored it into your follow up campaign schedule.
Also remember, you’re not just sending campaigns for the sake of your reputation. There’s an audience at the end of the inbox, who are expecting timely, relevant content – so come up with your best ideas. Repurposing previously performing email campaigns is a great way to drive engagement, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time.
6. Retention opportunities
A lot of brands think of BFCM predominantly as an acquisition opportunity, but don’t miss this chance to nurture and retain the new customers you worked so hard to gain. The weeks and months that follow are the perfect time to deepen the relationship and show them more about your brand, how you can help and why they should stick around.
Consider how you can keep the momentum going:
- Post-purchase flows: Include cross-sell recommendations, upsell product suggestions or review requests.
- A thank-you message: A simple but powerful way to build goodwill with new customers.
- Loyalty programmes: Highlight any rewards, points or perks they can unlock.
- Tailored BAU campaigns: Seasonal ranges or exclusive deals that keep them engaged.
- Replenishment nudges: If your products are repeat-purchase by nature.
- Zero-party data collection: Use follow-up campaigns to learn more about preferences and personalise.
- Multi-channel touch points: Consider SMS or Push to reinforce key offers (opt-in dependent).
And don’t forget to switch your automations back to evergreen versions once BFCM campaigns have run their course. If you built separate automations for BFCM, let them run their natural course but have a plan for when to switch them off (and the original flows back on). The quicker you return customers to a smooth, always-on journey, the better their long-term experience will feel.
7. Wrap up, debrief…and celebrate!
Once your Black Friday sale ends, it’s tempting to move straight on to thinking about Christmas. But don’t skip the debrief. Document what worked, what didn’t, and any learnings you want to carry into next year. Failures teach you just as much as wins (sometimes more), so capture those too. This review will be invaluable when you start planning for 2026.
And finally, take a breather. The busiest sales period of the year is intense, and recognising the effort that went in helps the team recharge for what’s next.
That closes my Black Friday Success Series: Plan. Build. Launch. I hope you’ve found it useful and picked up ideas to take into this BFCM season. Good luck putting your campaigns into action!
Need an extra pair of hands this sales season? My CRM Collaborative retainer offers flexible, on-demand support — whether that’s building campaigns, fine-tuning automations, or giving your strategy a fresh perspective.