9 Black Friday Email Marketing Campaigns to Drive More Sales

With one of the most important retail events of the year around the corner, it’s time to plan your Black Friday email marketing campaigns.

During this lucrative period, a strong email marketing strategy is key to ensuring you stand out from the competition and drive sales.

Traffic levels across the year are about to peak, and as an eCommerce retailer, preparation is key to capitalising on this season’s shoppers.

Despite increased financial challenges for consumers in 2025, last year’s Black Friday remained as popular as ever. Nationwide recorded 11.9 million transactions on Black Friday 2025, up by 8.7% from 2024.¹

In this article, we’ll explore why email marketing is essential for a successful Black Friday. We’ll also take a look at the campaigns you can use to recover sales, drive AOV, and build customer loyalty this time of year.

Suggested watching: Discover tips and tricks for your Black Friday strategy in our webinar ‘Mastering Q4: Tactics to Boost Seasonal Sales’.

The current state of Black Friday email marketing

Black Friday is a highly competitive time for eCommerce retailers. Many retailers offer their best deals and discounts, leaving shoppers with endless options.

Shoppers around this time often have high purchase intent, but can easily abandon their carts in search of a better deal.

Email marketing is one of the best ways to re-engage these Black Friday shoppers and bring them back to your site to purchase.

However, with an influx of emails hitting inboxes around this time, you must craft engaging campaigns that cut through the Black Friday noise.

Pre-planning your email calendar can help you do this. In the next section, we’ll cover the campaigns you can add to your calendar to build a top-class Black Friday email strategy.

Pro tip: Crafting a Black Friday email strategy can appear time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Harnessing automation like Salesfire’s AI-powered retargeting tools can help you send personalised, targeted emails on a large scale using minimal resources.

Suggested reading: Learn the benefits of email automation in our article ‘What is Email Automation?’.

Black Friday email marketing campaigns to drive sales

Let’s take a look at some of the email marketing campaigns that can play a critical role in your Black Friday success.

1. Sneak peeks

Building suspense around your upcoming promotions and discounts can be a great way to get shoppers excited and ready to buy on Black Friday.

Hinting at your deals ahead of time gives shoppers time to prepare for sales and ensure your brand is top of mind when they’re ready to buy.

To achieve this, you could send things like exclusive sneak peeks or previews of limited-time offers to your mailing list.

Building excitement with your email subscribers prior to Black Friday can help to:

• Boost customer loyalty: Giving your email subscribers a heads-up of your deals can make them feel valued and more inclined to choose your brand.
  
• Get shoppers invested in your deals: Shoppers can see which deals catch their eye ahead of time and prepare so they are ready to buy when the time comes.
  
• Inspire gift ideas: Giving a shopper time to review your upcoming deals can help spark gifting ideas for friends and family, driving larger orders.

Sending email campaigns in advance of Black Friday can help set both you and your shoppers up for success on the day.

Pro tip: Throughout Black Friday, many shoppers will be looking to bag a bargain and tick items off their Christmas gift lists. Enhance product discovery for shoppers during this time by showcasing relevant gifts and spotlighting your bestsellers. Try using AI-powered personalised recommendations to help shoppers discover additional products they might like.

2. Countdowns

When sending your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails, it’s a great idea to leverage campaigns with countdowns.

Countdowns can help to create a sense of urgency and generate FOMO (fear of missing out) for your shoppers.

With 62% of shoppers admitting that FOMO influences their purchases, this feeling can be the difference between your email being clicked or ignored.²

Countdown email campaigns can encourage your shoppers to act fast to avoid missing out on a good deal. This can motivate them to move quickly through the customer journey and checkout.

Timers can be such a simple addition to your email campaigns, but they can significantly boost your sales this Black Friday.

What else you can do: Use On-Site Messaging campaigns to extend urgency onto your website too. You can include countdowns or even strategies like social proofing, highlighting how many shoppers are viewing or have purchased a product. Leveraging urgency on your website can help prevent shoppers from dropping off once they get there.

3. Exclusive offers for VIPs

Black Friday can be a great time to strengthen relationships with your existing shoppers by offering exclusive VIP-only deals.

You can segment your email audiences to deliver highly targeted campaigns that reward your most engaged subscribers or loyal customers.

Examples of Black Friday email marketing campaigns for VIPs include:

• Early sale access: Provide repeat purchasers with an early-access link to your Black Friday sale, so they can bag deals before general access goes live.

• Exclusive discount codes: Show your existing subscribers how much you appreciate them by offering an extra discount on top of your standard deals.

Sending campaigns that make your shoppers feel valued can ensure they stay loyal to your brand throughout Q4 and beyond.

4. Browse abandonment

Browse abandonment emails should be a part of almost every brand’s Black Friday strategy. They are an effective way to recover sales from shoppers who browse your site but leave without purchasing.

With this type of behaviour common in distracted Black Friday shoppers, effective browse abandonment emails are key to maximising revenue.

You can easily send these campaigns using an automated email tool. For example, Salesfire’s Email Sequences can track shopper behaviour in real-time on your website to trigger personalised browse abandonment emails automatically.

By reminding shoppers of the products they were interested in, you can entice them back on-site to finalise their purchase.

This type of campaign is effective year-round, but especially during Black Friday when visitors often jump between sites looking for deals.

Suggested reading: Make your browse abandonment email campaigns more effective by supporting them with SMS too. Discover why SMS marketing should be in your brand’s toolkit.

5. Re-engagement emails

Black Friday provides an opportunity to re-engage and drive revenue from shoppers who haven’t interacted with your brand in a while.

It’s an exciting time for shoppers, and they can be willing to shop with brands they wouldn’t normally choose to secure the best deal.

You can draw these customers back in using re-engagement emails that capture your shoppers’ attention.

To create powerful re-engagement emails, consider including content such as:

• Incentives: Include a discount or free delivery offering that’s too good to pass up to tempt browsers to make a purchase. 

• Personalised product recommendations: Entice shoppers back to your site by displaying recommendations of other products they may be interested in.

This type of campaign can help secure more sales this Black Friday by unlocking revenue even from your less engaged shoppers.

6. Save my basket

During Black Friday, shoppers are bombarded with promotions, so they won’t always commit to a purchase there and then.

They’ll inevitably want to shop around and weigh up deals across brands before making a decision.

To encourage shoppers to return to you to buy, you can run a ‘save my basket’ email campaign.

Allowing shoppers to opt in to save their basket on site means they can easily return to it when they are ready to purchase. 

You also gain the opportunity to send a series of emails that entice them to pick up their on-site journey where they left off.

With this campaign, you can keep your brand top-of-mind for the shopper while making purchasing simple. It can help you unlock a stream of Black Friday sales.

Pro tip: Consider including a limited-time offer within your follow-up emails after a shopper has saved their basket. This can act as an incentive to act fast and choose your brand rather than shop elsewhere.

7. Cart abandonment

One of the most important email sequences for Black Friday is your cart abandonment campaign. 

This campaign is essential throughout the entire Q4, a time when distracted shoppers are frequently abandoning their baskets.

With Black Friday cart abandonment rates as high as 78%, if you’re not retargeting these shoppers, you’re leaving significant potential revenue on the table.³

You can make your cart abandonment campaigns extra engaging by:

• Offering incentives: Follow up basket abandonment with emails featuring personalised discounts to give your shoppers additional motivation to purchase.

• Remind shoppers of their basket: Personalise your cart abandonment emails to reference the specific items shoppers left in their cart. This can help recapture shopper attention.

Setting up this campaign before Black Friday traffic levels peak will ensure you’re ready to recover lost revenue through this key event and beyond.

Pro tip: Experiment with different email subject lines, designs, and copy to see what works best for your audience. Testing and optimising the content of your cart abandonment emails can help maximise clicks and opens throughout Black Friday.

Suggested reading: Discover the Top Email Marketing Metrics You Should be Tracking.

8. Welcome flow

The influx of traffic Black Friday brings means plenty of opportunities to acquire new customers.

An effective welcome flow can help guide new visitors towards their first purchase. It’s a series of emails you send when a shopper subscribes to your mailing list.

You’ll want to make the most of these new subscribers by sending a series of emails that guide them towards their first purchase.

When building your welcome flow ahead of Black Friday, you’ll want to include emails that:

• Provide value: Encourage shoppers to place their first order by delivering an exclusive welcome discount. You could make this eligible on sale items throughout Black Friday to offer even more incentive to buy.

• Reinforce your brand identity: Highlight what makes your brand stand out and why shoppers should choose you, such as key USPs like free delivery or rewards schemes. Promoting this is especially important during Black Friday when competition is high.

Pro tip: Maximise newsletter subscribers using data capture campaigns to highlight your welcome flow incentives. Solutions like Salesfire can display campaigns at key points in the customer journey, and hide them from existing subscribers. This can help boost marketing opt-ins while preventing discount misuse.

9. Post-purchase flow

Your shopper may have completed a Black Friday purchase, but your email campaigns don’t stop there. 

You now need to think about how you can nurture your shoppers after their purchases to capture additional sales opportunities.

A personalised post-purchase email flow can help to transform your Black Friday shoppers into long-term, repeat customers.

You can create an engaging post-purchase flow by:

• Hyper-personalising your content: Include the shopper’s name in the subject line, or go further and use AI-powered recommendations to personalise the content of the email itself. Including products connected to their interests or recent purchases can inspire further purchases.

• Optimising for all devices: Ensure your email is readable and just as engaging on mobile as it is on desktops or tablets. Consider your text and image sizes or use responsive designs. With over half of Black Friday purchases taking place on mobile, this is something you don’t want to overlook.⁴

Catapult your Q4 success with Black Friday email campaigns

Throughout Black Friday, there’s a whole host of opportunities to capture conversions. To thrive in Q4 and beyond, your email campaigns should nurture relationships across the entire customer lifecycle.

Supporting your email strategy with automation will allow you to tap into shopper behaviour to recover revenue and drive those all-important seasonal sales.

1 Black Friday post-weekend spending update | Nationwide

2 BEST FOMO IN MARKETING STATISTICS 2025 | Amra & Elma

3 How to Avoid Cart Abandonment This Black Friday: Ultimate Guide | Easyship

4 AI, mobile, discounts help drive online Black Friday sales higher | Chain Store Age