Black Friday marketing: Know what shoppers are waiting for

Black Friday plans tend to start with the calendar, while shoppers start with the thing they want. In our Cyber Five gap report, 68% of holiday shoppers waited for the sales between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday to buy at least one item.

Build your Black Friday marketing strategy around behavior. What a shopper keeps looking at or leaves in their cart tells you what they want, so make the messages you send them about that. That's how you stay relevant in an inbox full of Black Friday sales.

About the data: Centiment surveyed 1,048 US adults who bought online during Cyber Five 2025 and 295 in-house marketers at US retailers, September 28 to October 5, 2026. Holiday shoppers are the 981 who did holiday shopping, and shoppers who got holiday messages are the 908 who got promotional emails or texts that week. Shopper results are unweighted, and answers about 2025 rely on recall. The full report gives every base.

Key takeaways

• 68% of holiday shoppers waited for a Cyber Five deal on at least one item.
• 58% of all shoppers surveyed picked 30% off everything over 15% off the item they'd been looking at; 23% picked the precise offer.
• Past three to five messages from one brand across the five days, the share of shoppers who cut it off jumps from 53% to 67%.
• 46% of holiday shoppers had a deal they wanted sell out or end before they could buy it.

What should a Black Friday ecommerce strategy start from?

A Black Friday ecommerce strategy should start from what each shopper is waiting for, because most shoppers arrive at the five days with a specific item in mind. Most retail plans start somewhere else: 69% of retail marketers plan the holiday season calendar-first.

A plan built on dates can't see that. You find out who's waiting for what with behavior segmentation: grouping shoppers by what they do on your site.

How much of the holiday season does a Black Friday strategy cover?

Black Friday is November 27 this year, but a Black Friday strategy has to cover the days around it too, from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. By retailers' own estimate, those five days bring in about 48% of holiday revenue, even though 73% of holiday shoppers did most of their holiday buying outside them.

Which Black Friday marketing ideas respond to what shoppers do?

The Black Friday marketing ideas that respond to what shoppers do each start from a signal a shopper gives you. Build the three below before Thanksgiving, while there's still time to test them with real traffic and fix whatever breaks.

Score readiness before you choose the offer

If you want Black Friday promotion ideas that protect margin, start with a readiness score. It's a score per shopper, built from what they viewed, how often, and how recently. It shows who's close to buying.

Asked to choose between 30% off everything and 15% off the exact item they'd been looking at, 58% of all shoppers surveyed took the blanket discount. A blanket discount costs margin on every order, though, including orders from shoppers who'd already decided to buy.

Send the precise offer to the shoppers your score says are close, on the item they've been watching. Make it big enough to act on. Check before Thanksgiving whether your stack can identify purchase readiness, since the score has to exist before the offer goes out.

Follow up on the product they viewed

A product follow-up answers a shopper who looked at an item and left without buying it. About half of shoppers who got holiday messages received one last Cyber Five, and nearly half of those said it helped them decide. Mention the item they looked at. Leave out how you know.

Build the sellout path before the freeze

The sellout path is the set of journeys that answers a shopper whose deal sold out or ended before they could buy it. It has to be ready before your code freeze. 46% of holiday shoppers ran into one last year, and more than half of them bought the item from another store or went without.

Sending an automatic alternative is already retailers' most common response to a sellout, so set its rules now:

• What counts as a substitute: same category, in stock, at a comparable price.
• Who gets it: only shoppers who viewed the item, added it to a cart, or joined its waitlist.
• What ends it: a purchase, or the item's return to stock.

Keep those journeys running into December, where they become part of your Holiday email marketing strategy for shoppers still waiting on a restock.

How many Black Friday marketing messages should one shopper get?

Black Friday marketing messages hit the warning line at three to five per shopper, counting emails and texts across all five days. Past that line, the share of shoppers who cut off the brand jumps from 53% at three to five messages to 67% at six to nine.

Your send log doesn't show the rest of the inbox. For more than half of shoppers who got holiday messages, a brand's fifth message lands on top of messages from 10 or more other brands. So set one cap per person for all five days and count every channel against it. The same cap covers your Black Friday email marketing and every text and push notification alongside it.

How do you change a Black Friday strategy once the freeze is on?

To change a Black Friday strategy once the freeze is on, lock the systems and leave the responses open. Freeze code deploys and infrastructure for the week, and let your marketers change journeys and offers on their own, because most plans change after they're set.

74% of retailers changed a Cyber Five promotion or message after it was planned and scheduled. New creative and approvals slow those changes most. So pre-approve creative for the changes you can see coming, like a sellout, and decide before Thanksgiving which changes a marketer can make alone.

Should a Black Friday marketing strategy trigger messages or schedule them?

In a Black Friday marketing strategy, you trigger the messages that answer a shopper's own action and schedule the rest around them. A triggered message goes out because a shopper did something: viewed a product, left a cart, placed an order. A scheduled send goes to a list because the calendar said so.

Acoustic's own send data shows the upside and the cost. Across brands sending with Acoustic, August to early October 2026, triggered emails drew 3.9x the click-through of scheduled sends. They also drew 3.3x the unsubscribes, about 3 per 1,000 sends against fewer than 1. That's email from all Acoustic senders across industries before this season, and most triggered volume comes from a minority of them. The two kinds of send also reach different people by design, so the figures describe the whole base and predict nothing for any one sender.

The gain and the cost together set the report’s working hypothesis for this season: a triggered send earns its place by replacing a scheduled one. When a shopper’s action sets off a message, pull their next scheduled send. Use the same test to decide which holiday emails to trigger after Cyber Monday.

What should be on a Black Friday checklist?

A Black Friday checklist should confirm that the journeys responding to what shoppers do are built and tested before your code freeze. By then your team also needs to agree on a message cap, and on who can change what once the freeze is on.

Check that each of these is true:

• You can see who's waiting on which item, and each of those shoppers has a readiness score.
• A test shopper who views an item and leaves gets a follow-up about that item.
• Sellout journeys are live, and a test sellout reaches the shoppers who wanted the item and nobody else.
• Emails, texts, and push notifications all count against one cap per shopper from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
• Creative for a sellout is pre-approved, and the changes a marketer can make alone are written down.
• A shopper who triggers a message drops out of your next scheduled send.

Shoppers waiting on a deal leave a trail: the item they viewed and came back to. Make your Black Friday about answering it.

Build your Black Friday marketing strategy from the Cyber Five gap report

Get the Cyber Five gap report for the offer test broken out by every age group and the playbook's steps from now through Cyber Monday. Book an Acoustic demo to see how marketers use the In-Market Index, a 0 to 100 readiness score updated after every session, to decide who receives the precise offer first, and how they change journeys during the freeze without an IT ticket.

Black Friday marketing FAQs

How early should you prepare your business for Black Friday?

Early enough that the shoppers already looking at what you'll discount hear from you before Thanksgiving, since more than a third of holiday shoppers did most of their holiday buying before then. Acoustic's In-Market Index updates each shopper's 0 to 100 readiness score after every session, so you can see who's close to buying well ahead of Black Friday.

What should you send shoppers who already bought the item during Black Friday?

Stop promoting the item they bought and tell them when it'll arrive, then follow up on the other items they've been looking at. Acoustic captures each shopper's product views as they happen, so that follow-up can start from what they looked at.

Should you use SMS for Black Friday marketing or just email?

Use both, but save SMS for the subscribers who respond to it, since one in five shoppers who got holiday messages opted out of a brand's texts during Cyber Five 2025. With Acoustic, marketers send email, SMS, WhatsApp, and mobile push from one system and use Optimal Send Channel to set where each message arrives.