The absolute best time to send your Black Friday emails

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Ecommerce merchants can plan for Black Friday a few days before, right?

Well, no.

Black Friday as a single-day holiday is long gone. It’s now Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, extended to Gray November, and in many cases, lasts a month or even longer. Its size and popularity make it essential to give it appropriate consideration.

Timing is critical when it comes to your Black Friday email strategy, so you’ll want to prepare as early as possible. This approach will give you the best opportunity to capture your audience’s attention, even in the busiest of inboxes.

This article will guide you through the process of crafting the best email strategy for the extended Black Friday season, helping you to maximize both your impact and sales potential.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Consider kicking off on the second half of October weekends

When Amazon’s Prime Day begins, people start to feel the holiday vibes. The dates change every year and have occurred anywhere between late June and early October.

Keep an eye out for when Amazon Prime Day kicks off, and consider it as the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season — especially if it’s leaning towards October. Pick the following weekends to introduce upcoming holiday deals and consider launching some early-access campaigns.

Why weekends? They tend to see a lower sending volume. People have time to read emails and do online shopping. Use these days throughout the entire sales season to your advantage.

These are some ideas for emails in advance:

• Sneak-peek/sale teaser emails
• An early-access offer email
• Invitation to join an exclusive “SMS offers only club” email list
• Sale announcement emails

Our reports always point towards SMS marketing seeing a lot of potential for merchants. Whether it’s early in Q4 or a few weeks before Black Friday, it’s never too late to ask your subscribers to also sign up for your SMS program. You can incentivize this with SMS-only deals and early-bird access to deals throughout the entire holiday season.

The best time to email in November

When it comes to Gray November, let the show begin during the first days of the month. That’s the time to start sending irresistible marketing messages and increasing your email cadence.

Also, consider supplementing emails with SMS messages. You can send an SMS to those who didn’t open your emails or to your most engaged customers to boost their anticipation even more.

Remember, we’ve previously discussed the customer segments that should get the majority of your messages.

November 11th can be another holiday season tentpole. Two weeks before Black Friday, you can expect significant growth in competition. Don’t let other retailers steal your customers — it’s time to reveal your trump cards and create more actionable campaigns for these days. If nothing else, you can reinforce them with Black Friday SMS.

Finally, the Cyber 10. This period usually starts towards the end of November and ends on the last Tuesday of the month with the day known as Cyber Tuesday.

These 10 days are the peak time for Black Friday deals and promotions. Arm your communication with the best deals, free shipping, and intensive communication via email and SMS. It’s most likely that Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday will be the most intense both in sales and competition-wise.

Ultimately, remember not to wait until Black Friday to start your deals — promote them in advance.

These are a few email content ideas:

• Sale announcement emails
• Thanksgiving Day emails
• Sale reminder emails
• Final hours emails
• Best-sellers on sale emails
• Cyber Monday emails
• Cyber Tuesday — the last chance — emails

The most popular Cyber 10 days for sending email campaigns

In addition to the information mentioned above, we’d like to expand on the Cyber 10 period and its statistics a bit more.

According to Omnisend’s 2023 report, the total number of campaign emails sent during 2023 Cyber 10 was eclipsed by one billion, a 23.8% increase YoY. In fact, the five highest send days of the month were all during BFCM weekend: 

• Black Friday (194 million) 
• Cyber Monday (159 million)
• Thanksgiving Day (123 million)
• Saturday, November 25th (111 million)
• Sunday, November 26th (103 million)

It’s worth noting that Cyber 10 doesn’t always start on a Monday. It usually begins on the Sunday before Black Friday and finishes on the Tuesday after Cyber Monday.

This year, you still have an opportunity to hop on and maximize your revenue during this period. Here’s a full list of Cyber 10 dates in 2024:

Day 1	11/24/2024
Day 2	11/25/2024
Day 3	11/26/2024
Day 4	11/27/2024
Day 5	Thanksgiving
Day 6	Black Friday
Day 7	11/30/2024
Day 8	12/1/2024
Day 9	Cyber Monday
Day 10	Cyber Tuesday

It’s important to plan and gear up for Cyber 10 in advance. Get ready to meet increased demand and restock items that are likely to sell well during this period.

Use personalized marketing strategies, offer exclusive deals, and create some buzz around your Cyber 10 deals. Build an email marketing campaign and send out targeted emails to your subscriber list to inform them about exclusive offers and discounts. 

Here are some email ideas for Cyber 10 to engage your audience and boost sales:

• Limited edition Cyber 10 products
• Countdown to the end of Cyber 10
• Bundle and save emails
• Early access offers
• Social proof emails

Wrap up

This year, ecommerce retailers will be active like never before. To overcome the increased competition, arm your business with compelling sale offers and bulletproof communication.

Start promoting your Black Friday deals in advance. Don’t be afraid to send messages over the weekends, offer early access, and reinforce your communication with SMS messages.