Not every business should run a Black Friday email campaign. Not every business should run paid ads. The channel that works for a national e-commerce brand with a $50,000 daily ad budget and a six-person team isn’t the same one that will work for your local business with a much smaller team and budget.
There’s good news, though. Black Friday success doesn’t require every channel at once, only the right channels for your goals and your capacity.
Start with your goal, not the channel
There are two questions worth answering before you pick anything:
- What Do You Want?
- What does a successful Black Friday campaign look like for your business? More sales, a bigger email list, new customers who’ve never heard of you, or reactivated customers who’ve gone quiet?
- What Do You Have?
- What do you have available to execute it? A list you’ve been growing for two years, a social following that actually engages, a small ad budget, or just your own time?
The answers narrow the channel list quickly.
My biggest piece of advice is to make sure your offer is attractive. A 20% discount isn’t going to do much to sway customers. -Cole
Email: the highest-return channel
If you have a list, email should be the foundation. Open rates during Black Friday week tend to be higher than average because people are actively looking for deals. A subscriber who gave you their email is already more likely to purchase from you than someone who scrolls past an ad and sees your business for the first time. Most people are also checking their email much more frequently during sale seasons than they are during the rest of the year.
A simple email sequence example:Â
- A teaser a week or two out (Something is coming, here’s why you should care)
- The offer is revealed to your list before anyone else sees it (Exclusive! Just for you!)
- A reminder on Black Friday itself (Time to check out)
- A final send on the last day of your campaign window. (Last call!)
Four emails across two to three weeks is manageable even for one-person operations.
If your list is small or cold, email still matters, but pairing it with another channel helps you reach new people. Email converts well; it can’t grow your audience on its own.
Social media: reach, but not always conversions
Social is a natural place to build anticipation and reach people outside your email list. They could run into your organic content at any point, regardless of if they’ve heard of your business before or not! Teaser content, countdown posts, and behind-the-scenes clips can generate engagement without requiring ad spend.
The limitation is that social algorithms don’t guarantee reach, even to your own followers. A post you publish on Black Friday morning may not reach half your audience by the time the day is over.Â
Social works best in the Black Friday context when you pair it with email or ads rather than running it as a standalone channel. Use it for awareness and engagement, then use email or ads to close.
For businesses with large followings on Instagram or Facebook, Stories and limited-time posts can create urgency. The key is having content ready in advance, not improvising the week of.
Paid ads: powerful (when the price point works)
Google Ads and Meta Ads can put your offer in front of people who’ve never heard of you. For businesses with a strong offer, a clear landing page, and a realistic return-on-ad-spend target, paid ads are worth testing.
Black Friday ad costs are higher than most other times of year because every business with a budget is bidding on the same inventory. A small budget gets stretched thinner in late November than it would in September.
Paid ads make the most sense when you’re selling something with a clear price point and a strong margin, when you have a landing page built specifically for the campaign, and when you’ve run ads before and have some sense of what your cost per conversion looks like. Going into paid ads cold during the most competitive week of the year is usually a poor use of budget.
If you want to use ads for Black Friday, starting in October gives you time to test before costs spike.
SMS: high open rates, high expectations
SMS has the highest open rates of any marketing channel. Most text messages get read within minutes. If you have a subscriber list that opted into texts, a Black Friday SMS is worth sending.
The tradeoff is that text messages have almost no tolerance for irrelevance. An email someone ignores costs you nothing. A promotional text someone didn’t want costs you an unsubscribe and possibly their trust. Use SMS for your most engaged audience with a strong offer.
If you don’t already have an SMS list, Black Friday isn’t the time to start building one from scratch.
Google Business Profile posts: underused and free
For local businesses, Google Business Profile posts are an easy, zero-cost way to surface your Black Friday offer to people actively searching for what you do. A post announcing a seasonal deal shows up on your profile in search results and on Maps.
It won’t drive the same volume as email or ads, but it reaches people already looking for a business like yours in your area on Google.
Picking the right combination
If you’re a local service business with a modest list and limited time, email plus GBP posts is a realistic, high-return combination. You don’t need paid ads to have a successful Black Friday.
If you’re a product-based business or have a larger audience, email as the foundation, social for reach and engagement, and paid ads if the margins support it.
If you’re running a larger operation with more capacity, coordinate email, social, and ads in a sequence and make sure the messaging stays consistent across all three.
Whatever you pick, decide now so you’re building toward it instead of reacting to it.
If you want help building a digital marketing strategy for your Black Friday campaign, or need support with email marketing, paid ads, or social media, reach out here.