Pulling off a successful Black Friday today is no small feat. You need to maintain engagement throughout the period, overcome growing sales fatigue, and win over consumers that are savvier and more selective than ever before, all while maintaining engagement across countless channels. 

As leader of Ometria’s Retail Strategy team, I work closely with brands such as Finisterre, Holt Renfrew, and Jaded London to identify and craft strategic initiatives that truly move the needle on their goals. Squeezing every last drop out of BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday)—now much more than a sales event but often a barometer for business health and future performance—is frequently part of this.

I’m often asked what our strategic advice to retail brands is to succeed in this critical period. So in this blog, I’ll share our approach to creating a killer Black Friday marketing strategy, step by step, so you can smash your peak season goals in 2025.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Clarify your CRM goals

Every successful Black Friday starts with a clear goal. At this time (mid-year, likely mid-summer sale) the most important thing you can do is get crystal clear on the wider goals and outcomes the business is trying to achieve.

Of course, revenue is always going to be your North Star. But when it comes to creating your Black Friday strategy, establishing what the most important business outcomes are as early as possible means you can fine-tune the entire experience for shoppers around that. 

A few common Black Friday strategic focuses we see are: 

• Focusing on profitability: Perhaps your goal is to move away from deep discounts and instead increase profit per customer.
• Managing budget limitations: If you don’t have as much budget for acquisition as in previous years, doubling down on your existing customer base and emphasizing loyalty becomes crucial.
• Channel expansion: Maybe you’re launching a new channel - say, TikTok or SMS - and Black Friday is your opportunity to grow that audience.

We know in reality it’s never just one of these objectives in isolation, but understanding the full business context is a sure-fire way to take your BFCM marketing from good to great. 

Crucially, it’ll help you hone in on the audiences that matter most, allowing you to build a strategy laser-focused on engaging and converting them, as we’ll discuss in step 2.  

Step 2: Define your key audiences and what your goals are for each one

Now you’ve got your business goals straight, the next step is to identify the audiences that can help you reach them. Your aim here is to maximize customer value: engaging the largest number of contacts with the right strategy for conversion, while keeping deliverability and list hygiene intact.

Start with the non-negotiables:

• Previous Black Friday shoppers
• Loyal/VIP customers
• New subscribers in the run-up to peak

These segments are essential in any Black Friday marketing strategy, and we love seeing retailers get creative with them. For example, we loved Monsoon’s pre-Black Friday 2024 campaign, which targeted lapsed shoppers that previously shopped a particular color with a curated edit of product recommendations featuring that same color.

For more best-practice Black Friday campaign examples from 2024, click here.

But beyond these, you have a lot of flexibility, and that’s where you need to be smart in both audience selection and resource allocation. Ask yourself: Who’s worth more effort? Which shoppers are going to bring you closest to your business goal? 

Consider your marketable vs. non-marketable audiences. For customers who have unsubscribed from all marketing, it could be worth using different channels to reach back out, for example through paid social or display ads.

At Ometria, we’re also using AI in exciting new ways to elevate both segmentation and content. Being a Customer Data Platform (CDP), we’re uniquely positioned to leverage AI, bringing together data from all channels and partner integrations (loyalty, refer-a-friend, NPS, etc.) to create a complete picture of customer data. Plus, our AI algorithms are solely trained on retail datasets, creating an unbeatable package for better insights and smarter, more effective targeting. 

Here are a few examples of AI in action for BFCM:

• Building audiences based on predictive product affinity: AI can help surface the products customers are most likely to engage with, allowing you to tailor your content accordingly. For example, Sephora deployed this in a recent newsletter campaign where each subscriber received a version of the newsletter focused on the brand they were most likely to engage with, driving a 95% uplift in revenue per email.
• Identifying high-growth opportunities within your existing customer base: Another exciting way we’re using AI is to uncover high growth potential audiences by layering predicted customer lifetime value (CLV) with various shared behavioural patterns. This allows us to design strategies that focus on those most likely to spend with a brand. 
• Activating one-time buyers likely to repeat: Use predictive AI to identify first-time shoppers with high potential to buy again, and strike while the Black Friday excitement is high. Build on the excitement of their first purchase with a thoughtful post-purchase journey on their preferred channel, and follow up with tailored recommendations based on their initial purchase to lead them to the next best item. Nudge them closer to that second purchase with a well-timed incentive such as a percentage discount, dollar discount, gift with purchase, free shipping, or any other special offer to get them over the line.
• Targeting those that are loyal and likely to stay loyal: Black Friday is the perfect moment to celebrate your loyal customers and deepen the relationship. Use predictive AI to identify these key customers, then surprise them with early access to your biggest deals, exclusive Black Friday bundles, or VIP-only discounts. Reinforce their importance with dynamic banners in your emails and thank-you messages, showing that their loyalty earns them something special.

Interested in the future of AI (particularly agentic AI) and how it’s transforming the possibilities for personalization? Check out the Retail Marketer’s Guide to Agentic AI.

Get ready to smash Black Friday 2025!

If you’re aiming to make Black Friday 2025 your biggest and best yet, now’s the time to start laying the groundwork.

As we gear up for another competitive and lengthy peak season in 2025, a robust strategy founded in a clear understanding of your goals, strategic segmentation, and strong cross-channel execution will be key to engaging the right customers at the right time, in the right way.

If you're an Ometria customer, your Customer Success Representative is always on hand to support your peak planning, whether you’re refining your current strategy or testing new approaches.

Not yet using Ometria? Why not book a demo to see how we can help elevate your BFCM marketing and deliver a smarter approach to peak.