17 BFCM marketing lessons from 2024: what delighted customers + what drove them away

Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2024 shattered all previous spending records, with Klaviyo customers driving more than $3 billion in total Klaviyo-attributed value (KAV) between Thursday and Monday. More than 15,000 Klaviyo brands had their best sale day ever.

Of course, we’re in a very different landscape than last year: economic uncertainty is bound to make any marketer strategize a little more carefully.

But it’s still worth learning from last year’s wins and misses. We sat down with marketing experts from all over the world to hear what worked last year, and what didn’t.

The lessons from last year’s record-breaking BFCM weekend offer valuable blueprints for retailers preparing for holiday seasons to come, with implications extending far beyond the traditional retail calendar.

9 BFCM wins from 2024

1. Building hype ahead of the sale launch didn’t cannibalize sales

It’s important to build interest leading up to any sale, especially a shopping period as competitive as BFCM. This not only helps you stand out, it also helps your customers plan their shopping with your products in mind.

“Don’t have a fear of cannibalizing sales if you’re giving a reasonable, but not too lengthy, time ahead of a sale launch to build excitement,” says Ben Zettler, founder of Zettler Digital.

“Whether that’s highlighting what a discount is or teasing the release of a new product, if you’re sharing details about what’s to come, that should make it easier for people to take advantage of the offer once released,” Zettler adds.

2. Extending the sale beyond BFCM dates improved sales

Another BFCM tip: some shoppers may have set an alarm to shop online or even have a family tradition of heading out to the stores in person.

But it doesn’t hurt to begin your sales a little early or to extend them beyond Cyber Monday. That way, you catch people who spend the weekend away from their screens but are checking their email during the regular workdays before and after.

“Starting the sales earlier and/or ending them later improved sales across the board for our clients,” says Aastha Vij, senior client solutions manager at Scalero, a lifecycle marketing studio with locations across the US and Europe.

“Having the sale go for a full week—Monday to Tuesday, or Wednesday to Wednesday—worked especially well,” Vij adds.

3. Transparency with early promotion built trust

If you’re beginning your sale early, you’ll want to make sure your messaging around discounts is crystal clear. Nothing breaks trust faster than a shopper getting a 10% discount on Black Friday only to realize they could’ve gotten a 20% discount if they’d waited until Cyber Monday.

That’s why it’s important to keep your messaging consistent and truthful.

“We wanted to be able to compete with other early sales but also be fair to our customers,” says Michal Liberman, CRM director at The Sak. “So we launched our sale early in November and maintained a consistent message: ‘Take 30% off, and this is as good as it gets.’”

“This allowed our customers to come to us early and spend their money with us, knowing that we’re not playing games,” Liberman explains. “If they wait, their picks will likely sell out.”

This kind of communication is a real trust-builder—loyal customers can come to expect it yearly and plan their purchases for early November, maybe after a payday or before they start actively shopping for holiday items. It also allows you to move your inventory ahead of the big weekend.

4. Up-selling efforts brought high engagement

The benefits of launching early continued for Liberman and The Sak.

“Launching the sale early allowed us to implement an up-sell journey,” she says. “We sent personalized messaging to all customers who made a purchase during the sale, highlighting additional holiday deals and gift recommendations for their loved ones. The engagement was incredible.”

5. Early access—with a twist—made shoppers feel prioritized

If you’re planning out your BFCM promotion dates and simply extending them doesn’t quite feel right, consider a more layered approach.

“In 2024, consumers responded enthusiastically to brands that kept shopping exciting with early-access perks, evolving promotions throughout Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and free shipping,” says Rebecca Goodsby, CRM specialist at Shopify and ecommerce agency Domaine.

“Early access made loyal customers feel prioritized, while shifting deals throughout the weekend kept engagement high and prevented offer fatigue,” she says. “Layering in free shipping sealed the experience, turning casual browsers into eager buyers. Together, these strategies created a sense of momentum that customers loved.”

Zac Fromson, COO at Lilo Social, a full-funnel growth agency in Brooklyn, took an unorthodox approach, too, and it was well worth it.

“Instead of blasting the entire list with a generic preview, we segmented VIP customers and high-intent subscribers (like recent engagers and those who had added to cart) and gave them 24–48 hours of exclusive access with messaging that made it feel like a personal invite to skip the Black Friday stress,” he says.

“Not only did this drive a higher average order value (AOV) from these customers, it also alleviated pressure on the main BFCM send, because we’d already driven substantial revenue ahead of the holiday,” Fromson adds. “One brand we worked with saw a 41% increase in conversion rate YoYfrom their VIP early-access segment.”

Even better, Fromson says, these early sends often became the highest revenue-per-recipient (RPR) emails of the entire holiday season.

6. Prioritizing a unified messaging strategy for all communications increased conversion rates

Dedicated BFCM messaging is a must for this season, but updating your regular automated flows to reflect the discounts can have a big payoff, too. Your subscribers are getting those emails throughout the season even if holiday deals aren’t on their mind. So a reminder via a banner or footer may just serve to nudge them toward a purchase.

“We updated our abandonment emails to speak to the sitewide offer, increased urgency, and included holiday messaging and gifting,” says Liberman. “This increased conversion by 39%.”

“We temporarily replaced all our main flows (welcome, browse, cart, check-out) with messaging that matched the BFCM branding and promotional language,” says Marissa Nunez, director of CRM, lifecycle, and retention marketing services at all-in-one Shopify commerce agency ehousestudio.

Nunez shares that this approach had a few benefits:

• It helped to reduce the amount of customer service tickets for mismatched discounts being sent via email.
• It served as a reminder for shoppers to come back and shop the promo.
• Updated, universal footers including disclaimers about combining discounts reduced overall confusion.

Temporary sign-up forms scheduled to run through the dates of the promo went along with the unified messaging strategy, and allowed new subscribers to sign up for future emails without getting a discount code they couldn’t use immediately.

“We were able to grow the list without having to offer any additional or confusing incentives,” Nunez says.

7. Timers created urgency

When it comes to BFCM, countdown timers are a no brainer. They give shoppers a clear timeline for making their purchase in order to get the discount.

“We noticed that when embedding real-time countdown timers in hype campaigns, we managed to generate urgency without alienating shoppers,” says Fromson.

A standard countdown timer wasn’t all they strategized.

“A fashion retailer reported a 28% lift in BFCM purchases in 2024 vs. 2023,” he shares. “We kept the same discount strategy, but the hype email helped people, particularly loyalists, know when the official sale would be on, as they knew stock availability could be limited,” Fromson explains. With this strategy, a fashion retailer reported a 28% lift in BFCM purchases in 2024 vs. 2023.

8. Treating SMS as a VIP channel helped list growth

No other channel gives you the immediacy and intimacy that SMS does, making it the perfect path to your most engaged customers, especially during a hectic sale season.

Nunez used it in just this way in 2024. “We sent out messages to engaged email contacts and high-value customers that were not yet subscribed to SMS and gave them the opportunity to get our holiday promotion a little earlier than everyone else,” she says.

“They signed up for SMS, got the regular promo to shop right away, and then were also the first to know about our VIP sale window, as we only sent that to the SMS list early,” Nunez adds.

This is a great way to treat already-existing SMS subscribers, and an even better way to grow your list through your BFCM SMS marketing. Giving those new SMS subscribers early, exclusive access to your promotion will reinforce that signing up is worth it.

9. Using Klaviyo’s sign-up forms during BFCM led to higher flow revenue all year long

Before 2024, Universal Yums used Klaviyo pop-up forms only as a promotional messaging tool during BFCM. While the reasoning was solid—“let’s not distract shoppers from their journey”—the forms they were using didn’t include a field for email address collection.

That made Emily Tarvin, lifecycle and CRO manager at Universal Yums, uneasy. She wanted to see what effect collecting emails during such a high-volume holiday season would have.

The results were pretty hard to argue with:

• Including email capture in holiday promotional pop-up forms during early Black Friday sales resulted in an 11% lift in revenue, a 45% lift in AOV and an 11% lift in revenue per form view compared to the pop-up without an email capture.
• Universal Yums collected $33,000 in additional revenue during this 4-day promotion from the flow emails customers received after submitting their email address in the pop-up.
• Universal Yums implemented this change across all sign-up forms and flows for the remainder of Q4, resulting in 141% list growth.
• This change also led to 90% more orders, a 5% higher placed order rate, 111% more revenue, and 16% higher RPR compared to their 2023 email sign-up flows.

8 BFCM lessons from 2024

1. Confusing discounts make it harder to drive meaningful sales

In a season that’s known for shopping fatigue, the last thing you want to do is make your offer difficult to understand. In order for shoppers to take advantage of your deal, they have to know what it is.

“I’ve seen brands struggle to drive meaningful sales volume when presenting discounts that were too confusing,” says Zettler.

He offers 3 guiding principles:

1. Don’t try to stuff too many options in front of customers. It gets confusing.
2. Promotions that require an explanation act as a deterrent.
3. Keep it simple. “20% off site-wide” is a lot easier for a customer to digest than “Get 15% off, but an extra $10 off if you’re buying this color of XYZ product + a bonus 10% when you use code ABC.”

2. Batching and blasting curtailed sales and hurt deliverability

Spending money to send a marketing email featuring children’s clothes to someone who’s never bought them from you is not only a waste of money—it can also alienate or annoy your subscribers.

That’s why batching and blasting, even during BFCM, can hurt your sales, email deliverability, and even brand reputation.

“We sent to larger groups than normal in 2024, but were shocked to find out that, while we doubled our typical send list, 95% of the revenue was still generated by people who opened an email at least once in the last 30 days,” shares Liberman.

“Failing to properly segment audiences led to missed opportunities and disengagement,” says Goodsby. “Without tailoring messages based on customer behavior or loyalty, campaigns felt generic and underperformed.”

Vij at Scalero recommends segmenting for BFCM based on behavior and lifecycle stage, and to tailor your offers to the separate audiences.

3. Forgetting about post-BFCM efforts can make you miss out on lifetime value

Vij also recommends focusing more on post-BFCM efforts.

“Brands that aren’t onboarding, cross-selling, up-selling, or re-engaging new and recent shoppers are losing momentum on lifetime value,” she says. “At Scalero, BFCM has been exponentially more successful for brands who build a lifecycle program that goes beyond acquiring new customers during promotional periods. The weeks following BFCM sales are crucial for converting one-time sale only buyers into loyal customers.”

“A seamless post-purchase experience, as well as keeping those new customers engaged with brand-focused content, is the key to driving return purchases,” Vij emphasizes.

4. Running the same promo code or sending identical messaging across channels can lead to fatigue

While it can be tempting to keep your promo code the same all weekend for ease of maintenance, some brands reported losses from that tactic.

“Not changing the promo code on Cyber Monday was a missed opportunity for us,” says Liberman. “Keeping the code ‘FRIDAY’ was easier to maintain but also meant we didn’t message ‘Black Friday Deal ends tomorrow’ to then reintroduce the Cyber Monday sale with a different code. A static code all weekend means fewer reasons to message.”

For The Sak, keeping the same promotion but changing the code would’ve helped drive urgency. But for some brands, that wouldn’t be enough to hold consumers’ attention.

“Running the same promotion throughout Black Friday/Cyber Monday led to noticeable fatigue,” says Goodsby. ”Customers tuned out once they realized there was no urgency or evolving offer to keep them engaged.”

While transparency and simplicity are important for clear communication and trust, a different code is certainly something that shoppers have come to expect.

While cross-channel consistency is important, identical messaging and visuals across email and SMS can lead to subscriber fatigue.

“When both channels have the same CTA and copy, engagement dropped—especially on SMS, where users expect quicker, more urgent touchpoints,” says Fromson.

“Lesson learned: each channel should play a distinct role in the conversion path,” he says. “SMS works best when used for urgency, reminders, or surprise offers—not just mirroring the email.”

5. Making shoppers sign in was a “huge failure”

Prompting site visitors to sign in can be risky during BFCM. Liberman shares that in 2023, The Sak had a “huge failure” with their sign-in strategy.

“We thought that the 35%-off sitewide offer was enticing enough, so for establishing an account, we offered a $500 gift card giveaway once a week—instead of the 20% sign-in welcome offer,” Liberman explains. “That just wasn’t enough of an incentive. We saw subscriber sign-up conversion decrease by almost 40%.”

For BFCM 2024, Liberman’s team matched the offer on the welcome pop-up to the sign-in unit. Site visitors got 30% for establishing an account or for BFCM. The team also updated the welcome journey to emphasize that the offer was higher than usual and available for a limited time.

6. Being disingenuous about stock scarcity broke trust

Communicating that your stock is limited is a great way to motivate shoppers, but it has to be true.

“We’ve seen brands bombard customers with hourly ‘last chance’ SMS and email alerts, assuming scarcity would drive action,” says Fromson. “But when shoppers discovered the same ‘limited stock’ message repeated for days, they stopped believing.”

Some brands saw spikes in unsubscribe rates as high as 30%, and up to 15% drops in SMS engagement by Cyber Monday as a result, Fromson cautions.

“Remember,” he emphasizes, “it’s always important to pair urgency with authenticity.”

7. Exit-intent forms caused more harm than good

Exit-intent forms have their place, for sure. They don’t interrupt the shopping experience on your site, which can provide a nice customer experience. And they give brands one last chance to convince visitors to stay and shop, or at least provide a way to keep in touch.

But some brands found them to cause more harm than good during BFCM.

“We tried using them as reminders of the promo with ‘This is our biggest sale of the year, don’t go yet!’-style language,” says Nunez. “It ended up being annoying to customers on site, and it didn’t drive additional conversions for the clients who had it live.”

“It was also a lot more maintenance to add another form that needed to be changed for BFCM for little to no return,” Nunez adds.

8. Overextending November sales diluted BFCM excitement

What is a reasonable amount of time to run your BFCM promotion?

Well, the answer depends on several factors determined by your specific strategy. But in 2024, some brands reported that overextending BFCM sales was a miss.

“Starting promotions too early and running them all month diluted the excitement of BFCM,” Goodsby says. “By the time key shopping days arrived, many customers were either burned out or had already made their purchases elsewhere.”

Goodsby offers a more strategic approach: “Think of BFCM as a crescendo, not a marathon. Build anticipation in early November with teasers or VIP early access, but save your strongest offers for the key window—Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.”

Then, “break your promotion into phrases to keep energy high, and tailor messaging based on customer behavior to avoid fatigue and maximize impact,” Goodsby advises.

Turn BFCM insights into revenue

BFCM 2024 proved that success isn’t about luck—it’s about strategy. Klaviyo brands demonstrated that with the right approach, you can create personalized, engaging customer journeys, maximize revenue through smart segmentation, and maintain trust through transparent communication.

Klaviyo is the only CRM built for B2C—it can be your strategic partner in navigating the biggest holiday of the year.