BFCM email strategy for consumable brands: how hard to push and who to send to

How hard should you push email during BFCM?

Harder than the rest of the year. A lot of founders are scared of the unsubscribe button, so they send one Black Friday email, one Cyber Monday email, and call it a weekend.

Here's what the numbers say. Across 4 consumable brands and 2,897 campaigns, 3 of the 4 saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more. It's a small sample, so treat it as a direction, not a law.

And an unsubscribe isn't the end of the world. Someone who was never going to buy leaving your list isn't a real loss. The bigger risk is who you send to, not how often. I go deeper on that in does sending more emails increase unsubscribes.

Who should get your BFCM emails?

Start with people who've engaged recently and work outward. Don't blast the whole list five times.

The clearest example I have: a fitness tech brand sent one campaign to an engaged segment of 7,145 people and earned $0.19 per person. A full-list blast to 49,475 people earned $0.04 per person.

To be fair to the blast, it reached about 7x more people, so per person isn't the whole story. But every send to people who never click tells inbox providers your email isn't wanted, and that can drag down delivery to the people who do buy. During BFCM, when every brand is in the inbox at once, you want your best customers seeing you first.

Here's how I'd tier the list:

• Tier 1: anyone who's bought in the last 180 days, plus anyone who clicked in the last 60 days. They get every BFCM send.
• Tier 2: people who clicked in the last 61 to 180 days, plus new subscribers from the last 90 days who haven't bought yet. They get the big moments.
• Tier 3: everyone else who's still subscribed. One or two sends, your strongest offer, then you're done with them.

The full breakdown of how I build segments is in email segmentation for ecommerce.

Why your restock email might beat your sale emails

BFCM is when a lot of consumable brands sell out of something. My rule: when something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month.

A snack brand doing about $650K a month sent a restock email with the subject line "We're back baby!" It made $48,771 from 30,498 people, the brand's best campaign ever. Six different restock emails from the same brand each made more than $16,000.

Its back-in-stock emails earn about 1.7x the brand's average per person, $0.26 vs $0.15. People who wanted the thing and couldn't get it are about as warm as an audience gets.

What that means for your BFCM plan:

• If a bestseller sells out over the weekend, don't bury the restock in a "more deals" email. Give it its own send.
• If you know stock lands in December, put the restock email on your calendar now and send it to everyone who clicked that product during the sale.
• Turn on a back-in-stock flow before the sale so sold-out product pages collect signups. More on that in Klaviyo back in stock emails.

A BFCM email send plan for consumable brands

Here's the plan I'd start from for 2026. Adjust it to your list size and offer, but keep the shape.

1. Early November: get the plumbing ready. Build your tiers. Check that welcome, back-in-stock and post-purchase flows are live. Click every link in every flow.
2. Week of Nov 16: tell Tier 1 what's coming. One email, no discount yet. Just the dates and what's on offer.
3. Tue Nov 24 or Wed Nov 25: early access for Tier 1. Your customers and recent clickers get in first. Reward the people who already buy from you.
4. Black Friday, Fri Nov 27: launch. Morning send to all three tiers. Evening reminder to Tier 1 people who haven't clicked yet.
5. Sat Nov 28 and Sun Nov 29: keep it going. One send a day to Tiers 1 and 2. Lead with bestsellers and bundles.
6. Cyber Monday, Mon Nov 30: second launch. Morning send to all three tiers. Evening last call to Tiers 1 and 2.
7. Tue Dec 1 onward: stop when you said you'd stop. No fake extensions. Let your flows take over the new customers, and give any restock its own send.

That's about 8 emails to your best people over two weeks, and 2 to the rest of the list.

For a consumable brand, I'd lean toward offers that build a habit over a flat sitewide percentage. Think a bundle that lasts two months or a discount on a first subscription order. The goal of BFCM is the second order, not just the first.

How do you know what worked? Judge by clicks

Opens lie, especially on big sending weekends. Across the same 4 brands, open rate tracked revenue at 0.32 and click rate at 0.65. For one brand, open rate tracked revenue negatively: more opens, less money. Apple Mail auto-opens pushed open rates past 85% on some segments.

So when you review BFCM, sort your sends by clicks and revenue per person.

And watch for clicks with no sales. A fitness gear brand's restock email got a 0.40% click rate, double its other sends, and made $0. Clicks with no sales means something broke. Click every link before you hit send, especially on the busiest weekend of the year.

Don't forget the flows behind the sale

BFCM brings in a wave of new subscribers and first-time buyers. Your flows decide whether they come back.

• Welcome email #1. Across the 4 brands, it earns about $4.50 per person, compared to about $0.10 each for emails #2 to #5. If BFCM fills your list, email #1 does most of the work, so make sure it reflects the sale while the sale is on.
• Reorder reminders. Replenishment flows earned about $2.23 per person in the same data, about 28x the best campaign. Only 2 of the 4 brands had one built. Someone who buys on Black Friday hits their reorder window weeks later. If your product runs out, build the Klaviyo replenishment flow before anything else.

Where these numbers come from

The pooled numbers come from 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. That's a small sample, so read them as directional. The single-brand numbers each come from one brand I've worked with, described by category instead of name.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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