Your regular customer may be shopping for someone else this Black Friday. But does your automation strategy recognise that?
The person who normally buys for themselves might now be choosing a gift. An occasional customer might be planning several purchases. And someone who usually shops online might need to visit a store because the delivery deadline has passed.
These changes affect what people need from your communications, including the product recommendations, buying advice and reminders you send.
Recognising that shift in buyer behaviour was key to my work with a popular high street lingerie brand to optimise their peak-season strategy, delivering a 10% uplift in email-driven revenue.
The starting point was understanding how customers’ shopping needs changed during this period, then using those insights to shape segmentation, automated journeys and personalised content that would help them choose and buy.
Here’s how to adapt your Black Friday email automation around those needs throughout the festive shopping season.
1. Find out who they’re shopping for
Purchase history gives you useful context. During gifting season, you also need to understand the purpose of the current visit.
A customer’s usual preferences may have little bearing on the gift they’re trying to choose today. Recommendations based entirely on their previous purchases could leave them searching for something more suitable.
A simple question can help:
“Are you shopping for yourself or buying a gift?”
You could ask through a sign-up form, an in-email poll or, where appropriate, during the purchase process. Choose a point where answering feels useful and easy.
Then make sure the answer changes the experience.
For gift shoppers, your welcome and browse-abandonment journeys could provide:
- Gift ideas organised by budget or recipient.
- Help choosing between suitable products.
- Clear information about gift returns and exchanges.
- Delivery information that helps them decide in time.
For people buying for themselves, recommendations based on their preferences, fit and previous purchases may be more useful.
Keep that intent flexible. Someone might buy a gift today and return to shop for themselves tomorrow. Give them opportunities to show you what they need next.
2. Match the journey to their buying window
Your customers won’t all be ready to buy at the same time.
Look at previous seasonal purchase timing. Who tends to shop early? Who usually buys close to the delivery deadline? Are there customers who return specifically during the festive period?
Use those patterns as a starting point for planning your communications, then respond to what people do during the current season.
For example, a customer who usually shops late may start browsing early this time. Their current activity deserves attention.
Think about the support each situation calls for:
- Exploring early: inspiration, gift guides and help understanding the range.
- Returning to a product without buying: information that could resolve uncertainty, such as sizing, suitability or returns.
- Shopping close to a deadline: clear delivery dates and available fulfilment options.
Review the timing of your automated messages alongside that buying window. A follow-up that arrives after an offer ends or a delivery deadline passes may have lost its usefulness.
Where you have stores, the next helpful step might be directing someone to shop in person. Make sure that guidance reflects the services and availability you can actually offer.
3. Change the communication when someone buys
A purchase during peak season changes what someone needs next. They may have finished their shopping, bought one of several gifts or treated themselves while browsing for someone else.
Review what happens when someone buys partway through a welcome, browse or basket journey. Check which messages stop, which continue and what they receive alongside your scheduled campaigns.
Reduce repetitive reminders for products they’ve already bought, then use what you know about their shopping intent to make the next communication useful.
For gift buyers, that could mean:
- Clear delivery updates so they know whether the gift will arrive in time.
- Gift returns and exchange information they can keep or pass on.
- Relevant suggestions to help them complete a gift or shop for another recipient.
For customers buying for themselves, product or care guidance may be useful once their order arrives. That same information may have little immediate value to a gift buyer who won’t be using the product.
Timing matters too. Someone who bought early may welcome help finishing their shopping later in the season. Someone ordering just before the delivery deadline may primarily need reassurance about their order.
Buying once doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve finished shopping. Let their purchase, shopping intent and subsequent behaviour guide the frequency and purpose of your next messages.
4. Review the complete experience
Customers experience your automated journeys alongside your campaign emails, SMS messages and advertising.
Before peak trading, walk through that combined experience for a few core customer situations:
- A new subscriber looking for a gift.
- An existing customer shopping for themselves.
- A customer who has clicked and browsed but hasn’t bought.
- A customer who has already made a seasonal purchase.
For each, check the messages they could receive over the same period.
Are the offers consistent? Are recommendations useful? Is the next step clear? Does the volume still make sense once automated and scheduled messages are combined?
This exercise can reveal gaps that are difficult to spot when reviewing each programme separately.
Turn customer understanding into journey decisions
Start your planning with three questions for each core customer segment:
What are they trying to do?
What could stop them?
What communication would help?
Then translate the answers into decisions about who enters each journey, what they receive, when it arrives and what causes the messaging to change.
Measure the commercial outcome through revenue and purchases, alongside the customer behaviours you wanted to support. Where possible, test changes so you can understand their contribution.
The 10% uplift in email-driven revenue in our work with a popular high street lingerie brand reflects the wider Black Friday strategy, but its practical lesson is the value of planning around customers’ seasonal needs.
Before signing off your peak-season campaign calendar, review whether your automation helps people shop in the circumstances they’re in today.
For a wider review of your programme, explore our Black Friday CRM readiness guide. If you need support turning customer insight into journeys, learn about our customer relationship design and strategy work.
