47 emails, one inbox: How to be the email they open on Black Friday

Black Friday is the time of year when inboxes go from manageable to overwhelming overnight. Attention spans shrink, open rates drop, and your competitors are all doing the same things: countdown timers, alarm clock emojis, urgent subject lines in all caps.

The emails that cut through aren’t louder. They’re more specific to the customer and the moment. And they have an offer that doesn’t look like the other 47 in the inbox that day. 

Most stores offer rounded discounts, like 20% or 30% off. If you’re looking for visibility in a crowded inbox, why not go with something different?

Try 12% instead. Nobody does 12%. It looks deliberate and gets attention because it doesn’t fit the pattern shoppers are used to. Get them to ask, “Why 12?” 

You could then double it to 24% during select times, or bump it to 36% for top customers — whatever works for your business. WooCommerce’s built-in coupon management handles percentage discounts natively, so you can set this up without any extra extensions.

Some other underused offer formats:

• “First 50 orders get X” uses quantity scarcity, not just time.
• Bundle pricing. One price for the set, no percentage-off required.
• Set a gift-with-purchase threshold like, “Spend $100 and get Y free.” Raise your average order value without discounting your core product.

Here’s a five-email structure built backwards from Black Friday, explaining what each one needs to do.

1. One month before: Start making an impression. Send a hint that deals are coming. Subject lines like “We’re doing something different this year…” work well. They create a question the reader wants answered.
2. Two weeks before: Reveal your offer, and the specific products or departments where they’ll find the offer. If you’re segmenting your mailing list (more on that below), offer existing customers early access. It feels personalized, sparks curiosity, and adds a sense of urgency.
3. Black Friday eve: Your offer, a deadline, and a single CTA. That’s it.
4. Black Friday: Short and punchy. If the subject line does its job, this email is almost redundant. Remember, your offer and deadline should be in the first two lines. If they have to scroll, you’ve already lost them.
5. The day after: If you extended the sale, say so. If not, this is your last chance email. Keep it shorter than you think.

If you’re using WooCommerce, I recommend MailPoet to help your emails drive more sales. It lets you pull live product suggestions directly from your store catalog into any of these emails, which is especially useful for steps two and four.

Segmenting your email list lets you make offers that speak directly to different types of customers. 

Win ‘em back

Previous customers are your warmest audience; they already trust you. My go-to for this is AutomateWoo’s follow-up feature that lets you filter by purchase history and send them something exclusive. Think: early access, a loyalty discount, or even a gift.

If someone bought from you but hasn’t returned in 6–12 months, Black Friday is an ideal opportunity to use a “win back” workflow. For example, “We haven’t seen you in a while — here’s something worth coming back for.”

Match the offer to what they’ve bought

Send emails to customers based on the specific products or categories they’ve previously purchased. If someone bought pet food from you, send them a pet food deal instead of a generic storewide discount.  You can set this up using MailPoet.

Standard abandoned cart emails go out hours later, sometimes the next day. On Black Friday, that’s too long. A shopper who left your site at noon has probably already bought from someone else by 3pm.

Move your trigger to under an hour. If you’re using AutomateWoo, you can adjust abandoned cart timing from your dashboard without touching any code.

The best thing you can do in the 48 hours after a Black Friday sale: send one email that doesn’t sell your customer anything. 

Thank them. Include shipping details. Tell them how to reach support. AutomateWoo triggers this automatically when an order status changes, so you can set it up and let it run.

People want to feel good about a purchase they just made, especially in the middle of a shopping frenzy, and the store that gives them that reassurance is the one they remember in January.

About

Melisa Pacheco

Melisa is a Sr. Lifecycle Marketer at WooCommerce, where she obsesses over the full customer journey, from "just signed up" to "can't imagine running my store without it." And she builds the email strategies to get them there. Outside of work, she writes, reads, hikes, boxes, and loses a daily power struggle with two dogs and two cats.