Take a deep breath.

You’ve got 3 months and a few weeks until the big holiday weekend. It’ll be a lot of work—and somewhat hectic—no matter what. But there’s plenty you can get done this month to set your brand up for success.

In the last 7 years at Retention Commerce, I’ve worked with dozens of brands both big and small on their email and SMS strategy going into BFCM. Regardless of their size, planning for BFCM is always a high stress moment.

So starting as early as August will make a huge difference in not only the success and outcome of your BFCM, but also gives you the confidence and peace of mind knowing you have taken advantage of all opportunities.

Here are 6 steps you can take during the month of August to prepare for BFCM.

1. Wrap up any A/B testing

Now is the time to pick your winners and confirm them with one last test. If the results are close, meaning, a particular test doesn’t have a clear winner, try to establish one anyway.

Note: some brands test well into October, and that’s OK.

Wrapping up A/B tests in August is better for brands with smaller teams, brands that are stricter on brand image, and brands that have products with smaller catalogs or longer purchase cycles.

Finishing up in August:

• Allows you to be sure of the winning copy/template/offer early on and plan ahead, so you can focus on other tasks closer to BFCM
• Gives you plenty of time to get approval from leadership on BFCM messaging, and allows for more consistency in messaging leading up to the one of most important shopping events of the year
• Let’s you spread out any discounting messages, know which ones work, or pause anything that might conflict or compete with your BFCM messaging

Continuing to A/B test until October is great for brands that:

• Have higher volumes of transactions
• Have more resources
• Have a big catalog of products
• Sell products with short purchase cycles
• Are more flexible and operate at a faster pace

More time means more tests and more data, which leads to more reliable results—especially fitting for brands that have an internal conversion rate optimization (CRO) team or work with an agency on CRO.

2. Draw your BFCM roadmap

August is the perfect time to answer some important questions to build your roadmap:

1. What type of offers will you run?

You have several options:

• Site wide discounts
• Discounts specific to certain categories
• Stacked discounts
• Bundling discounts
• Doorbuster deals
• Progressive discounts from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

2. What cadence will work for your audience?

You may message them more frequently leading up to BFCM. You may also send a different cadence of messaging to different segments.

3. What will get people excited for your incentives?

Can the incentives be themed or have a story around them? Can you activate external third party folks like influencers or brand partners?

4. Are there any new upcoming products or roadmaps that should be included (or excluded?) from the promotion?

Hopefully the research you’ve been doing earlier this summer will help you make definitive, confident decisions.

3. Decide on your macro offer

In August, you’ll want to make sure your offers are clearly defined, and that you establish your creative arc for your BFCM campaigns.

4. Convert email-only subscribers to other channels

Remember: come November, everyone’s inboxes will be stuffed as full with marketing emails as you’ll be with turkey. If you can get loyal subscribers into other channels—SMS and push notifications—you’ll have a clearer path to reach them.

Consider adding SMS opt-ins at the bottom of all email campaigns starting in August.

5. Decide if you want to do pre-offers

Pre-offers are discounts or other promotions right before BFCM that can potentially lead people into BFCM with an even bigger offer or promotion.

Pre-offers have plenty to recommend them:

• They can help you build a wider base of engaged users to get their attention or reactivate lapsed subscribers. This is especially true if you have a wider catalog, replenishable products, or complementary products that come with cross-sell opportunities (e.g., camera and lens, shampoo and conditioner, products with different flavors, etc.).
• They can help you validate your main offer. If you’re on the fence about your offer, you can test a related pre-offer to see if it’s compelling.
• Pre-offers can be limited to certain segments of your audience. For example, if you have an early access or VIP group, use pre-offers to reward them without sending the offer to the entire audience.

But there are certainly reasons why you might decide against them.

• Sometimes the pre-offers can pull the demand forward, and can impact your BFCM goals and objectives, resulting in a softer BFCM.
• If your pre-offer is too similar to your macro offer, your audience may end up confused or disappointed in your macro offer.
• If your brand doesn’t do offers frequently or isn’t promotional by nature, a pre-offer may devalue the perceived value of your BFCM opportunity and set the wrong tone or expectation.

6. Grow your lists with paid traffic

Leading up to BFCM, you should try to get as many email addresses as possible. One avenue that can be worthwhile is using paid traffic to collect them.

In the months before BFCM, optimize for cost per lead, not only return on ad spend. The new subscriber might not become a shopper until BFCM, but if you get them into your funnel, it’s worth it.

Remember: leads get more and more expensive the closer you get to BFCM, so it’s worth spending more earlier. And don’t forget, this year is an election year—so there will be even more dollars competing for your audience’s attention.

Related content:

• July BFCM checklist
• 2024 BFCM calendar
• 5 ways to grow your email list