● BFCM for The Other Half
Your BFCM strategy if you’re a non-BFCM brand
Most Black Friday advice assumes November is your biggest month. In Shoplift’s Storefront Index, 53% of $10M+ Shopify brands don't experience the usual BFCM peak.
These brands still get a November lift: 23% more visitors and revenue at 1.34x a normal month. By December, though, they’re back to 1.09x. Traffic costs don’t wait for your peak, either. In Northbeam’s Meta data, CPM peaked at $23.06 during BFCM week in 2025.
A couple of weeks ago, we hosted a Masterclass with Bryan Bumgardner, head of content at Northbeam, and Nick Shackelford, VP of Partnerships at Common Thread Collective.
The masterclass started with one question: what job should Black Friday do for a brand whose peak falls somewhere else? We answered it through seven buying patterns we call Shapes. Most brands recognize themselves in one or two.
Let’s take a look at three of them:
The season’s mood runs against you:
Fresh-start products peak when motivation turns. 37% of Other Half brands had a January bigger than December, compared with 11% of Black Friday brands. For this Shape, BFCM’s job is to prepare for that turn. Give visitors a fresh-start reason to sign up, and lead with a starter option. Then shift the hero and merchandising when your data shows the change.
The purchase cannot close inside a weekend:
The sale runs four days, but a made-to-order purchase can take weeks. Show an expected delivery date instead of a broad lead time, and route shoppers to what can still arrive in time. When the full purchase can’t happen yet, offer one next commitment, like a swatch, consultation or deposit. Measure that commitment first, then follow it through to purchase.
It's a refill. Your customer was already coming back:
Your customer was already coming back, so a blanket discount can pay for orders that were coming anyway. Separate the audiences before you set the offer:
Existing subscribers don’t need a first-order discount.
A one-time purchaser is worth your biggest swing, because BFCM is a strong moment to turn her into a subscriber.
First-time visitors get starter kits instead of a forced subscription.
Gifters get their own catalog.
The other four Shapes cover: A season that falls elsewhere in the year, an event that creates the need, professional purchases, and real deadlines like FSA year-end.
Each Shape comes with the optimizations to test and the metric to judge them on.
Read the full blog post
Your BFCM-for-non-BFCM brands strategy inside:
|
