You’ve probably heard me quote this stat before, but did you know that 60% of all your Q4 sales will come from those who engaged with you during the first half of the year. While that sounds like a lot, because it is, that also means you still have a pretty big opportunity to scoop up some new customers before we hit peak season. In fact, according to Attentive, 93% of BFCM shoppers would subscribe to a new brand before Cyber week, you just have to ask.
So today I want to give you some ideas for how you can grow your email list just in time for Black Friday weekend. I’m gonna start with some of the basics, to make sure they get mentioned, but don’t tune out… even if you think you’ve got it all on lock, okay?
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Check Your Existing Sign Up Forms
Start by checking the pop-ups you think you have. Make sure they’re set up properly, are up to date, and actually firing the way you expect them to. Turn on the teaser aka persistent tab so a website visitor can always find their way back to it if they didn’t sign up right away.
Visit your store in incognito mode so you see your website the same way a brand new visitor does. There might be items appearing or overlapping in ways you don’t expect.
You’ll also want to confirm the timing of your pop-up to ensure it doesn’t take too long to appear. I would take a peek at how long people typically spend on your website, and make sure it pops up sooner than that. If you want to keep the delay on the longer side, having the teaser is even more important.
And don’t forget about your embed forms. At a minimum there should be a form in your footer. I recommend you have a landing page version you can use to direct people from social media. This way you’re not asking them to go to your site and wait for the pop-up to appear or for them to find the teaser.
Update Your Sign-Up Form Messaging
To make your sign up form more enticing, you can update your form offering to include a call out for early access to your holiday promotions. I wouldn’t necessarily take away the current welcome discount, at least not so far out to the holiday season, but start warming those people up for your holiday offers now.
Just make sure you update the action of that form to also tag them as an early access VIP.
This is also a great opportunity to add an exit-intent pop-up if you don’t already have one. People start researching early. They may come to your website with no intention to buy right now and completely ignore your welcome offer. But… if they see an exit pop-up inviting them to get early access to your holiday sale they may be more inclined to join.
How to Turn Past Customers Into Email Subscribers Before Black Friday
Some of the easiest new subscribers you’ll get are the ones who have already bought from you. They trusted you with their credit card, but they never checked the box to get your emails. This is the perfect opportunity to reach out to them and encourage them to join.
Show Them Their Own Pop-Up
By default, especially if you’re using Klaviyo, your form is likely only showing to profiles that don’t already exist in your Klaviyo account. But having a profile in Klaviyo doesn’t automatically mean they’ve subscribed to your email marketing.
Create a separate pop-up that targets profiles who haven’t opted in. You could adjust the targeting on your existing pop-up, but I’d rather see the metrics separately. And since these people likely bought from you already, or at least started a checkout, position the offer differently than your welcome offer. Think a perk on their next purchase, or first dibs on your holiday sale.
And you’re not just limited to one pop-up for all past customers. Maybe you want to isolate holiday only shoppers, or the biggest spenders. The more personalized you can make the offer, without seeming creepy, the more likely they are to convert.
Add a Call Out to Your Order Confirmation Emails
If it’s allowed in your jurisdiction, you can even add a little call out to the bottom of your order confirmation and shipping emails. I would just put it in the footer and only show it to people who aren’t subscribed. You want to keep it subtle, nothing more than a text call out and link, this email still has to be mostly about the order itself so it counts as transactional.
If you make the message holiday specific, set a calendar reminder to remove or update it after the holiday since you’ll have to do it manually.
Add an Order Insert with a QR Code
If you’re not already including an order insert with information on how your customer can stay engaged with your brand, I would start doing it now. Even if you’re already communicating it in other ways, like a transactional post-purchase email flow, the truth is not everyone will see it and people need to see things multiple times anyway. Depending on the rules of marketplaces you sell one, if it’s allowed, I’d do it for those orders too.
Run a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign
Using direct mail for existing customers is also a great way to re-engage people and potentially get them on your list. You already have their address, right? You can even loop in unsubscribed customers to see who can win back.
When it comes to the direct mail piece though, I wouldn’t just make it an email sign up call to action. You probably want to send that closer to your actual promotion and just encourage them to buy.
Cross Promote Your SMS + Email Lists
If you run an SMS program alongside your email strategy I would start cross-promoting your programs to the other. So if someone is only on SMS, invite them to join the email list and vice versa.
This works best if there is a clear distinction in what they’ll get on each. And it’s nothing something I would harp on too much, a lot of people do have preferences, but it’s worth a shot to just make sure they know the other one exists.
A lot of people will tell you to have a better offer to encourage SMS signups, as studies show people are more likely to sign up for both – for example on your initial sign up form – if there’s a better offer to do so. And it’s not that it’s bad advice. If you’re building from scratch it makes sense.
But keep in mind that SMS has higher churn than email because it’s so much more intrusive. That also often leads to more engagement and conversion, but it’s just something to keep in mind.
I guess my point is, if you’re going to do both, it does make sense to give away a better offer, but make sure it isn’t so big that it only attracts people who want that offer vs. people who genuinely want to be on your SMS list.
It’s kinda like a subscribe and save offer. You don’t want to give so much off on that subscription that they sign up to get that discount but then cancel right away completely negating any potential lift in lifetime value.
Work Your Social Presence
If you’ve got an organic social presence it’s important you consistently ask your audience to get on your email list. In addition to a link in bio – Shopify Secrets students check out the custom link in bio section template so you can stop sending people to 3rd party sites – you’ll also want to have it as a regular call to action in all your posts, your stories, your videos… everything.
As mentioned earlier, I recommend you have a specific landing page you send people to from social media. That could be the link in bio landing page, a specific early access landing page, or just a general landing page you use all year long. The point is you don’t want people to have to hunt for it.
And, since it’s super hard to get people to leave a platform like that, using automation is definitely your friend. Whether it’s Manychat, Klaviyo social auto-replies, or the free version meta supplies – starting that email collection journey in the DMs generally works a lot better.
Lounge members and Email Badassery students, you have a free ManyChat template you can import for this exact purpose. You can also get 30 days of pro ManyChat for free with my affiliate link. I’ll stick it in the show notes.
Make it More Interactive
Even if you make it easy to sign up through the DMs, join my email list can still be a hard sell on social. You might want to make it more interactive and give them something to do instead, making email the natural next step.
A few ideas:
- Let them vote on your doorbuster. Share 3-4 products in your stories or a post and let your audience pick which one goes on sale for Black Friday. They cast their vote through your sign-up form (or a ManyChat keyword), and everyone who votes gets first dibs when the winner goes live. They’re invested before the sale even starts.
- Comment for a sneak peek. Tease your holiday lineup with a blurred photo or a “guess what’s coming” post. Comment a keyword to get the full reveal in their DMs, and the automation grabs their email along the way.
- Play gift matchmaker. Ask who they’re shopping for this year. When they reply, send them a mini gift guide in the DMs and invite them onto your early access list to get your picks and the deals.
The more fun it feels, the less it feels like you’re asking for something. And every one of these tells you what they’re interested in, so tag them and use it in your Black Friday emails.
The Mystery Black Friday Code
Want a sign-up offer that gets people excited instead of just getting them a discount? Give every new subscriber a mystery code. They get it now, but it doesn’t work until Black Friday, and they won’t know what it’s worth until they try it at checkout.
How to set it up in Klaviyo
First, create a unique coupon in Klaviyo. Unique means every subscriber gets their own code, so nobody can post it on a coupon site. Give it a prefix like MYSTERY so the code itself doesn’t give away the amount.
Next, set the activation date to Black Friday and the expiration date to whenever your sale ends.
You can send them a confirmation email to say they’ll get their mystery coupon on black friday, but don’t include the coupon placeholder code. If you have a coupon placeholder for a coupon that isn’t allowed to be active, the coupon creation will be rejected by Shopify and Klaviyo won’t send that email.
So, for that first send, just make it a confirmation to say, you’ve locked it your mystery offer, it will be revealed on whatever date.
Make the mystery real
If you really want to make it a true mystery, and send different discount amounts to different customers, you can do that too. Create 3 different coupons with different discount amounts.
Then, in your flow add a split for a random sample. If you want to do 3 different discounts, you can do 2 samples of 33% and then everyone else. Or, you can put a smaller percentage on the higher discount amount, however you want to mix it up.
Set up your emails with the corresponding coupon placeholder, and they’ll get assigned the right discount when the email sends.
You’ll just want to make sure you trigger this flow after the discount code has already been made live. Since they’re unique, and haven’t been delivered yet, you might want to activate it sooner than your sale is actually going to start.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Generating codes: When you’re sending campaign emails with a unique coupon code, you have to pre-generate them, otherwise the campaign won’t send. And even though each subscriber will get the same code revealed to them – they attach to the profile – Klaviyo doesn’t know that when the email sends. So, if you have 1000 people receiving this campaign, and you’re sending 3 emails about it, you need to generate at least 3000 codes.
- Stacking: Decide whether this mystery code works on top of your regular BFCM promotion and make sure you have your coupon setting correct. You might also want to make this mystery deal better than your public facing offer. For example, if you only advertise a discount off a specific selection of items, maybe the mystery codes can be used sitewide or on an additional group of items.
- Expiration date: Klaviyo automatically extends the expiration of personalized codes to account for any confusion with time zones. So don’t be surprised if you see redemptions after the end of your sale.
- Early birds: People will absolutely try the code before Black Friday. Make sure they know from the jump that it won’t be active until Black Friday. I’d put it on the form success page and in the email you send. You might also want to just mentally prepare for increased customer service inquiries. Maybe it’s not worth it to you. If that’s you, maybe skip this one.
Offer Price-Drop and Wishlist Alerts
Your early access list is great for people who want to know about your sale in general. But lots of shoppers are watching for one specific thing. They’ve been eyeing it for weeks and they’re waiting to see if it goes on sale before they pull the trigger.
You can notify them about the exact products they’re interested in with price drop and wishlist notifications. But this one comes with a few requirements, so it really only makes sense for bigger stores. Think at least 25k website visitors a month, 10k+ email subscribers, and a wide product assortment where people are zeroing in on specific items.
The catch is that the price of the product has to actually change for these to work. A discount code sale won’t trigger them.
Once the price drops, the notifications go out automatically. With a wishlist app, shoppers get alerts on the products they saved. With Klaviyo’s price drop flow, shoppers get alerts on items they viewed or added to their cart.
If that sounds like your store, you’ll also need an app that can schedule your price changes so you’re not updating everything by hand at midnight on Thanksgiving. Search “bulk price editor” in the Shopify app store. There are lots of them and they’re really affordable.
If the price drop piece doesn’t make sense for you, a wishlist* or gift registry* is still worth a look. It gives shoppers a place to save their favorites and share them with whoever is most likely to buy for them. And since they have to enter their email to save their list, that’s your list growth piece. I added links to my favorite platform for this in the show notes.
Most wishlist apps integrate with your email platform, so you can send targeted emails based on what people saved. Depending on how you set it up, it may end up being more of a conversion tool than a list growth one, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Quick-Hit Ideas to Round Out Your List Growth
Let your VIPs bring a friend. In your early access emails, invite subscribers to share the sign-up link with a friend who’d want first dibs. Add a hidden field so you can see how many people come in that way.
Have influencers send people to your list. Instead of a discount code, ask creators to send their followers to your early access page. Their audience isn’t ready to buy in October anyway, so catch them now and sell to them in November. Give each creator their own link so you know who’s actually bringing in subscribers.
Do a newsletter swap. Partner with a complementary brand and feature each other in your emails. You’re getting in front of people who already open brand emails and buy stuff, without spending a dime on ads.
Run Meta lead ads to your early access list. While I recommend you focus most of your ad budget on conversion ads, throwing a couple bucks behind a list-growth ad could be a good investment. Even if it’s just focused on your warm audience. Remember, I recommend you even require your existing subscribers to actively opt-in to your early access list so they make that micro-commitment to pay attention to your messaging.
Bring a QR code to your holiday markets. If you’re doing in-person events this season, set out a QR code that enters people into a raffle or gets them on your early access list. These people already met you and touched your product, so they’re warm leads.
Don’t Turn Your Forms Off During Black Friday
Once the sale starts, a lot of brands turn off their pop-ups so they don’t compete with the sale. Big mistake. In 2025, subscribers who signed up during Cyber Week made up just 0.8% of brands’ lists but drove 22% of their Cyber Week revenue. Keep your forms on, just update the messaging so it matches your sale.
Your Next Steps
So… that was a lot. I know. And it’s not even close to all the holiday email strategy I’ve taught on the podcast. Make sure you check the show notes for other episodes.
But before you go building out some insanely long to-do list that you’ll never actually be able to accomplish, let me remind you that I never expect or would recommend you did ALL these things. Unless of course maybe you already have 99% of them in place and just wanted to add in a couple more.
I recommend you start with the basics like checking your existing pop-ups, updating your messaging, and tapping into your existing customers. Use that as the baseline. Then, pick the handful of other ones that make sense with what you’re already doing in your business.
If you haven’t been using SMS, you can skip that. If you’re not already crushing it on social media, don’t trick yourself into thinking that if you implemented the strategies I talked about here today that it would resurrect your dead account.
Just pick the ones that are most likely to have the biggest impact for your unique business, and marketing strategy. Then ignore the rest. You can always revisit them for a future campaign.
