Black Friday is the best time of the year to increase ecommerce sales and take advantage of different marketing strategies. Adobe reports that Black Friday sales are at an all-time high and continue to rise year after year.

To take advantage of this, you can set up your referral and email marketing campaigns, increase your AOV, update product descriptions, and more.

Scroll below to find all of the best marketing strategies for Black Friday 👇

15+ Black Friday marketing strategies to drive record sales

To gather the below strategies, we contacted 30 marketing experts and gathered recent statistics on the topic. 

These insights helped us craft the best Black Friday strategies.

1. Set up your referral campaign

Referral campaigns are one of the highest ROI strategies for the next Black Friday. The average referral rate across all industries is 2.35%, which means that most merchants see a positive ROI on their programs.

To set up your referral program, you can use ReferralCandy. 

After signing up, you will be guided through the referral setup process, and you can create your Black Friday landing pages, send out invitation emails and track their performance.

Want to learn more? Read our guide on how to set up your referral program.

2. Start earlier than anyone else

Adam Watson from Hollywood Mirrors shared his direct experience of running his own Black Friday campaign:

“My number one advice is to go early with your Black Friday offer, your audience only has so much money to spend.”

Consumers start their holiday shopping as early as in October, according to Statista.

This means that you should start preparing your discounts and sales immediately, if you already haven’t.

3. Plan out your marketing content calendar

To get ready for Black Friday, plan out your marketing content calendar.

You can leverage HubSpot’s content template for free. There are also a plenty of free resources online.

Create a content calendar that details what content assets you want to share, and when you want to share them.

Specifically, you want to develop your assets, such as:

• Images and graphics
• Black Friday social media posts
• Ad, email, and website copies
• Giveaways and special discounts plans

Be sure also to include and schedule posts for social media and use catchy Black Friday phrases in your post.

4. Dont compete on discounts (offer value, gifts & deals instead)

The average Black Friday discount was 31% in 2023, as reported by Demandsage.

Competing in discounts is difficult since brands offer higher and higher discounts year-by-year.

You can flip the switch and offer value, gifts & deals instead.

Here are three ideas to implement:

1. Offer value: For example, if you’re selling gardening tools, you could offer a free gardening ebook as a value add-on for Black Friday.
2. Offer gifts: You could offer a free complementary product (such as a drill and free gloves) for customers who purchase from you during Black Friday.
3. Offer deals: You can create simple and interesting deals, such as “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” for Black Friday. These kinds of deals are so simple, which is why they work.

5. Increase your average order value (AOV)

An ecommerce brand Bambu Earth, ran an experiment to see if they could nudge customers into a higher spending bucket. 

They offered two tiers of rewards:

• Spend $50, Get a $28 gift 
• Spend $200, Get a $160 gift

They ran the event for just 24 hours, using email marketing and remarketing ads only. Each “minimum spend” amount would tip customers into a higher spending tier. 

The results?

Over $135K in sales on a random Friday in August — which turned out to be the single biggest revenue day in Bambu Earth’s history. Even better, that data can now be used to fuel the brand’s upcoming holiday deals.

In the same way, you can increase your average order value through gifts and offering value.

An easy way to do this is to use an upsell app, which is designed to increase AOV. If you use Shopify, you’ll find plenty of upsell apps.

6. Offer product bundles or a mystery box

For Black Friday, you can try to:

• Bundle items your customers would normally buy together and offer them at a discount
• Bundle all your best selling products into one unit and sell them together
• Offer a mystery box (the customer doesn't know what he's going to get)

Another idea to give the bundled products a “mystery box” effect: keep some of the items in the bundle a secret. And every day during the sale, you’d reveal one “mystery” item to your audience targeting a segment of your market.

7. Can’t offer cash discounts? Offer free shipping

If you can’t offer cash discounts, see if you can offer free shipping. Free shipping is one of the most powerful Black Friday promotion ideas you can use.

In one study, 90 percent of participants said free shipping was their number one incentive for buying. Another study mentions that 62% of consumers say they won’t purchase from a brand if there is no free shipping available.

Black Friday campaigns are pretty powerful when you combine free shipping with same-day delivery.

8. Optimize existing email workflows

Before creating any new Black Friday campaigns, think of the existing email workflows your brand has, such as:

• Abandoned cart emails
• Welcome emails
• SMS messages
• And more

These can all be optimized to bring higher sales during Black Friday.

Klaviyo’s 2024 email benchmark data showed that abandoned cart automation flows had the highest click rates and revenue per customer.

To take advantage of this statistic for Black Friday, optimize your abandoned cart flow. One simple thing you can do is to send out abandoned cart emails to customers quicker than normally.

For example, if you normally send it 24 hours after someone abandons the cart, switch it to only 4 hours for Black Friday.

You can even send multiple abandoned cart emails.

9. Set up Black Friday email marketing campaigns

A well-known statistic about email marketing states that every dollar spent on email marketing yields $44 in return. 

The return on investment is even higher on Black Friday.

To take advantage of the high ROI, set up your Black Friday email marketing campaigns. 

You can take inspiration from websites like Really Good Emails and Milled to see how other brands have done it.

10. Work hard on your email subject lines

People decide whether to read your email just by looking at the subject lines, so take them seriously. 

Or steal the best subject lines. Campaign Monitor provides a list of Black Friday email subject lines you can explore, grab them here.

11. Use SMS marketing

Greg Zakowicz shared interesting Black Friday SMS statistics from Omnisend customers:

• During 2020 BFCM, there was a noticeable uptick in brands using SMS marketing as well as consumers responding to them.
• Conversion rates for SMS were 9% higher during the holidays than the rest of the year.
• In November 2020, Black Friday orders were responsible for 19% of all SMS orders

Impressive, right?

If you haven’t used SMS marketing before, Black Friday can be an excellent time to start.

The results speak for themselves; SMS marketing can bring great results.

SMS marketing can be combined with email marketing for a more omnichannel approach. Tools such as Klaviyo can help.

12. Create a mission-driven story around your Black Friday offering

An inspirational and mission-driven story around your Black Friday offering can significantly improve your Black Friday results.

What do we mean by this?

Patagonia is doing this exact thing and they want to fight against the normal Black Friday deep discounts, limited-time offers, and last-ditch sales.

They explain it well here:

Related to the above campaign, Patagonia donated 100% of their Black Friday profits to environmental nonprofits.

The results?

Patagonia's Black Friday sales were a record-breaking $10 million, five times more than the company expected.

You don't have to go as far as Patagonia by donating 100% of profits, but even offering a small percentage and explaining it to your audience can have a significant impact.

13. Update your product descriptions

If you haven’t updated your product descriptions in a while, Black Friday is a great time to do that.

This can significantly increase your conversion rates.

Some product description ideas you can implement are:

• Highlight discounts and urgency: Update your product descriptions to mention the Black Friday discounts clearly.
• Focus on benefits: Black Friday shoppers are looking for value, so highlight the benefits that matter most to them.
• Incorporate customer reviews: Add snippets of positive customer reviews directly into the description to increase social proof.
• Add visual elements: If possible, include icons, badges, or short video clips that showcase the key selling points.

14. Build a connection with video messages

According to Wyzowl's study of video marketers, 88% said videos helped users understand their products or services better.

If your product/service is more complex or you just want to use video marketing for Black Friday, it's a great idea.

Here are some ideas to implement:

• Work with influencers: You can collaborate with influencers to create video content for their social media channels. For example, you can announce a sale with the influencers for Black Friday.
• Countdown videos: Create engaging countdown videos leading up to your Black Friday sale. This helps to build anticipation.
• Customer testimonials: Genuine customer feedback can provide social proof and influence new buyers during Black Friday.
• Behind-the-scenes content: Share behind-the-scenes footage of your team preparing for Black Friday. This adds a human touch to your brand and can build excitement.

15. Improve your checkout

Customers are quick to leave your website if your checkout process isn’t optimized.

Ecommerce brands lose up to $18 billion in sales due to shopping cart abandonment - which happens 18% of the time (according to Bogdan Klopov from Visme).

The simple way to resolve this? 

Simplify your checkout process as much as possible. Reduce the number of steps involved, and ensure customers don’t have to sign up to purchase.

This will improve sales and eliminate cart abandonment to ensure smoother sales for your store. But remember - you’ll want to collect emails so you can re-market to these new customers during the slow seasons.

16. Black Friday ideas for small businesses

We’ve discussed lots of Black Friday ideas for small businesses that you can take advantage of right away. 

Here are three more ideas you can implement:

• Team up with other small businesses: Working with small businesses that complement what you sell can be great for business. For example, if you sell wine openers, you can team up with wine brands. You may choose to offer a discount or design and launch creative Black Friday campaigns for your users.
• Promote your offers across platforms: If you sell on more than one platform, such as Shopify and Amazon, make sure to use the promotional tools available on each platform to get the word out.
• Don’t make it passive, have a landing page: Make sure you have one or more landing pages to welcome visitors to your Black Friday marketing campaigns. Show them how they’ll benefit from your deals. Go above and beyond. Remember that other businesses are making offers too. So make sure yours stands out.

An extra tip: Use word-of-mouth marketing for Black Friday

Using word-of-mouth marketing through referral and affiliate programs is an effective way to increase Black Friday sales and keep customers retained afterward.

ReferralCandy helps to increase word-of-mouth sales by letting users start their customer referral programs.

To automate the process of running the referral program, ReferralCandy has advanced automation tools available.

If this sounds interesting, you can easily sign up for ReferralCandy’s 14-day free trial.

Referral plugins allow you to create and run a referral program on WordPress stores.

If you don’t have these plugins, you can’t take advantage of the available automation tools, ready-to-use templates, fraud detection to prevent any fraudulent activities, and more.

To help you choose a WordPress referral plugin, we have reviewed the top options. We have outlined the key features, pros and cons, pricing, and whether the plugin has a free trial or not.

If this sounds interesting, keep on reading.

The 8 best WordPress referral plugins you should use in 2024

Below are listed the 8 best WordPress referral plugins:

1. ReferralCandy
2. WPLoyalty
3. Coupon Affiliates
4. WPSwings
5. SliceWP Affiliates
6. Referral Factory
7. Genius Referrals
8. ReferralRock

We have reviewed each plugin in more detail below.

1. ReferralCandy

WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (200+ reviews)

Free trial: There is a 14-day free trial available

Pricing: The paid plans start from $59 per month

Best for: Merchants who want to start and grow their referral/affiliate program

ReferralCandy helps merchants run successful referral programs. To start, you can select from one of the available referral email and landing page templates. The referral program setup process is intuitive, and you will be guided through it.

ReferralCandy offers reports and analytics to follow the performance of your referral program. You can see your daily referral revenue, referred traffic, customer insights, social media shares, and more. 

If you want to see what other ReferralCandy customers, such as Toki Mats, generateing over $500,000 through it’s referral program, check out our case studies.

Pros and cons

• Simple set-up process
• Live chat customer support
• Referral email and landing page templates
• Fraud detection system
• Automation capabilities
• Admin dashboard to track performance
• 14-day free trial available

2. WPLoyalty

WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (70+ reviews)

Free trial: A free trial is available

Pricing: Annual plans start at $99

Best for: Managing WooCommerce loyalty program

WPLoyalty is a commonly used points and rewards program tool for WooCommerce stores. You can reward customers with free products, free shipping, fixed discounts, percentage discounts, or store points.

WPLoyalty offers various approaches to rewarding customers, such as when they leave reviews, sign up, make purchases, or share your brand on social media.

WPLoyalty is designed for WordPress users who use WooCommerce.

Pros 

• Different referral reward types are available
• Reward customers when they sign up or purchase
• Create and schedule campaigns in advance for special occasions, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday
• Enable customers to earn rewards

Cons

• There is only a yearly plan available. If you want to test out the platform with a monthly plan, it is not possible

3. Coupon Affiliates - Affiliate Plugin for WooCommerce

WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (60+ reviews)

Free trial: Monthly plans start at $19.99

Pricing: There is a free trial available for 7 days

Best for: WooCommerce affiliate program with coupons

Coupon Affiliates is specifically made for running coupon-based affiliate programs on WooCommerce. Through the affiliate dashboard, you can manage registrations, create coupons, assign users to coupons, and generate admin reports.

You get a unique affiliate dashboard for each coupon to track the performance.

Affiliate users can submit and track payment requests through their affiliate dashboard.

Pros 

• Run a coupon-based program on WooCommerce
• Good customer support available
• Built specifically for WooCommerce
• Affiliate dashboard to see detailed statistics, such as sales, commissions, and recent orders

Cons

• Focuses mostly on coupon-based program features and lacks advanced referral tools

4. Coupon Referral Program by WPSwings

WordPress rating: n/a

Free trial: Not available

Pricing: There is a $49 annual fee

Best for: Setting up a simple referral program

One of WPSwings' products, the Coupon Referral Program, is a referral tool for WooCommerce stores. With it, you can offer sign-up and purchase discounts to new users or exclusively to referred users.

The dashboard can be used by both the admin and the customer to track referral performance. Customers can see their points, rewards, and coupons, while admins can track revenue generated through admin reports.

Admins can use the dashboard to create referral codes and links.

Pros 

• Dashboard for customers to track rewards, points, and coupons
• Reports for analyzing coupon utilization
• Compatible with WooCommerce Points and Rewards
• Create restrictions on coupon usage

Cons

• Offers only the most basic referral tools
• There are no templates for referral emails and landing pages

5. SliceWP Affiliates

WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (90+ reviews)

Free trial: No free trial available

Pricing: Annual plans start at $229

Best for: Running an affiliate program on WordPress

SliceWP is mainly designed for running affiliate programs on WordPress, but it also offers tools for referral programs. Advocates can view their referred visits, commissions, and payouts through the affiliate dashboard.

Affiliates have access to banners and texts to advertise the referral program. 

SliceWP Affiliates is available in the WordPress plugin directory.

Pros 

• Suitable for running affiliate programs
• Intuitive affiliate dashboard for advocates
• Customizable affiliate registration form
• Customizable emails to invite customers

Cons

• Useful add-ons include an extra cost
• No monthly plans available to test out the platform

6. Referral Factory

WordPress rating: n/a

Free trial: There is a 15-day free trial

Pricing: Monthly plans start at $95

Best for: Ecommerce and SaaS businesses looking to start a referral program

Referral Factory is a referral program tool for ecommerce businesses. It offers a drag-and-drop builder for creating referral landing pages and emails. To advertise your program, you have access to promotional tools such as pop-ups, widgets, and join links.

Referral Factory can be used with WordPress, but it isn’t available in the WordPress plugin directory. This is a slight drawback as the integration process isn’t as straightforward.

Pros 

• Referral program templates are available
• Hubspot & Salesforce integrations
• Multilingual option available for 21 languages
• Easy setup process
• Referral analytics

Cons

• The price of every plan increases quickly if you bypass the referral limit
• Isn’t available in the WordPress plugin directory, which means the integration process is more complicated

7. Genius Referrals

WordPress rating: n/a

Free trial: 30-day free trial available

Pricing: Paid plans start from $89/month

Best for: Ecommerce stores that want to start a referral program

Genius Referrals is a referral solution for ecommerce brands. You can design your emails and landing pages with the drag-and-drop builder and choose from different referral rewards. Advocates can share the referral program via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, email, and more.

Genius Referrals isn’t available in the WordPress plugin directory and has to be integrated with WordPress through its website.

Pros 

• Pick from various referral rewards
• Many sharing options for advocates
• Invite customers to join via email
• Reward advocates through cash, credit, vouchers, or physical products

Cons

• Only email support is available for the cheaper plans. This is a slight drawback, as ReferralCandy, for example, offers a live chat for all of its available plans
• A Capterra user mentions that he hasn’t gotten any responses from the Genius Referrals customer support team

8. ReferralRock

WordPress rating: n/a

Free trial: Free trial available

Pricing: Starting at $200/month for ecommerce stores

Best for: SaaS & ecommerce businesses who want to start a referral program

ReferralRock is used by ecommerce, SaaS, and tech businesses to run referral programs. You can choose from pre-made templates for reward payouts, emails, and landing pages. 

Admins and customers get access to a referral dashboard to track the performance.

The tool isn’t available in the WordPress plugin directory, but offers an integration for WordPress stores. You first need to sign up on the ReferralRock’s website to use it.

You can select an onboarding service for $400 as an additional option.

Pros 

• Suitable for many industries
• Advanced referral capabilities
• Reward payout templates
• Referral email & landing page templates
• Integrations with third-party tools

Cons

• Referral Rock is one of the most expensive solutions, which can be problematic for companies just getting started
• The price adds up quickly as you manage more referrals

Selecting the best referral plugin for WordPress

When selecting a referral plugin for WordPress, make sure it has the following features:

• Ready-to-use templates for landing pages and emails
• Ability to send referral emails
• Fraud detection system
• Good customer service
• Third-party integrations
• Easy set-up process

One platform that offers all of the above and more is ReferralCandy.

If you're interested in creating your own referral program, you can sign up for ReferralCandy’s 14-day free trial.

To run a successful referral program for WooCommerce, you need a plugin to handle various aspects of it. These plugins should have advanced automation, fraud detection, and tools for creating referral landing pages and emails.

The challenge is that some plugins are more capable than others, making it difficult to select the best one.

To assist you, we have listed the 9 best referral plugins for WooCommerce below. 👇

The 9 best referral plugins for WooCommerce

Here is an overview of the 9 best referral plugins for WooCommerce:

1. ReferralCandy
2. WPLoyalty
3. WPGens
4. Gratisfaction
5. Coupon Referral Program
6. InviteReferrals
7. Multilevel Referral Affiliate Plugin
8. MyRewards
9. Beans

Below is a more detailed comparison of these.

1. ReferralCandy

Free trial: 14-day free trial available

Pricing: Paid plans start from $59 per month

Best for: Running a successful referral/affiliate program on WooCommerce

ReferralCandy is the leading solution for running a WooCommerce referral program. To get started, you can select from one of the available templates and design your landing page and referral emails.

The automation capabilities automatically send invitation emails to customers to join your referral program.

In addition to being one of the top referral plugins, ReferralCandy is also an affiliate marketing plugin. With it, you can start and run an affiliate program.

ReferralCandy is one of the highest-rated referral plugins in the WordPress plugin directory, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5.0 from over 200 reviews.

Pros and cons

• 14-day free trial available
• 24/7 customer support is available
• Easy set up process and templates to choose from
• Advanced tools for running a WooCommerce referral program
• It can also be used to run an affiliate program
• Ability to send referral emails

2. WPLoyalty

Free trial: Free trial available

Pricing: Paid plans start from $99 per year

Best for: Running a WooCommerce loyalty program

WPLoyalty is a WooCommerce plugin for running a referral program. It is often used to run a loyalty program where you reward customers with points when they make a purchase. For example, you could offer 10 points for every $100 spent.

Other ways to reward customers with WPLoyalty include a free product, free shipping, a percentage discount, and fixed discounts.

WPLoyalty has real-time analytics available to track referral performance.

Pros

• Reward customers who sign up for your store
• Start a loyalty program and let customers earn points
• Reward customers for writing a review
• Reward customers for sharing your products on social media

Cons

• Only a yearly plan is available, making it hard to test the platform and its features

3. Refer A Friend for WooCommerce by WPGens

Free trial: No free trial available

Pricing: Paid plans start from $59 per year

Best for: Running a simple WooCommerce refer-a-friend program

Refer A Friend for WooCommerce by WPGens lets you reward customers for referring friends with discounts, free products, and discounted subscriptions.

You can set up two-sided incentives where both the advocate and the friend get rewarded.

Advocates get access to a referral dashboard where they can manage their referral links and commissions.

Pros

• Compatible with most WooCommerce themes
• Analytics to follow the performance
• You can reward per order or per sign up
• Fraud prevention system built-in

Cons

• The cheaper plans only include one year of customer support
• No ability to send referral emails

4. Gratisfaction

Free trial: Free trial available

Pricing: The monthly plans start at $19.99 per month

Best for: Running multiple different loyalty programs

Gratisfaction is a referral program plugin that lets you run giveaways, contests, referral campaigns, and birthday programs.

The refer a friend campaign tool allows you to run a referral program where customers can invite their friends in exchange for a referral incentive.

Gratisfaction offers different templates for its users.

Pros

• Run multiple types of campaigns, including loyalty programs, sweepstakes, giveaways, contests, and more
• Holiday season templates available (Black Friday, cyber monday, Christmas, etc.)
• Email customer support available

Cons

• Doesn’t offer the most advanced referral program tools. For example, you can’t send referral emails to customers

5. Coupon Referral Program by WP Swings

Free trial: No free plan available

Pricing: The yearly cost is $49

Best for: Running a simple referral program

Coupon Referral Program for WooCommerce offers the basic capabilities for running a rewards program on a WooCommerce store.

It offers an admin dashboard for both the admin and customers. Admins can track their referral program performance through reports, and customers can track their rewards, points, and coupons.

The tool lets you send emails to customers to inform them about your referral program.

Pros

• Sign-up discounts for new customers
• Referral dashboard for customers to track their rewards
• Referral reports for admins
• Affordable yearly plan available

Cons

• Lacking referral templates for emails and landing pages
• Only offers the most basic referral tools

6. InviteReferrals

Free trial: 14-day free trial available

Pricing: Custom quotation in place for the paid plans

Best for: Running a WordPress-based referral program

InviteReferrals offers a solution for running a WordPress-based referral program. Key features include a referral dashboard for managing referrals, fraud prevention to protect against referral fraud, and an email tool for sending invitation emails. 

The tool offers analytics for tracking referral visits, invites, referral registrations, and the amount of sales.

Pros

• Basic automation tools, such as referral tracking available
• Customers can share the referral program 
• Customizable email templates available
• Fraud prevention system in place
• Referral statistics available

Cons

• The integration works through Javascript and isn’t as streamlined as many other referral plugins

7. Multilevel Referral Affiliate Plugin for WooCommerce

Free trial: Free plan available

Pricing: The pro version pricing is not disclosed on the website

Best for: Running a multi-level referral program

Multilevel Referral Affiliate Plugin lets WooCommerce store owners start and run a referral program. The tool’s key features include a multi-level referral program tool, the ability to set validation dates for store credits, and an admin panel for managing referrals.

To invite new customers to join, you can send referral emails. Most of the available features are only available on the paid pro version.

Pros

• Send emails to customers
• Start a multi-level referral program
• Set validation date for store credits
• Manage advocates referral level

Cons

• While there is a free plan available, it is highly limited

‍

8. MyRewards

Free trial: 30-day free trial available

Pricing: The paid plans start from $11.99/month

Best for: Running a store points program

MyRewards is a loyalty program tool for creating a store points program. For example, when a customer spends a specific amount of money on your store, you can reward them with store points.

Customers can see the amount of points they have through a store balance.

MyRewards has a free plan as well as paid plans available.

Pros

• Offer customers store points when they spend money on your store
• Customers can automatically convert store points into coupon codes
• Send reward emails to customers when they unlock a reward
• Multilingual option available
• Free add-ons available

Cons

• Focuses mainly on store point programs and doesn’t offer the most extensive referral program capabilities

9. Beans

Free trial: 14-day free trial available

Pricing: Paid plans start from $29 per month

Best for: Running an ecommerce referral program

Beans is a referral program tool for WooCommerce. With it, you can build referral emails and landing pages, send reminder emails to customers, and manage referrals through an admin dashboard.

To extend the functionality, Beans integrates with marketing automation tools, such as Mailchimp, Zendesk, and Klaviyo.

Beans is also available in the Shopify App Store.

Pros

• Reward customers based 
• Send email reminders to customers 
• Integrates with other WooCommerce apps, including Lightspeed, Clover, Woo Review, and more
• The referral emails and landing pages are customizable
• Online store pop-us 

Cons

• The pricing increases quickly as your monthly order amount increases. This is also indicated by reviews on WordPress plugin directory.

Conclusion

Hopefully, our comparison of the best WooCommerce referral plugins has been helpful.

If you still haven’t decided on one plugin, consider using ReferralCandy.

It is one of the highest rated referral plugin apps on the WordPress plugin directory and offers all the tools for you to succeed with referral marketing.

An easy step you can take is to sign up for ReferralCandy 14-day free trial.