BFCM email advice: 4 Shopify sending tips for 2024

Search the internet, and you’ll find plenty of Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) email marketing playbooks.

What follows isn’t one of them. Instead, it’s a patchwork of BFCM email sending advice for Shopify brands, informed by Seguno users’ performance data from 2023. 

Here’s what we found: 

1. For the highest click rate, send on Thanksgiving.
2. For the most sales, send on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
3. For higher cart values, send on Small Business Saturday.
4. For a higher AOV, automate with an abandoned checkout email.

Read on for the details of our findings and how they translate to BFCM email advice in 2024.   

Why you should trust our recommendations 

Our BFCM email advice stems from the results of small to mid-sized Shopify stores with limited marketing resources, not large companies with a roster of marketing specialists.    

The BFCM 2023 retrospective analyzed newsletters and automations sent on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday and Cyber Monday. Together, they’re known as “the Cyber 5.” 

We examined:

1. Merchant data whose revenue is in USD 
2. Comparisons to BFCM 2022 Seguno merchant metrics

Much of the analysis was inconclusive. But a handful of insights emerged, laying the groundwork for our recommendations. 
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Tip #1 For the highest click rate, send on Thanksgiving

If any BFCM sending day made a mark, it was (unexpectedly) Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day emails accounted for just 14% of Seguno merchant emails sent during Cyber 5, only beating Sunday. Yet they caught our attention for four reasons: 

1. It’s the only sending day that experienced a revenue increase from 2022, at 17% year over year (YoY). The explosive growth happened despite a meager 1.65% YoY increase in emails sent (versus sending increases of 10%, 16%, 18% and 42% for the other four days). 
2. They accounted for nearly 20% of all BFCM conversions. In other words, one in five Cyber 5 customers purchased via a Thanksgiving email. Not bad, when you remember that Thanksgiving emails made up just 14% of the five-day sending volume. 
3. They came in second place for average order value (AOV). At an AOV of $114.44, Thanksgiving-triggered purchases edged out the average cart values of Black Friday ($112.43) and Cyber Monday ($112.18). 
4. They produced the highest click rate. Thanksgiving Day emails drove the highest percentage of subscribers to click through to the website. 

All of the above means that people are shopping on Thanksgiving. Consider satisfying their interest as part of your BFCM campaign.
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Tip #2 To stoke the most sales, send on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

 When combined, Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails account for slightly more than half of Cyber 5 conversions and revenue. 

Black Friday was the best sending day, by far, for Seguno merchants in 2023 because: 

1. It generated the highest total conversions — about 1.4 times more than the No. 2 slot (Cyber Monday).
2. It scored the top spot for generating revenue, surpassing Cyber Monday sales by about 44%.   

Cyber Monday is a solid complementary day because: 

1. It produced the second-most total conversions. 
2. It generated the second-highest revenue, slightly edging out Thanksgiving.
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Tip #3 For higher cart values, send on Small Business Saturday   

In our BFCM 2022 analysis, we advocated leaning into Small Business Saturday. It was a top-converting day, accounting for just 15% of sends over Cyber 5 but 22% of revenue. 

Seguno merchants seemingly listened and increased sending in 2023 by 54%. 

The ensuing performance fell short of our expectations, except in the category of average cart value:

• AOV was $124.64, much higher than the second-highest AOV day (Thanksgiving, at $114.44)
• AOV was even better for accounts with above-average conversion rates, ringing in at $127.93 

The data shows people are willing to open their wallets for small businesses. So leverage Small Business Saturday as an opportunity to highlight your higher-value products.
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Tip #4 To supercharge AOV, automate an abandoned checkout email

Automations work behind the scenes to automate the customer journey and reach subscribers with pertinent messages. We were curious about their performance during BFCM. Do email workflows triggered by a specific action (i.e., subscribing to an email, abandoning the checkout process) make an impact?  

When examining all emails sent during BFCM — newsletters plus automations — just 0.51% were automated. But automations generated 9.92% of the revenue across the Cyber 5.

Upon closer inspection, we discovered that abandoned checkout emails wield extra power. Their AOV was $205.81, which crushes the AOV of Seguno BFCM newsletters ($112.29) by 83.29%. 

Welcome automations didn’t perform at the same level but still edged out BFCM newsletters. They generated an AOV of $132.96.  

Activate at least one abandoned checkout email for BFCM. We guarantee you’ll boost profits. 
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Get your post-purchase automations prepped now so you’re ready to engage with customers after the BFCM rush.

Use Seguno to launch your BFCM email marketing

We can’t promise you’ll catapult sales by following our BFCM email advice. Consumer behavior is unpredictable, so we’re limited to making suggestions based on data. 

We’ll close with one more (unabashedly self-promotional) suggestion: use Seguno Email Marketing to connect with your subscribers this BFCM. Our merchants achieved greater AOV last year than the typical Shopify merchant. 

The average cart price for Shopify merchants over the BFCM weekend was $108.12. The average Seguno merchant AOV: $112.29, 4% better than Shopify merchants as a whole.

We can’t pinpoint why our merchants’ AOV was nearly 4% better. But maybe it’s a sign to peek around Seguno and discover how it can help convert your audience.