The Retention Blueprint for BFCM

Turn your sales spike into a pipeline

Author

Pietro Saccomani
October 30, 2025

Everyone talks about “winning” BFCM.

But while celebrations will happen, sales will blow through the roof, and your Slack channels will fill up with champagne emojis, the truth is that winning BFCM doesn’t happen until months later.

Because the real measure of success isn’t how much you sold. It’s how many of those customers ever come back.

If the impact of your BFCM campaign ends when Cyber Monday does, you’re leaving the real value on the table.

The upside of BFCM isn’t a four-day sales spike. It’s using this momentum to build a pipeline of new customers who love your brand, and end up buying from you multiple times.

Let’s break down how to make that happen — and how to actually win BFCM.

BFCM is Where Brands Get Forgotten

Here’s the thing about BFCM:

It’s not just when you make the most money, it’s also when you’re most likely to be forgotten.

Your customers are buying from ten, maybe fifteen different brands over a weekend. Their inbox is full of purchase confirmations from all these brands.

That makes standing out a major challenge.

Most brands go quiet after the weekend. You’re not going to hit people with another promo right after they just stocked up. It makes sense, right?

But by the time you show up again, in January or February, you’re starting from zero.

The customer’s already forgotten about the things they got on Black Friday. There’s no relationship.

You end up having to re-acquire the same customers you just paid premium CPMs and gave heavy discounts to win in the first place.

When that happens, your record-breaking BFCM starts looking a lot less profitable.

The Retention Blueprint

If you want your BFCM numbers to mean something, you need to get to the second sale; the moment when someone buys again, at real margins, not because of BFCM hype or a 75% off sale.

Here’s how to get there.

1. Make the first purchase memorable

The initial CX sets the stage for retention.

Create memory anchors that make them remember you.

Think:

  • Exceptional packaging that feels premium.

  • A handwritten note or founder card.

  • A surprise sample, small gift, or discount for later.

  • Lightning-fast shipping that exceeds expectations.

These moments trigger emotional recall — the foundation of long-term loyalty.

2. Start re-engagement early

Don’t wait months to reappear. Big mistake.

Within 3–5 days of delivery, reach out; but not with a sale.

Send a thank-you note, a behind-the-scenes story, or tips on how to get the most from their purchase.

You’re not selling here. You’re building memory. You’re showing up while they still remember opening your box.

This short post-purchase window is where you plant the seeds for repeat behavior.

3. Keep the conversation going

December isn’t the time to sell hard. Your buyers are fatigued, their credit cards are tired, and inbox burnout is real.

But that doesn’t mean you go dark. This is the biggest difference between successful brands and brands always struggling to stay afloat.

The second type think every campaign has to convert. Their only goal when reaching out to customers is to make a sale.

The best brands understand not every email or message needs to convert. They understand the 95-5 rule: at any given time, 95% of your audience isn’t in-market to buy.

This is true across almost every industry. And you’ll be at a competitive advantage if your brand is the one who shows up to the the 95%, not just the 5%.

4. Be available

Retention really just comes down to availability, especially in the post-BFCM window, where you’re not looking to aggressively sell your customers on their next purchase.

There are two sides to availability: mental and physical.

  • Mental availability: Stay top of mind through light, consistent, non-sales communication — think storytelling, tips, community moments, and non-intrusive push notifications.

  • Physical availability: Make it frictionless to reorder — subscriptions, one-click rebuys, a mobile app, and omnichannel pickup or fulfillment.

When January rolls around, or whenever it makes sense for your product cycle, you can start reintroducing purchase intent.

Even if all you’ve done is stay visible and accessible, you’re already 80% of the way there. And you’re maintaining a steady state of awareness that makes it much easier to convert once you do switch back to promo mode.

Post-BFCM Messaging Ideas

The few weeks after BFCM aren’t about staying relevant.

Your job is to make sure that when they think of replenishing, re-ordering, or gifting again, your brand is the one that pops into mind.

Here are a few ways to stay in the conversation without fatiguing your customers:

  • Send a post-purchase “story” campaign — show behind-the-scenes, brand values, community impact (build mental availability).

  • Deliver surprise delight — e.g., bonus gift code for January, or a “member-only” note that feels personalized.

  • Value-add content (“How to make the most of your product”) — help the purchase become a part of their routine, help it deliver real value.

  • Personalized automations: “You bought X — here’s how others are styling/using it.”

  • Showcase UGC or creator testimonials (or encourage them to post) — makes the customer feel like part of a tribe.

  • Run soft surveys or quizzes to segment intent for Q1

Wrapping Up

The real winners of BFCM aren’t announced in December.

They’re revealed six months later, when you see who kept the customers they worked so hard (and paid so much) to acquire.

By then, one of two things will be true:

  • You’ve built a higher-margin base of repeat buyers who remember you, or

  • You’re back to square one, paying to reacquire the same people next year.

Make BFCM a launchpad, not a lifeboat.

Keep the conversation alive, nurture memory, and turn short-term spikes into long-term stability.

That’s how you win BFCM — really win, not just come away with some pretty screenshots to share on LinkedIn.

Show up in front of your best customers, every day

One of the best ways to build and maintain availability is with a mobile app.

When a customer downloads your app, your brand’s icon shows up on their home screen, next to Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, and all the other apps they open compulsively.

You can reach out with push notifications for free — right on the lock screen, not the promotions tab in Gmail.

And best of all, this visibility comes in front of your best, most valuable customers, who self-sort themselves into a VIP group by downloading your app.

MobiLoud turns your existing site into an app, with no rebuilding, virtually no extra work to maintain, and full feature parity with your website.

Quick Hits

McKinsey Predicts a $5T Market for Agentic Commerce

AI agents haven’t taken off yet. But if McKinsey’s predictions hold up, we could see up to $5 trillion in global sales handled by AI agents by 2030.

Another Agentic Commerce Take (It’s Already Here)

Agentic commerce seems like a seismic shift. But it might not be that much different from what we already have.

Val from Digioh suggests that quizzes, which ecom brands have been using for years, serve the same function as an AI agent. And that AI agents aren’t rewriting the rules; they’re just automating them.

The Billion-Dollar Impact of the AWS Outage

If you had any doubts about how much of the world Amazon controls, just see what happened when AWS went down last week.

The impact was crazy, with some of the biggest sites/apps offline. And experts suggest the financial damage could be in the billions (with a B).

Pinterest BFCM Tips

Pinterest released a BFCM playbook to help brands optimize their peak season campaigns on the platform, and how Pinterest marketing differs from typical campaigns.

“Our users aren't impulse buyers; they're planners, savers and decision-makers. Last year, 76% of our monthly audience shopped Black Friday or Cyber Monday—30% more likely than non-users.”

Untapped Channels in Proven Niches

A lot of people think you need to find a new product in an unsaturated niche to win.

But that might not be necessary. Davie Fogarty shares how you could get ahead, even in seriously competitive industries, just by finding new channels that aren’t tapped out yet.

“They're not selling a revolutionary product. They're just showing up where big brands haven't figured it out yet.”

How to Grow Your AOV

Omar looks at a topic that every brand cares about — getting customers to spend more in each order. It’s short, but there’s some good ideas to take away here, including segmenting your audience the right way to craft offers that boost AOV across the board.

That’s all for now.

I’ll be back in touch next week, with more on how successful brands are doing CX and retention right.

If there’s any topic you’d like to see us dive into, for either the newsletter or the podcast, just shoot me a message here.

Until next time,

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team

PS: want to boost retention, revenue and profitability? If so, launching your own app could be the best move you make this year.

See how: go to our website to get a preview of your app for free, or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn to talk about it.