23 Black Friday Promotion Ideas to Boost Sales (2026)

Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) is one of the highest-traffic weekends of the retail year. During BFCM 2025, Shopify merchants generated a record $14.6 billion in global sales, up 27% from 2024, according to Shopify research.

 Long-distance gifting, gift card with purchase, subscription offers and product bundles are just a few popular Black Friday promotion ideas. Store owners who plan their promotions ahead of the Black Friday weekend are better positioned to capture demand across channels.

This post covers Black Friday promotion ideas across discounting, bundling, email, social, and loyalty strategies, with guidance on how to run each one in Shopify.

23 Black Friday promotion ideas to boost sales

BFCM 2025 saw more than 94,900 store owners record their highest-selling day ever on Shopify. These Black Friday promotion ideas will help you build a campaign for this year:

*Effort level is based on the number of steps and complexity in each idea.

1. Make long-distance gifting easier

Cross-border orders represented 16% of all global orders on Shopify during BFCM 2025. Store owners can add gifting options to their checkout flow, including gift wrapping, personalized messages, and delivery date selection, to serve Black Friday shoppers sending purchases directly to recipients.

Shopify apps like Super and Giftship let store owners add gift messaging, wrapping options, and delivery date pickers to their Shopify store without custom development.

2. Offer a gift card with a purchase

Gift cards can be used as a promotion incentive. When a store owner sets a minimum order threshold, shoppers who meet it receive a gift card toward a future purchase.Gift cards are available on all Shopify plans and can be created and issued directly from the Shopify admin under Products > Gift cards.

3. Convert one-time buyers with subscription offers

Shopify Subscriptions lets store owners offer auto-billed weekly, monthly, or yearly renewals, set up directly from the Shopify admin. Store owners can apply a percentage or fixed-amount discount to subscription products to pair a subscription offer with a BFCM promotion.

Subscription offers are most straightforward for replenishable products including coffee, supplements, beauty products, or pet supplies, where shoppers are already buying on a recurring basis. 

For one-time or gift-oriented products, gift cards and post-purchase emails through Shopify Email are options for keeping BFCM buyers engaged after the sale.

4. Curate a bundle of your products

Product bundles group multiple items into a single purchasable unit, with the bundle priced below the combined cost of individual items. 

Store owners can create fixed bundles, multipacks, or mix-and-match sets using the free Shopify Bundles app, available on all Shopify plans, or third-party apps like Amplify for more complex bundle types with tiered pricing and quantity breaks.

Store owners cam use these bundle formats during BFCM:

• Fixed bundles: A set group of products sold together at a single price—for example, a skincare set or a coffee starter kit
• Mystery bundles: A selection of products offered at a discount without revealing all items upfront, which can move slower-selling inventory
• Tiered bundles: Multiple bundle options at different price points

Nguyen Coffee Supply offers multiple bundles between $48 and $155 to connect with customers who have different gifting budgets.

Bundle inventory in Shopify is determined by the component product with the lowest available stock. When one item in a bundle sells out, the bundle becomes unavailable, so inventory tracking across all component products affects bundle availability during high-traffic periods like BFCM.

5. Create mystery boxes and surprise bundles

A mystery box is a single product listing containing a curated set of items without fully disclosing the contents. The listing describes what the buyer will receive such as the quantity of items, the product category, and the total retail value, without identifying every product. 

Setup follows the same path as any product in Shopify. From the Shopify admin, go to Products > Add product, create a listing for the mystery box, set the price, and publish it to your sales channel.

To identify which products to include,Shopify admin lets store owners label and filter inventory by criteria like category, season, or sales velocity using product tags. 

To add a product tag, start at Products or Products > Inventory, then select Search and filter > Tag to pull a filtered list. This makes it possible to view slow-moving or surplus stock as a group and select items for inclusion without manually searching the full catalog.

Because a mystery box listing doesn't use Shopify Bundles’ component-level inventory tracking, stock for the listing needs to be managed manually. Setting a defined quantity on the product listing and monitoring it through Products > Inventory during the sale keeps availability accurate.

Art of Play used this tactic to create a mystery playing card collection. 

6. Gamify your Black Friday promotions

Gamification apps add interactive formats to a Shopify store, including spin wheels, scratch cards, and slot machine-style pop-ups, that present discount codes or other rewards as the outcome of a game. 

Store owners can use these formats during BFCM:

• Spin wheel pop-ups: A pop-up presents a wheel with labeled segments, such as discount codes, free shipping, or a free gift, and the visitor spins to reveal their reward. Wheelio and Spin-a-Sale both offer this format on Shopify, with options to require an email or SMS opt-in before playing. Wheelio also includes scratch card and slot machine formats within the same app.
• Scratch cards and instant win games: Digital scratch cards can be embedded on a store page or triggered as a pop-up, giving visitors a chance to reveal a reward by interacting with the element. Apps Mav: Scratch and WIN! is a free Shopify app for this format. ViralSweep and Gleam Competitions support instant win and sweepstakes formats for store owners who want to combine a prize mechanic with entry collection.

7. Build Black Friday excitement with daily deals

Store owners running multi-day BFCM campaigns can structure promotions as a sequence of time-limited offers rather than a single sitewide discount. 

Common formats include:

• Deal of the day: One product or category is discounted for 24 hours
• Flash sales: A smaller set of products goes on discount for a shorter window within the day

Shopify Plus stores can use Launchpad to schedule sale pricing, product availability, and theme changes for each event, with automatic start and end times. For stores on other plans, Daily Deals is a third-party app that schedules timed discounts and creates a dedicated deals page on the store.

Countdown timers display the remaining time on an active offer. They can be placed on product pages, collection pages, or in a site banner. Essential Countdown Timer Bar is a Shopify app that supports placement across store pages and can be configured to show or hide automatically when an offer starts and ends.

Flavored water retailer Hint put a countdown on its promotion of its Cyber Monday sale. It sent a clear message to its customers: Buy now or miss out on the discounts we’re offering you.

8. Offer a free gift with every purchase

A gift with purchase gives customers a free item when their order meets a minimum spend. Store owners can set this up in Shopify using a buy X get Y automatic discount, with the discount value set to "Free." The discount triggers when a customer's cart reaches the minimum purchase amount, and the free item is added automatically.

Gifts can be a single low-cost item included with every order, or a higher-value item reserved for orders above a set spend threshold. Some store owners keep the gift a surprise rather than naming it upfront. 

Our Place offered customers a mystery gift with orders over a set amount during a past BFCM promotion.

9. Implement tiered discount strategies

Impact's 2025 US holiday shopping research found that 38% of online shoppers preferred percentage discounts on a single item, 38% preferred buy-one-get-one (BOGO) or similar offers, 35% preferred flash sales, 21% preferred a free gift with purchase, and 20% preferred bundle deals.

A tiered discount sets multiple spending thresholds, each unlocking a larger discount. For example, a store could offer 10% off orders over $50, 20% off orders over $100, and 25% off orders over $150. Store owners can set up tiered discounts in Shopify using multiple amount off automatic discounts, each with its own minimum purchase requirement.

10. Partner with influencers to promote sales

In a Q4 2025 Shopify survey* of store owners, 35% of store owners cited building a social media presence as their second most common Year 1 growth strategy.

Common formats for creator partnerships during BFCM include a creator-specific discount code tied to a sale, a product bundle curated by the creator from the store's catalog, and user-generated content collected through a branded hashtag or social contest. 

Shopify Collabs helps store owners connect with creators, send custom discount codes or affiliate links, and track resulting sales from the Shopify admin.

If you’re running a contest that requires entrants to post, tag, or share content, you should review platform rules for contests and sweepstakes before launching, since requirements vary by platform.

Creators who receive payment, free products, or a commission for promoting a sale need to disclose that relationship clearly in their posts, per the FTC's Endorsement Guides. The FTC notes that a personalized discount code alone may not be a clear enough disclosure of a financial relationship between a creator and a brand.

11. Donate to a cause with every purchase

A cause-marketing promotion donates a portion of sales to a charity or nonprofit instead of, or alongside, a traditional discount. 

Store owners can structure the donation in a few ways: 

• A percentage of each sale
• A fixed dollar amount per order
• Around-up option that rounds a customer's total to the nearest dollar and donates the difference
• A customer-selected amount added at checkout

Give & Grow and Shop for Good are two Shopify apps that support these donation structures and connect to a database of nonprofits. Both let store owners display the donation option in the cart or at checkout. 

As part of a past promotion, clothing brand Brixton offered customers the option to donate to Rollin' From the Heart, an organization supporting mentorship for at-risk and disadvantaged youth.

Store owners should be clear with customers about the donation structure, including the percentage or amount being donated, and link directly to the recipient organization's website so customers can verify it. Donation timing varies by app. 

With Give & Grow, for example, donations are charged to the merchant once $50 in donations accrues or 30 days passes, whichever comes first. Stating clearly when donations will actually be made, rather than implying they happen instantly with each purchase, helps avoid confusion.

12. Host livestream shopping events

Livestream shopping lets store owners demo products and answer questions in real time while viewers shop directly from the stream. TikTok Shop, Facebook Live, and Instagram Live all support shoppable live video connected to a Shopify store.

To set up TikTok Shop for live selling, connect the TikTok sales channel from the Shopify admin under Settings > Sales channels, then add a TikTok for Business account. 

The store needs a verified location address and a published return policy page before TikTok approves the connection. Once approved, products sync automatically from Shopify to the TikTok catalog, and viewers can purchase directly from a live broadcast without leaving the app.

Facebook Live and Instagram Live work through the Facebook and Instagram by Meta sales channel. Once a Meta product catalog is connected and approved, store owners can tag products during a live broadcast so viewers can check out without leaving the platform.

Store owners can use a livestream to walk through new products, answer audience questions, or run a time-limited discount code specific to the stream.

13. Email exclusive Black Friday promotions

In Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey,* 37% of store owners reported marketing as their top Year 1 challenge. 

Automated emails around promotions can help: Omnisend's 2025 ecommerce marketing report found that automated emails drove 37% of sales from 2% of email volume, and that abandoned cart, welcome, and browse-abandonment emails were responsible for 87% of automated orders in its dataset.

A BFCM email campaign can target different segments with different offers: early access for high-spend subscribers, a discount code in an abandoned cart recovery email for shoppers who left without purchasing, or a browse-abandonment email for visitors who viewed products without adding them to their cart. 

One example: Yolélé, which sells ready-to-cook fonio, gave email subscribers early access to its Black Friday exclusive deals ahead of a public announcement.

Shopify Messaging lets store owners create segmented email campaigns and automated flows from the Shopify admin, including abandoned checkout recovery, abandoned cart, and browse-abandonment emails.

Store owners can segment their subscriber list in Shopify using customer segment filters including total spend, last abandoned cart date, and purchase history. 

To set up abandoned checkout recovery, go to Apps > Messaging > Automations in the Shopify admin and select the abandoned checkout template. Abandoned cart and browse-abandonment automations are available in the same location under Recover site visitors templates.

Shopify Messaging also lets store owners send catalog emails displaying multiple products with images, descriptions, and prices, giving subscribers a full-catalog click-through experience from the inbox. 

Vin Chicago, a Chicago wine retailer that built its business around email-driven sales, found that customers directed from marketing emails to a separate ordering platform couldn't access its full product catalog. 

"Once you were on that site, you weren't able to shop our full catalog," says Peter Schwarzbach, owner of Vin Chicago. After migrating to Shopify and connecting its email ordering system to its main storefront, Vin Chicago saw 20% year-over-year growth on Cyber Monday, according to theShopify case study.

14. Offer referral rewards to loyal customers

In Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey,* 53% of store owners cited word of mouth as their most common Year 1 growth strategy. A referral program gives existing customers a reason to share their positive experience like a discount, store credit, or points when someone they refer makes a purchase.

ReferralCandy automates referral tracking and reward distribution for Shopify stores. Smile combines referrals with a points-based loyalty program, letting store owners run bonus point events, including double or triple points promotions, alongside standard referral rewards.

During BFCM, store owners can run a double or triple points event so that purchases made during the sale period earn more points than usual. Because points are redeemed against future purchases, the mechanic gives shoppers a reason to return after BFCM ends. 

In Smile, bonus point events are configured from the app dashboard under the Bonus Points section and can be set to run for a defined date range.

15. Create unique and helpful gift guides

A gift guide is a curated collection of products grouped by a theme like price range, recipient type, interest, or activity. 

Store owners on the Basic plan or higher can create a manual collection in Shopify for each gift guide theme by going to Products > Collections > Add collection, selecting Manual as the collection type, and adding products to it. Each collection publishes as its own storefront page, which can be linked from the store's navigation menu.

Common gift guide structures include guides grouped by price point (such as gifts under $50 or gifts under $100), by recipient (such as gifts for home cooks or gifts for new parents), or by product category. Store owners can include both full-price and discounted products in the same collection.

For the holidays, Chanel groups products into gift guides organized by recipient persona.

16. Create Black Friday and Cyber Monday collections

A BFCM collection groups discounted or themed products into a single storefront page for the sale period. Not only does putting together a collection entice curious shoppers to buy, but it also introduces them to a wider selection of the brand’s product range. 

Store owners can create a manualcollection in Shopify by going to Products > Collections > Add collection and hand-picking the products to include, or use asmart collection with a condition such as "compare-at price is greater than price" to automatically pull products that have a sale price set. 

Collections can be linked from the store's main navigation or featured on the homepage.

In addition, putting a 24-hour time limit on it creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

17. Offer a Black Friday promotional coupon at checkout

A discount code can be created in the Shopify admin under Discounts > Create discount. Store owners can configure the code type (percentage off, fixed amount off, free shipping, or buy X get Y), set a start and end date, limit the number of uses, and restrict eligibility to specific customer segments. 

Codes can be set to combine with other discounts, and up to five discount codes can apply to a single order. Once created, a shareable discount link auto-applies the code when a customer clicks through, removing the need to enter it manually at checkout. 

Adding UTM parameters to the shareable link lets store owners track redemptions by source in their marketing campaign reports.

Unlike automatic discounts, discount codes give store owners a distributable code to share through a specific channel like an email campaign, a social post, or a partner promotion, making them easier to attribute to a specific source.

The Pro’s Closet offers a discount code via email for $20 off a first purchase of more than $100. 

The FTC's advertising guidance requires that sale price claims be truthful. A product advertised at a sale price must reflect a genuine reduction from the regular price, and any terms or conditions attached to a coupon or discount offer must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. 

Framing a discount as time-limited when it is not, or advertising a "free" item tied to a purchase where the base price has been raised, can constitute deceptive advertising under FTC rules.

18. Deploy exit-intent pop-ups with special offers

Baymard Institute's 2026 benchmark puts the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate at 70.22%. To present an offer before a visitor leaves, use an exit-intent pop-up. It will display when a visitor's cursor moves toward the browser's close button or navigation bar.

Third-party apps including OptiMonk (free plan available), Privy, and Justuno support exit-intent triggering on Shopify. These apps can display a pop-up with a discount code, free shipping offer, or other incentive, and can target the pop-up based on cart contents, cart value, or the product page the visitor was viewing. Tailoring the offer to what the shopper already has in their cart keeps the pop-up relevant to that specific session.

For store owners who want to capture email addresses without exit-intent functionality, Shopify Forms supports pop-up and inline sign-up forms created directly in the Shopify admin under Apps > Forms. 

A discount code can be attached to the form as a sign-up incentive. Subscribers collected through Shopify Forms feed into Shopify Messaging for follow-up email campaigns and automations.

19. Create mobile-optimized experiences

Mobile revenue share hit a record 56.4% during the 2025 holiday season, the first full year that mobile made up more than 50% of online spend, according to Adobe Analytics.

Shopify themes are responsive by default, but store owners can preview how their storefront and checkout appear on a mobile screen before BFCM. In the Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes > Customize to open the theme editor, then use the mobile preview toggle in the toolbar to check product pages, collection pages, and banners at mobile screen size. 

To preview the checkout on mobile, go to Settings > Checkout > Customize, then select the mobile preview option in the checkout editor.

To make purchasing simpler, accelerated checkout buttons for Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay can be enabled on product pages, letting customers skip the cart and go directly to checkout using saved payment and shipping information. 

These buttons display automatically on product pages when the corresponding payment method is active in Settings > Payments. 

Store owners can test that buttons are rendering correctly on mobile using the Shopify app: Go to Sales channels > Online Store > Manage themes > View store, then navigate to a product page.

20. Offer free shipping

Impact's 2025 US holiday shopping research found that free and reliable shipping was the most-preferred online holiday promotion, chosen by 44% of respondents.

Store owners can create a free shipping discount in the Shopify admin under Discounts > Create discount > Free shipping. The discount can be set as automatic, applying when a cart meets a minimum purchase amount, or as a discount code that customers enter at checkout. 

Start and end dates let store owners limit the offer to the BFCM period. Transit time can be displayed at checkout to show estimated delivery dates, configured in Settings > Shipping and delivery.

Hextom: Free Shipping Bar is a Shopify app with a free plan that displays a progress bar showing how much more a customer needs to add to their cart to qualify for free shipping. The bar updates as items are added.

21. Run anti-BFCM campaigns

An anti-BFCM campaign positions a store around values rather than discounts, using the BFCM period to highlight production practices, sustainability commitments, or product origins instead of price reductions.

Euromonitor's Voice of the Consumer: Sustainability 2025 report found that 61% of global consumers say they care about climate change and try to have a positive impact on the environment.

Store owners running anti-BFCM campaigns during the period have taken approaches including donating a percentage of sales to a charity or cause (covered in idea 11), sharing information about how products are made or who produces them, and declining to run promotional discounts while explaining the reasons publicly.

22. Offer free gift wrapping services

Gift wrapping can be added to a Shopify store's cart or checkout using apps including Wrapped: Gift Wrap & Messages, Gift Wrap Plus, and Super: Gift Wrap, Gift Message. All three support free and paid wrapping options, letting store owners offer free wrapping for orders above a set spend threshold and paid wrapping below that threshold.

For online orders, displaying the order deadline next to the gift wrap checkbox gives shoppers the information they need to confirm their wrapped order will arrive in time. This can be added as static text in the app's label or description field, for example, next to the checkbox label, using the app's text customization settings.

For in-store gift wrapping, no Shopify app is required. The option can be noted on the store's product pages or communicated at the point of sale through Shopify POS.

23. Create wish list reminder campaigns

Wish list apps let shoppers save products to a list and return to them later. Swym Wishlist Plus and Growave both support automated email and SMS alerts triggered by price drops, low stock, and back-in-stock events on saved items. Swish integrates with Klaviyo and Meta for wish list–based retargeting.

Swym Wishlist Plus integrates with Klaviyo and Omnisend, letting store owners build automated flows that trigger when a saved item goes on sale, drops below a stock threshold, or comes back into stock. These flows can be configured to send during a BFCM sale window by setting the trigger conditions and active dates in the email platform.

After BFCM ends, the same integration supports a follow-up automation for shoppers who saved items but did not purchase during the sale period, using the wish list data as the audience segment in the email platform.

Black Friday timeline: When to start your campaigns

• September: Foundation building
• October: List building and teasers
• November: Launch and momentum
• December: Follow-up and retention

Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27. The National Retail Federation defines the winter holiday season as November 1 through December 31, covering Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. BFCM, the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, sits within that broader window, but many store owners run campaigns that begin before November 1 and extend into December.

September: Foundation building

September is when store owners who plan to run BFCM campaigns typically audit their store, confirm inventory, and set up the infrastructure their campaigns will depend on. 

Tasks that commonly fall in this window include:

• Checking site speed, mobile responsiveness, and checkout functionality
• Reviewing product pages for accuracy and completeness
• Forecasting inventory and confirming stock levels with suppliers for bestselling products
• Identifying and reaching out to affiliate or partner collaborators for joint campaigns

October: List building and teasers

Discover Network's 2025 data shows 61% of surveyed shoppers planned to start buying gifts before the end of October, which is a signal that email list–building and early-access campaigns launched in this month can reach shoppers before peak BFCM competition begins. 

Store owners can use Shopify Forms to add email capture to their storefront and Shopify Messaging to send teaser campaigns to existing subscribers.

November: Launch and momentum

Black Friday 2026 is November 27. A FedEx and C Space survey of merchants found that most planned to launch their Cyber Week 2025 promotions in October through mid-November. 

The same survey found that 70% of merchants planned to use their website as a Cyber Week promotional channel, 66% planned to use email, and 62% planned to use social media.

Promotional formats store owners commonly run during the November campaign window include daily deals, flash sales, email drops, and livestream events. Several of these formats are covered in earlier sections of this post.

December: Follow-up and retention

Shopify and Sapio Research's 2025 global holiday retail report, which surveyed 18,000 shoppers across nine countries, found that 49% of shoppers said discounts would make them remain loyal to retailers after buying during the 2025 holiday season, while 41% cited free shipping and/or returns, and 29% cited loyalty programs.

Post-BFCM retention tools available in Shopify and the App Store include:

• Gift card redemption: BFCM shoppers who received a gift card as a promotion incentive (section 2) or as a gift are likely to redeem in December and January. Gift card balances are visible in the Shopify admin under Products > Gift cards.
• Loyalty points: Store owners using Smile can configure a post-BFCM bonus point event to run in December, giving shoppers an incentive to return after the sale period ends.
• Referral programs:ReferralCandy and Smile both support referral rewards that can be promoted via post-purchase email to BFCM buyers in December, extending the acquisition window beyond the sale period.
• Post-purchase automation:Shopify Messaging supports post-purchase email automations that can be configured to send a follow-up to BFCM buyers in December, including product recommendations, loyalty program invitations, or a referral offer.

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with more than two years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.