Your holiday setup is done. Promotions are planned, emails are scheduled, and ads are live. The busiest stretch of the year is here, and there’s no time to start anything new.
The good part is, you don’t have to. Now you get to shift from building to watching. These quick daily checks take about 20 minutes and help make sure all your hard work pays off.
Want a second set of eyes this holiday season? Get in Touch with Brandography, and we’ll help keep your Black Friday marketing on track.
This is part two of our holiday series. Part one, the Turkey 5 Checklist, covered how to plan for the five shopping days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Didn’t get to it this year? Save the article for next year!
Daily Black Friday Marketing Checklist
Here are a few ways to think about your strategy during this time.
UX: Keep Checkout Running Smoothly
- Walk through your own checkout every couple of days. Every ad and email sends shoppers to your site, so a broken checkout wastes all that effort. Test it on your phone. According to Adobe, 57.5% of online sales on Cyber Monday 2025 came from mobile devices. Broken promo codes and payment hiccups can cost stores the most money in November, and they’re easy to miss if you only test on desktop.
- Keep shipping cutoff dates current. Shoppers want to know if their gifts will arrive on time. Update your site banner and email footers as carrier deadlines pass. It takes two minutes and saves you many “Will this arrive by Christmas?” emails.
- Don’t change your site. Hold off on redesigns, new apps, and theme updates until after the holiday season. Increased traffic and last-minute changes are a risky mix. If it isn’t broken, leave it alone.
Ads: Keep Spend in Check
Ad costs climb fast this time of year. A few minutes of daily attention keeps your budget on clicks that can actually convert.
- Pause ads on sold-out products. Check inventory against your Google and Meta campaigns every morning. If a product sells out, pause ads or (better yet) point your audience towards a similar item that is in stock.
- Watch ad spend. Here’s some advice from Brandography’s Senior Manager of Paid Media, Brandon Kasper
“Because impression inventory climbs this time of year, so does competition. Leaving your budget flat will typically get you more impressions and clicks, but they can also be very low intent if you’re not careful.
With the additional competition, CPCs can start to climb, but so do conversion rates. Be careful, though, because even BFCM has diminishing returns. Make sure your ROAS doesn’t dip too low as you capitalize on a strong search market and higher conversion rates.”
Need a stronger PPC strategy for next year? Start planning now with us.
Email: Reach the Right Inboxes This Black Friday
Your customers’ inboxes fill up fast in November. These two quick checks help you reach the people most likely to buy this holiday season.
- Only email engaged subscribers. Sending to your whole email list in November can push you into spam folders right when shoppers are ready to buy. As Mailchimp explains, “High engagement rates tell spam filters that your contacts are real people.” Filter for people who opened or clicked in the last 90 days.
- Tag your Black Friday and Cyber Monday buyers. Set up a segment for those who buy during this year’s Turkey 5. It gives you a ready-made list for a January follow-up and next year’s early-access offers.
“If your customers only bought because you offered a discount and they never hear from you with meaningful content again, you didn’t acquire a customer. You rented a transaction at an unsustainable margin. This season’s real profitability doesn’t happen at checkout; it’s in your post-purchase strategy and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).“ – Jason Dailey, Brandography’s CEO.
Strategy: Track Your Wins While They’re Fresh
You don’t have to wait until January to learn from this season. Use the data you’re seeing now to shape your future strategies. What discounts worked? What messaging resonated? This information is valuable, but only if you capture and analyze it.
A few minutes a day now makes that much easier.
- Keep an eye on your KPIs. According to HubSpot, 44% of marketers review campaign performance weekly. During the holiday rush, a week is too long to wait. Each morning, check your high-level KPIs:
– Revenue
– Orders
– Average order value (AOV) - Build next year’s plan as you go. Keep a running list of what happens this season. Did a product sell out fast? Did a sale do better than expected? Did something on your site break? Write it down somewhere your whole team can access it. Next summer, you’ll know what to repeat and what to fix.
Need a place where your strategy can live and be accessed by your whole team? That’s why we built Fetch Focus. See how this platform can keep your marketing efforts aligned.
Here’s to a Successful Q4
The holiday rush can feel like a sprint, but you don’t have to run it alone. You’ve already done the hardest part by planning your promotions, setting up your campaigns, and getting your site ready. These daily checks help you protect that work through Cyber Monday and into December.
They also do something else. The numbers you track and the notes you keep this season become the starting point for next year. That’s the kind of information that makes next October’s planning faster and less stressful.
When the rush is over, we’d like to help you put those insights to work. Schedule a meeting with our team, and we’ll review your holiday results with you and turn them into a stronger Black Friday strategy for next year.
