Black Friday is two weeks out. It lands Friday, November 27, and Cyber Monday is November 30.

Here's the number that should shape your plan. In Triple Whale's data on BFCM 2025, more than half of revenue came from people who had already bought. New customers drove roughly 48%, down from about 60% the year before.

Black Friday is turning into a retention event. Your list is the asset.

And most of your competitors already started. Their early access lists are open. Their VIP texts went out last week.

If you haven't texted your list yet, stop reading and go do it. Right now. Then come back.

Most brands treat the next two weeks as warmup. It's not. It's the only window where you can find out who's going to show up while you still have time to act on it.

So give people a reason to raise their hand. The reason is simple: first access. Anyone who clicks, replies, or signs up gets the Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers before everyone else. That one promise does three jobs. It earns the click. It tells you who's paying attention. And it hands you a VIP list to send to first.

→ Text your list today. One message, one ask: tap here to get early access to our Black Friday sale. Every tap is signal.
→ Send the same ask by email and tag everyone who clicks. Your clickers are your VIP segment.
→ Comb the list. Who opened or clicked in the last 30, 60, 90 days? Build the holiday plan around them.
→ Send early and often. Text and email more than once before the 27th: a teaser, the early access invite, a last call to get on the list.
→ Add a banner to the top of every email. Countdown to your shipping cutoff, when your sale starts and ends, and whether the reader has early access. Details like these break the normal expected email, and that's what makes yours stand out.

Early access only works if there's somewhere to land and the basics hold up. Here's the pre-flight list:

→ Build the early access page now. One simple page with an SMS signup and an email signup. Without it, your "tap for early access" text goes nowhere.
→ Clean the list before the rush. Triple Whale's guide says to remove invalid contacts, suppress unengaged subscribers, confirm consent, and watch bounce, complaint, and unsubscribe rates. Do it before volume spikes, not after.
→ Lock your shipping cutoffs. Build the countdown banner once as a reusable block (in Klaviyo, a universal content block) so every send carries the same dates.
→ Standardize your UTMs across email, SMS, paid, affiliates and creators. If you can't tell which channel won on Monday, you can't plan December.
→ Pre-build and schedule your sends. Write the Black Friday and Cyber Monday messages now, so the weekend is for monitoring, not typing.
→ Check inventory against your VIP list. Early access means nothing if your best sellers are gone before the general sale.

Once the list is warm, the goal is to get more out of the same four days. Triple Whale's 2025 data points at where the money was:

→ Plan for the weekend, not the day. Black Friday was 33.9% of four-day revenue and Cyber Monday 25.5%. That leaves about 40% for Saturday and Sunday (our arithmetic on their chart).
→ Send when your competitors are asleep. Saturday and Sunday spend peaked at 3 AM and 4 AM EST. Black Friday peaked around 1 PM EST and Cyber Monday around 2 PM EST. Test an early morning send.
→ Early access first, then widen. The guide recommends 12 to 24 hours of VIP early access or inventory priority, and rewarding loyalty without resetting your price.
→ Make Cyber Monday a deadline, not a deeper discount. The guide suggests an optional gift or loyalty bonus instead of a bigger sitewide cut. Black Friday stays your best deal.
→ Fast follow your winners. If a send is working, send a second and third version with a new subject line and hero image within 48 hours.
→ Treat mobile as the main event. The guide cites Salesforce at roughly 70% of Cyber Week 2025 orders on mobile. Check your checkout on a phone this week.