But despite the turbulence, fundamentals remain that will help you stay the course and achieve your Black Friday/Cyber Monday objectives. Here are 10 quick wins from our Overdose ecommerce experts you can implement now to drive more revenue this peak season.
1. Get the promos locked in early
First things first: Connecting with your agency partner/s as early as possible is key to getting peak season right. There’s no such thing as too early. And if you haven’t done so yet, the next best time is now. At Overdose we aim to understand your planned Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions at least a few weeks before the big sale. This gives us time to plan the campaigns, nail the structure, craft the best CTAs and ensure we help you hit or surpass your peak season targets.
2. Reuse URLs, don’t start from scratch
It may be tempting to set up a new Black Friday landing page each year, but you should reuse the same URL and just refresh the content each time. Jason Mun, our Chief Search Officer, explains why: “Google and other search engines have a very long history. They know that page has already been indexed, you already ran a lot of traffic through, and it was converting quite well previously. So when Black Friday/Cyber Monday comes along, if you activate that same URL, the chances of it ranking and being visible quicker for the end user will be significantly increased rather than starting from scratch.”
Jason also highlights that you should give your Black Friday page a quick content refresh before the promotion actually starts.
“Reactivate those pages around the October mark to give Google the right signals that hey, this page has been refreshed, come and grab new content" he says. Even if you don't know what the exact promo is yet, the landing page would have stayed dormant for quite a number of months, so you should signal to Google that it's been reactivated. For example, you could add a new “Black Friday coming soon” banner or the email sign up form with messaging around being the first to know when the sale starts.
3. Get the data foundations right
Ankit Patel, Overdose’s Data Solutions Lead, highlights that brands need to get their data foundations in place before they increase their spend during peak season. “They need to make sure their signals are strong and their tracking is durable,” he says.
Roughly a third of traffic now goes unmeasured, and since AI-driven bidding tools (Performance Max, Advantage+, and similar) make decisions based on whatever signal they can actually see, weak data doesn't just create a blind spot, it actively compounds into wasted spend, mispriced bids, and drifting forecasts.
“They need to make sure their signals are strong and their tracking is durable.”
Ankit PatelData Solutions Lead4. Product feed optimisation
Bige Metodo, our Digital Marketing Director, highlights that getting product feeds ready is one of the most important steps for peak readiness and helps you get visible when customers are shopping online. Product titles that work on your website often aren't best practice for LLMs or ad platforms, so you can rank higher by feeding in the attributes LLMs and ad platforms want to see. “You need to clean your product feed, which means titles, attributes, pricing, in stock info so shopping and AI services can read that” she says.
5. Utilise the CRM personalisation at your fingertips
If you’re on a platform like Klaviyo or Braze, there’s a wealth of personalisation features available to be used. In fact, McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions, and 76% get frustrated when it doesn't happen. Personalisation creates more meaningful interactions with your customers, which can result in stronger loyalty and conversions.
However, this is still underutilised by many. “I think a lot of brands are 100% promotional to their entire database still, despite years of talking about segmentation” says David Visser, our Director of CRM & Solutions. Instead, David encourages you to personalise the approach based on the data you have about what a customer segment actually buys.
For example, if you're a beauty retailer and you’re blasting lipstick deals to a customer who has only ever bought men’s skincare, you’re likely doing yourself a disservice. Worse yet, you may even prompt them to hit the unsubscribe button.
6. Plan the post-peak nurture sequence now
We know commerce and marketing teams are incredibly busy with prep for Black Friday, but one thing that’s important to plan as soon as possible is your post-peak nurture sequences. They’re one of the most underutilised ways to connect with new customers who have entered your CRM.
David says that you need a clear plan of how you’re going to retain the new business that comes in during Black Friday: “How are you going to get those customers coming back to you? What is your follow up plan?” he says.
7. Consistency is key
Our Creative Director, Shantelle Johnson, advises that you should ensure your assets are consistent across all touchpoints - website, email and social - both from a messaging and a visual point of view. “So if a user sees one thing on Instagram, then they go to the website, they can visually recognise that it's connected in the same sale” she explains.
The same creative and messaging should carry through category pages, product pages, and even mega menus.
“A lot of brands think if they just have it as their hero banner on the homepage, that's enough. But a lot of users don't necessarily enter a website just on the homepage” she adds.
8. Make it easy for customers to say yes
While these should be on your website year-round, it’s worth highlighting them again. Make sure your delivery times and shipping and returns policy is visible, not buried on the site. Shoppers buying gifts for others particularly need to know they'll arrive in time and that they can be returned if they're the wrong fit for the recipient.
Secondly, if you have payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay or Buy Now Pay Later, make them visible too. They’re especially useful when people are stretching their budgets to buy a pricier gift for loved ones.
9. Break through price-only noise
Ryan Delaney, Group Chief Experience Officer, challenges you to think about what else you can offer besides the typical discounts. “What are some other optimisations that you can bring to the table that’s not just selling the lowest priced item?”
Racing to the bottom with the lowest discounts can bleed into profit, which isn’t overly sustainable for most brands. So think about alternative levers beyond discounting, such as: FOMO tactics, free-gift-with-purchase, GEO/ AI discoverability plays, and leaning into Christmas gifting as a core message.
Ryan says you should also understand and cater to your superstar spenders in particular. “Why are they spending more? Do you need to give them less of a discount and something more exclusive that shows we deeply value you as a customer?” There could be a real opportunity here to further grow their loyalty and average order value.
“What are some other optimisations that you can bring to the table that’s not just selling the lowest priced item?”
Ryan DelaneyGroup Chief Experience OfficerIsabella Ruiz, our CRO/UX Specialist, adds that you can further add value by temporarily extending your returns period. Black Friday and Cyber Monday fall so close to Christmas that many people do their gift shopping then. However, the typical 14-30 day returns policy leaves the gift recipient little or no time to return anything.
“It just gives people a lot of reassurance that yeah, I can take advantage of the sale, I can buy it now, and they have time to return it if they need. So both [brand and customer] win” she says.
10. Create FOMO, but without the pressure
The fear of missing out is of course one way to win sales. But there could be a more subtle yet effective way to do it - without eroding trust or sounding like every other brand in the market. Isabella suggests testing a simple one-liner at the checkout:
“It’s just a line of copy that says items in your cart are not reserved and may sell out. Not saying there are two left of this product or there's 50 items left of this product. It's a little bit unknown. It builds a little bit of FOMO [making them think], it might run out or I’ll just buy it. We've tested it in the past and it's worked really well.”