Complete insights from the Marketing Operators Digital Marketing Conference on Black Friday Cyber Monday Success
The Black Friday Operators Online conference (9ops.co/black-friday) brought together some of e-commerce’s sharpest minds for a rapid-fire masterclass in holiday marketing. With no slides and just five minutes each, 15 industry leaders shared their most powerful tactics for winning the noisiest, and most profitable, time of the year.
Here’s a comprehensive recap of every speaker’s insights from this game-changing event.
MacCoy Merkley, CMO of Portland Leather: The 55-Day Season Framework
MacCoy Merkley fundamentally reframed how we should think about BFCM. Instead of treating Black Friday as a 48-hour sprint, Portland Leather approaches it as a 55-day season stretching from early November through New Year’s.
Key Insight: “A calendar full of marketing activities creates the motion needed to hit ambitious revenue goals. Start early to capture consumer budget before your competitors.”
Merkley emphasized the importance of having a disciplined plan prepared in advance, with his “Super Bowl Mentality” approach:
- Maintain “stone cold” focus during the event
- Establish strict daily routines to avoid constantly checking metrics
- Protect your mental headspace by continuing activities you enjoy
- Practice “strategic surrender” in Q3 by saying no to non-essential commitments
Actionable Takeaway: Block out your Q1 recovery time now while you can think clearly. True recovery takes several weeks.
Cherene Aubert, SVP at ILIA Beauty: Dual-Track Consumer Psychology
Cherene Aubert revealed how ILIA Beauty segments their holiday customers into two distinct psychological profiles, each requiring different offer strategies.
The Two Consumer Types:
- Loss-Focused Consumers: Feeling financially behind, these risk-seeking customers respond to “go big” packages, 9 to 12-month supplies or large bundles that help them “regain ground”
- Gain-Focused Consumers: Risk-averse and focused on protecting what they have, these customers prefer safe, low-commitment purchases like simple add-ons or single essential items
Key Insight: “The same product can be positioned completely differently based on which psychological state your customer is in.”
ILIA Beauty creates separate landing pages and marketing campaigns for each segment, dramatically improving conversion rates by speaking to the specific mindset of each group.
Jerel Blades, Head of Growth at Tushy: Building and Flying the Rocket Ship
Jerel Blades broke down Tushy’s two-phase approach to BFCM, which he calls “Building the Rocket Ship” (preparation) and “Flying the Rocket Ship” (execution).
Building Phase Essentials:
- Unit economics must be thoroughly understood, including loaded costs
- Test and validate all offers before BFCM, never launch unproven offers during the event
- Use pop-ups strategically to collect data (Tushy asks “how many bathrooms do you have?”)
- Implement post-purchase surveys for direct feedback
- Activate diverse top-of-funnel channels early
Flying Phase Tactics:
- Daily stand-ups with growth, creative, and e-commerce teams, even on Thanksgiving 😬
- Focus on “horizontal scale” with creative, prioritize new concepts over minor A/B tests
- Creative should act as a “flashlight” to uncover new customer personas
- Speed to decision is crucial, be prepared to make quick calls with incomplete data
Key Insight: “Don’t waste spend accelerating purchases from people who would have bought anyway. Acquisition marketing spend is most crucial after the initial pop.”
Connor Dault, CMO of Grüns: The Leaky Bucket Framework
Connor Dault presented Grüns’ three-point system for plugging revenue leaks during BFCM:
The Three Critical Moments:
- Post-First Click: Use Identity Resolution partners like OpenSend or Retention.com to identify anonymous visitors for cross-channel remarketing
- Post-Purchase (Pre-Arrival): “Go ham” during peak customer excitement with videos, emails, SMS, and targeted ads
- Post-Churn: For high-value churned customers, send personal letters from the founder including their cell phone number
Key Insight: “The moment after purchase is when customer excitement peaks. That’s when they’re most receptive to additional communication and offers.”
Aman Advani, Co-founder of Ministry of Supply: Community as Performance Engine
Aman Advani shared Ministry of Supply’s framework for turning community into a performance driver through “Lore, Layers, and Loops.”
The Three L’s:
- Lore (The Art of the Easter Egg): Create “secret handshakes” and insider language that makes your community feel special
- Layers (Different Messages, Different Messengers): Seed stories with creators in September, test offers in October, run ads in November
- Loops (Bringing Customers Back): Use tools like ManyChat to automatically DM users who comment, creating re-engagement without paid ads
Key Insight: “Community isn’t just about engagement; it’s a force multiplier that drives measurable performance when structured correctly.”
Sarah Levinger, Brand Therapist: The Stress Budget Strategy
Sarah Levinger focused on the human side of BFCM, introducing the concept of a “Stress Budget” for teams.
Mental Energy Management:
- Treat mental energy as a finite resource that must be budgeted
- Practice “strategic surrender” in Q3 to preserve energy for Q4
- Schedule non-negotiable Q1 recovery time now
- Establish “circuit breakers” with coverage windows instead of 24/7 availability
- Normalize asking for help as a feature, not a failure
Key Insight: “Burnout isn’t a badge of honor, it’s a business risk. Plan your recovery before you need it, while you can still think clearly.”
Ronak Shah, CEO & Founder of Obvi: SMS Mastery and Wallet Notifications
Ronak Shah dropped two powerful tactics that Obvi uses to cut through the noise.
SMS Strategy:
- Don’t stop sending; subscribers expect offers
- Send 5+ messages over BFCM weekend (outperforms 3 or less)
- Avoid 9 a.m. congestion; late evening (7-9 p.m.) has higher engagement
- Send between 12-29 or 35-44 minute marks of the hour
- Tuesday before Black Friday is a high-performing “sleeper day”
Wallet Notifications Secret Weapon:
- 85% average open rate (compared to 20% for email)
- Perceived as system alerts, not marketing
- Use platforms like PassKit or Novel
- Implement geo-fencing to trigger offers near retail locations
- Send competitor-triggered offers when customers are near rival stores
Key Insight: “Wallet notifications can generate $2.20 per subscriber with unlimited pushes for essentially free.”
Emily Herrera, Creator Venture: Building Long-Term Creator Relationships
Emily Herrera emphasized moving beyond transactional influencer deals to true creator partnerships.
Partnership Principles:
- View creators as founders of their own firms who seek data to improve
- Share performance data transparently to build trust
- Connect on a personal level—creators are the best source of channel insights
- Use tools like TubeLab or VueStats for creator discovery
- Focus on co-creation rather than simple ad placements
Key Insight: “The best creator relationships aren’t vendor-client dynamics; they’re data-sharing partnerships where both sides win.”
Aaron Esmailian, CMO of birddogs: Email Marketing Excellence
Aaron Esmailian’s rapid-fire session focused on what makes birddogs’ email marketing so effective during BFCM.
Email Strategies:
- Start warming up your list in October with non-promotional value content
- Segment aggressively; one message doesn’t fit all customers
- Create urgency through inventory transparency
- Use humor and personality to stand out in crowded inboxes
- Plan your entire email calendar before November 1st
Key Insight: “The best time to build your email list isn’t during Black Friday, it’s right now. Every email collected before November is worth 3x more during BFCM.”
Grace Clarke, Shopify Community: Contribution Margin Focus
Grace Clarke from Shopify emphasized the importance of understanding unit economics and contribution margin during BFCM.
Financial Framework:
- All marketing metrics must ladder up to contribution margin
- Model different scenarios at various spend and efficiency levels
- Understand your loaded cost structure completely
- Know your break-even points before the event starts
- Make decisions based on contribution, not just top-line revenue
Key Insight: “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but contribution margin is reality. Know your numbers cold before the season starts.”
Elle Rudnick, SET ACTIVE: Out-of-Home Marketing Innovation
Elle Rudnick shared SET ACTIVE’s creative approach to breaking through digital saturation with physical-world marketing.
OOH Strategy Example:
- Placed branded advertising in TSA security bins at LAX during holiday travel season
- Targeted their exact demographic during high-stress travel moments
- Created memorable brand moments that sparked social sharing
- Complemented digital efforts with unexpected physical touchpoints
Key Insight: “When everyone’s fighting for attention online, sometimes the best strategy is to show up where they don’t expect you in the physical world.”
Panagiota Hatzis, VP HR at Hexclad: Team Alignment and Culture
Panagiota Hatzis focused on the often-overlooked human resources aspect of BFCM success.
Team Preparation:
- Align the entire team on KPIs and success metrics before November
- Create clear communication protocols for the high-stress period
- Establish decision-making hierarchies to avoid bottlenecks
- Build in mandatory rest periods for team members
- Celebrate small wins throughout the season to maintain morale
Key Insight: “If any team member can’t articulate what success looks like for BFCM, that’s a leadership failure. Alignment before the event prevents chaos during it.”
Additional Lightning Round Insights
The conference also featured quick-hit tactics from several speakers:
Measuring Channel Incrementality: Call customers directly after purchase with a vague “How did you hear about us?” to determine true attribution. Multiply channel ROAS by this “incrementality factor” for accurate metrics.
The Shipping Cliff Strategy: December presents three distinct opportunities:
- Pre-shipping cutoff: Use excess inventory for gift-with-purchase offers
- Expedited shipping window: Run separate offers with urgency messaging
- Post-shipping cutoff: Pivot to digital products and gift cards
Boxing Day Opportunity: Don’t neglect this key event for international markets, especially Canada and the UK.
January Momentum: Q4 performance directly impacts January success. Position products with “New Year, New Me” messaging and use the creative backlog built in Q4 to combat ad fatigue.
Key Takeaways for Implementation
- Start Now: If you haven’t begun preparing for BFCM, you’re already behind
- Think Season, Not Event: Adopt the 55-day approach rather than focusing only on Black Friday weekend
- Segment Ruthlessly: Different customers need different messages and offers
- Protect Your Team: Build in recovery time and stress management now
- Focus on Contribution: Revenue without profit is just expensive activity
- Test Everything: Never launch unproven offers during the main event
- Document Everything: Your 2025 BFCM success depends on learning from 2024
Looking Ahead
The Black Friday Operators Online conference made one thing crystal clear: winning BFCM isn’t about having the deepest discounts or the biggest ad budget. It’s about strategic preparation, understanding consumer psychology, protecting your team’s wellbeing, and executing a disciplined plan across a 55-day season.
As MacCoy Merkley concluded: “BFCM success is 80% preparation, 20% execution. The brands that win aren’t the ones with the best Week-of strategies; they’re the ones who started planning in September.”
For more information about the Marketing Operators community and future events, visit operatorscontent.com.
I boiled down all of these great insights into “The Service Business Owner’s Guide to Winning the Holiday Season: 10 Strategies to Cut Through the Noise.“
Want to implement these strategies for your business? The tactics shared at Black Friday Operators Online aren’t just for enterprise e-commerce, they can be adapted for businesses of any size willing to think strategically about the holiday season.
