Black Friday Email: Examples and Timing for Small Shops

A Black Friday email is the sale email a shop sends before, during and just after Black Friday. In 2026 that is Friday 27 November, and Cyber Monday falls on 30 November. For a small shop, five emails cover the sale.

Each one has its own job and its own audience. The examples use a made-up shop: Oliver Bennett sells hand-poured candles online from a workshop in Leeds. He has 1,800 subscribers and one offer: every candle at 20% off, from Friday until Monday night.

When to send Black Friday emails

Send the first Black Friday email a week before the sale and the last one on the morning it ends. Oliver's calendar uses GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), because the clocks went back on 25 October.

Email	When in 2026	Who gets it	Its job
Teaser	Friday 20 November, 08:00	The opted-in list	Name the offer and the dates
Early access	Tuesday 24 November, 08:00	Recent customers and engaged subscribers	Open the sale three days early
Launch	Friday 27 November, 07:00	The opted-in list	Say the sale is live and when it ends
Weekend reminder	Sunday 29 November, 10:00	Contacts who did not click the launch	Give a new reason to look
Last day	Monday 30 November, 08:00	The opted-in list	Say the offer ends at 23:59

If you only have time for three, keep the teaser, the launch and the last day. Early access and the weekend reminder are extras for people who are already interested.

A 07:00 launch lands before the working day starts, and the sale is already live by the time people read it. Once the weekend is over, look at when your own subscribers clicked. Move next year's times to match.

On Tuesday 1 December, an optional email can thank buyers and give your last order date for Christmas delivery.

Black Friday email examples to copy

The first three emails each have one job. The teaser announces the sale, early access opens it to your keenest readers and the launch says it is live.

Why it works: the offer, the start and the end fit on one screen. Nobody has to guess whether to buy now or wait.

Tip: give the number up front. A hint such as "something big is coming" asks people to wait without saying what for.

Why it works: it rewards the people most likely to buy. Orders spread over a week also leave time to pour and pack them.

Tip: make early access a real head start, with the full range three days before anyone else. If the "early" sale opens at the same moment as the public one, the email is only a label.

Why it works: before any scrolling, the reader knows what is discounted, by how much and until when.

Tip: lead with last winter's three best-selling scents. Your own best sellers do more work than a banner that only says "Black Friday".

Weekend, Cyber Monday and no-sale examples

After the launch, the emails change job: first they remind, then they close. Shops that skip discounts still have something to send that week.

Why it works: people who skipped Friday's email get something new to look at. Resending it with a louder subject line would not do that.

Tip: pick the products from your weekend sales, so "selling fastest" is true and you can show it.

Why it works: because the deadline is real, the email can state it plainly.

Tip: send it in the morning. An evening email leaves only a few hours, and people who check email once a day may open it after the sale is over.

Why it works: subscribers have a question that week, and this email answers it. It also suits a shop that sells on craft rather than price.

Tip: send this email on the Thursday, so it reads as a choice, not an oversight.

Black Friday email subject lines

Put the offer or the reason to open in the first few words of the subject line. Phones cut long subject lines short. Most inboxes show preview text after the subject, and it carries the second fact: the end time, a condition or the products.

Here are two more for each email in the calendar.

Email	Subject line	Or
Teaser	Black Friday: 20% off, starting next Friday	Our one sale of the year starts on the 27th
Early access	Customers first: the sale opens today	Your early access code is inside
Launch	20% off everything starts now	The sale is live until Monday night
Weekend reminder	This weekend's three best sellers	Two days left of 20% off
Last day	Final hours of 20% off	The sale ends at 23:59 tonight

Who should get your Black Friday emails

Email only people who agreed to your marketing emails, or who bought from you and were offered an opt-out. That second group is the soft opt-in of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which the regulator's guidance limits to your own similar products. A list you bought or copied from elsewhere qualifies for neither.

Within your list, leave out people who have ignored you for months. A sale email to someone who forgot they subscribed invites a spam complaint, which affects where the rest of your sale emails land. Keeping emails out of spam starts with cleaning those addresses out.

Subscribers who join in November for the sale will get your welcome email within days of the launch. Let the first welcome email mention the sale instead of offering a second discount on top.

In MailGraf, two ready segments do this sorting. Hot right now finds contacts who responded to one of their last three emails, a sensible audience for early access. Cold, never engaged finds contacts with no response to their last ten emails and little before that.

Save the cold card as a segment, then turn on Exclude specific recipients on the campaign's Audience step to keep it out of the sale. Start from a ready segment explains the cards, and engagement segments shows how to build your own.

Deadlines and sale prices: the UK rules

Every deadline and saving in a Black Friday email counts as a claim, and it has to be true. Falsely claiming that an offer lasts only a limited time, to rush a decision, has been banned since 2008. Since 6 April 2025 the ban sits in Schedule 20, paragraph 7 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the courts can now fine traders up to 10% of their worldwide turnover. That figure comes from its guidance for businesses, updated on 3 December 2025.

The CMA's letter on urgency and price reduction claims, dated 29 March 2023, lists marketing emails among the places businesses should check. It was written under the 2008 rules. Five of its examples (1, 2, 10, 13 and 15) map onto three claims these emails make.

Claim in the email	OK when	Likely to mislead when
"Ends 23:59 on Monday"	The price goes back up at 23:59 on Monday	The offer carries on, or a similar saving starts straight after (examples 1 and 2)
"Was £24, now £19.20"	£24 was the normal selling price before the sale	The price went up in October, or few candles sold at £24 (examples 10 and 13)
"20% off everything"	Exclusions or a minimum spend sit clearly next to the offer in the email	The conditions are in small print, away from the offer or only at checkout (example 15)

The first row decides the shape of your weekend. Suppose the launch email gives Sunday as the end, and Monday brings a similar saving back as a Cyber Monday deal. In the CMA's view, Sunday's deadline is then likely to be misleading, even though the first offer did end.

So run one offer from Friday to Monday, as Oliver does, or make Monday's deal genuinely different from Friday's. A new name on the same 20% does not count.

On 24 October 2026 we read six Black Friday email pages, five from UK Google results and one cited by ChatGPT. Four of them suggest an email that extends the sale after it ends. That letter asks businesses to make sure special offer prices do not continue beyond the promotion's end date. Choose an end you will keep.

This is a summary of the published law and guidance, not legal advice.

A countdown timer for the last day

The timer belongs in the last-day email, where the hours left are the news. In the teaser it would count days, which a date says just as well.

In MailGraf, drag the Countdown block from the editor's Dynamic group. Set the end date, the end time and the time zone. For when time runs out, choose Show a message and write a line such as "This sale has ended". Someone who opens the email on Tuesday then sees that line, not a row of zeros.

Outlook on Windows shows the timer as a still image, so write the deadline in the text as well. How an email countdown timer works explains what each email app shows and how the CMA treats timers.

How to schedule Black Friday emails in MailGraf

A one-person shop is busiest during the sale itself, so build and schedule the emails before it starts. Four of the five can be scheduled a week ahead. The weekend reminder waits for the launch to go out.

1. Build the teaser, early access, launch and last-day emails as four campaigns. For Monday's campaign, open Sending frequency and recipient limit on its Audience step and leave both rules off. Limit sending frequency skips contacts who received at least three campaigns in the last seven days. Leave 24 hours between emails skips anyone emailed in the previous 24 hours.

2. On each campaign's Review step, choose Schedule under When should this send? and set the date and time. Scheduled campaigns wait in the Scheduled tab of Campaigns and are locked; to change one, click Unschedule first.

3. On Friday, once the launch has gone out, open its report, click Retarget and choose Non-clickers. MailGraf copies the email into a new draft addressed to them. Rewrite it as the reminder and schedule it for Sunday.

Both frequency rules protect a list in a normal month, but on Cyber Monday they work against you. The 24-hour rule alone would drop everyone who got Sunday's reminder 22 hours earlier.

Auto resend, also on the Review step, adds up to three repeats of a campaign, each with its own subject line. The repeats reach the whole audience again, including people who clicked, so Retarget suits a sale reminder better. Retarget a campaign shows each step.

Busy weekends leave baskets behind as well. If your shop sends abandoned cart emails, test them with your own address before 27 November: place an order and check that the reminder stops.

A personal inbox cannot remind just the people who did not click, or draw a timer that updates when the email is opened. MailGraf's monthly plan has unlimited contacts, and the pricing page is where you check what it covers and get started.