Black Friday eCommerce: Strategies & Tips To Improve Profitability in 2025

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Black Friday used to be about slashing prices and watching orders roll in. But in 2025, high ad costs, rising return rates, and fragile supply chains mean that chasing top-line revenue without a clear profit plan is a recipe for regret.

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This year, leading eCommerce brands aren’t just preparing to sell more, they're planning to sell smarter and make more profit than ever. 

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In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a Black Friday eCommerce strategy that maximizes profitability, not just clicks or orders. From forecasting inventory to setting discount guardrails to leveraging AI tools like Conjura and Owly AI, you'll walk away with a game plan to win the season and the months that follow.

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Your 2025 Black Friday Profit Playbook

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Here’s a quick-hit checklist of what a profit-first Black Friday setup looks like:

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• ✅ Contribution profit targets set by category and SKU
  
  
• ✅ Discount guardrails linked to margin bands
  
  
• ✅ Inventory forecasts aligned with channel plans
  
  
• ✅ Ad budgets tied to SKU stock levels and ROI
  
  
• ✅ Pre-tested creative and promo formats
  
  
• ✅ UX optimized: site speed, delivery messaging, returns clarity
  
  
• ✅ Reporting dashboards showing profit - not just revenue
  
  
• ✅ Cohort-based LTV tracking for new customers
  
  
• ✅ Refund risk monitoring throughout the weekend
  
  
• ✅ Post-peak plan to clear overstock and retain new buyers
  
  

Let’s dig into the strategy behind each of these.

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Set Profit Targets Before You Set Discounts

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Don’t just discount without a profitability model; that’s a recipe for disaster!

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Before launching your promo calendar, set contribution profit targets at the SKU and category level. That means understanding your gross profit, variable costs, return rates, and ad spend attribution, all broken down by product.

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If a product has a 65% gross margin but a 25% refund rate and eats 30% of every ad dollar, that generous 30% discount isn’t doing you any favours…

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Use these guardrails:

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• Set maximum discount percentages by margin band.
  
  
• Tie free shipping thresholds to AOV and your actual shipping costs.
  
  
• Prioritize cart-building offers (e.g., “Spend $100, Get $20 Off”) over flat discounts.
  
  

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It’s not about being stingy, it’s about being smart. When contribution profit is your gold standard metric, you can afford to be bold without bleeding margin.

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Inventory & Demand: Avoid Stockouts and Overstock

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It’s one of the worst Black Friday feelings: seeing your best-performing SKU sell out by 2 p.m. on Friday… and staring at shelves of slow-moving inventory by January.

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That’s why a strong demand forecast, powered by SKU-level data and AI, is your best defence.

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Here’s how to get it right:

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• Forecast demand at the product level, not just category or total revenue. This helps you set better purchase orders and stock thresholds.
  
  
• Identify “hero SKUs” that drive the most revenue and “attachment SKUs” that boost AOV in bundles.
  
  
• Align discount depth to stock cover; don’t go deep on SKUs with limited inventory.
  
  
• If you’re running paid ads, throttle spend on low-cover SKUs and redirect to profitable, well-stocked products.
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Tools like Conjura’s AI Inventory Forecasting can help model demand based on seasonality, promo depth, and past performance, so you’re buying (and selling) with confidence.

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Traffic Quality > Traffic Volume

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Sure, everyone wants more site traffic over Black Friday weekend. But not all clicks equate to the same value for your business.

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Without quality control, you risk attracting deal hunters who buy once and bounce, or worse, return half the order. The goal? Traffic that converts profitably and sticks around.

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Tips to improve traffic quality:

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• Prioritize high-intent channels like branded search and email over broad-targeting social ads.
  
  
• Use pre-sale campaigns (email/SMS quizzes, early access lists) to build warm audiences.
  
  
• Refine paid social creative to filter for your best-fit customers. Use messaging that reinforces value, not just price.
  
  
• Optimize your landing pages and PDPs to convert: fast loading, clear delivery cutoffs, trust badges, and transparent returns policy.
  
  

And most importantly, track traffic quality by SKU. Some products are natural click magnets but don’t convert. Others quietly crush it. 

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Price & Promotion Tactics That Protect Your Margins

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Not every product needs a 30% discount to fly off the shelves. In fact, blanket sitewide discounts are often margin killers.

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Instead, use historical data to identify price-sensitive SKUs versus inelastic performers. You might find that your top sellers convert just as well with a gift-with-purchase or free shipping offer instead of a discount.

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Smarter promo structures include:

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• Bundles that mix margin-rich SKUs with popular ones
  
  
• Spend-threshold offers that boost AOV
  
  
• Tiered discounts that reward bigger baskets
  
  
• Exclusive perks for loyal or early-access customers
  
  

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Use your refund rate and profit margin data to determine which SKUs to include in your core Black Friday offer and which to leave out. A SKU with a high return rate and low margin shouldn’t be the face of your BFCM campaign.

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Creative & Offer Testing Calendar (August–November)

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The brands that win Black Friday don’t wait until November to figure out what works. They’ve been testing promos, refining creative, and warming up their audience for months.

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Here’s a phased approach:

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August–September: The Warm-Up

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• Run creative tests on Meta/Google with different hooks (urgency, value, social proof).
  
  
• Test offer formats: bundles vs. discount vs. free gift.
  
  
• Build intent-based lists with quizzes or lead magnets (“What kind of gift-giver are you?”).
  
  

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Early October: The Dress Rehearsal

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• Launch a micro-event (e.g., “Fall Flash Sale”) to stress-test your tech stack, fulfilment, and analytics setup.
  
  
• Review what converted and what didn’t. Use this data to lock in your BFCM strategy.
  
  

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Mid-November: Lock and Load

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• Freeze your offer structure, site UX, and discount guardrails.
  
  
• Only make small tweaks to budgets, bids, and creative variants.
  
  
• Ensure analytics dashboards (like those in Conjura) are prepped for daily performance reporting.
  
  

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Measurement That Won’t Lie During Peak

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If you’re relying on last-click ROAS alone to measure success over Black Friday, you’re missing a trick.

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Why? Because ROAS often ignores returns, refund rates, contribution margin, and cross-product behavior. It tells you what looked good on paper, not what actually made money.

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Metrics to prioritize:

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• Contribution profit per SKU
  
  
• Ad spend per SKU
  
  
• Refund % by product
  
  
• Landing page revenue (identifies “traffic magnet” SKUs)
  
  
• CAC and LTV by cohort
  
  
• Stock cover vs. sell-through velocity
  
  

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With Conjura, you can track real-time contribution profit by product, surface recommendations like "Stop Advertising" or "Increase Prices," and monitor landing-page-to-revenue conversion to catch winners before they run out.

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Post-Peak Recovery: What Happens After the Sale Matters

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Once the dust settles, the work’s not over.

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The weeks after Black Friday are critical for managing returns, optimizing cash flow, and turning one-time buyers into loyal customers.

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Here’s what to do:

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• Track refund rates by SKU and customer cohort. This helps you spot promo tactics or products that drive costly returns.
  
  
• Suppress high-risk segments from future deep-discount campaigns.
  
  
• Build reorder flows for first-time customers within 30–45 days to boost retention.
  
  
• Use price reversion plans to move back to full price in stages, not all at once.
  
  
• Identify overstocked SKUs and promote them with targeted discounts or bundles (without cheapening your brand sitewide).
  
  

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Conjura’s product actions, combined with Owly AI make this easy, suggesting pricing changes, promo exposure, and markdown candidates based on live performance data.

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How Conjura Can Improve Profitability This Black Friday

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Black Friday has never been more competitive. With rising acquisition costs, complex customer journeys, and razor-thin margins, the ability to make decisions at SKU-level speed isn’t just an advantage, it’s essential.

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That’s exactly where Conjura comes in. Built for eCommerce operators who care about contribution profit (not just vanity metrics), Conjura helps brands turn their data into high-impact, margin-saving decisions before, during, and after Black Friday.

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Before Black Friday: Build a Data-Driven War Room

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In the weeks and months before Black Friday, your goal is to build a clear view of your product, marketing, and inventory performance so you can enter November with confidence.

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With Conjura, you can:

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• Segment your SKUs by margin, refund risk, and profitability to plan discounts with guardrails.
  
  
• Use the Expanded Product Table to surface products with the biggest swings in contribution profit—perfect for identifying this year’s “hero SKUs.”
  
  
• Build saved dashboard views like “BFCM Heroes,” “Low Cover + High Spend,” or “Refund-Risk Products” and share them with your team.
  
  
• Analyze SKU-level ad spend attribution to stop wasting money on low-return products and reallocate to winners.
  
  
• Set promo and pricing thresholds based on real-time product data like Gross Profit, refund %, and stock cover.
  
  

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By the time Black Friday hits, your strategy is no longer based on gut feel or last year’s guesswork, it’s built on clean, live data.

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During Black Friday: Act Fast, Protect Margin

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Black Friday weekend moves fast. So should your decisions.

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Conjura gives you real-time visibility into SKU-level contribution profit, stock health, and marketing efficiency, so you can act before margin leaks turn into profit losses.

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Key capabilities:

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• Track ad spend by SKU and instantly identify when spend is outpacing margin.
  
  
• Use Conjura’s Recommended Actions like:
  
  
  
  • Stop Advertising: flag SKUs burning ad budget with poor returns
    
    
  • Increase Prices: suggest price adjustments where elasticity is low
    
    
  • Reduce Marketing Aggression: highlight SKUs with limited stock but aggressive promotion
    
    
• Monitor landing-page revenue to understand which pages (and products) are actually driving conversions, even if the hero SKU sells out.
  
  
• Get daily (or hourly) updates in dashboards and email summaries that your team can act on immediately.
  
  

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Your team won’t be staring at 10 spreadsheets trying to make sense of chaos, they’ll have a single source of truth guiding what to scale, pause, or protect.

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After Black Friday: Capitalize on the Clean-Up

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Once the orders slow down, it’s time to analyze, learn, and optimize.

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Conjura supports post-BFCM decision-making in two major ways:

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• Refund % and LTV by acquisition cohort
  Understand which promos created sticky customers vs. one-and-done deal hunters. You’ll be able to identify which products and campaigns actually contributed to long-term revenue.
  
  
• Clear overstock strategically
  Conjura’s Recommended Actions will highlight which SKUs are sitting idle and should be discounted—without impacting products that still have demand at full price.
  
  

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And with AI Forecasting baked in, you’ll be able to feed actual sales performance back into your Q1 buying plan, improving accuracy for your next big campaign.

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Owly AI: Your Black Friday Co-Pilot

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Black Friday weekend doesn’t wait for Monday-morning analysis. That’s why Owly AI, Conjura’s decision-support agent, is built to act as you trade.

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Owly isn’t just another chatbot or AI wrapper. It’s your very own personal data analyst, available 24/7.

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• Anomalies in performance
  
  
• Opportunities to reallocate ad spend
  
  
• SKUs bleeding margin
  
  
• Pricing inefficiencies
  
  
• Under-utilized inventory

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• Stragic recommendations

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• Custom report generation
  
  

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Owly will deliver recommendations like:

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“SKU #1189 is spending 4x more than its gross profit. Suggest: reduce ad budget by 40% and increase price by 10%.”

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“Stock cover for your top revenue-driving bundle is under 4 days. Suggest: cap promo and shift spend to bundle #2.”

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Rather than sifting through dashboards or waiting for analysts, your team gets bite-sized insights with context and actions, at the moment they need them.

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AI Forecasting That Aligns Stock to Demand

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One of the biggest pitfalls brands face during Black Friday is misaligned inventory, over-ordering SKUs that barely move and under-stocking the ones that fly off the shelves. It’s a painful and costly mistake that can tank margins or leave revenue on the table.

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That’s where Conjura’s AI Inventory Forecasting comes in. It enables brands to forecast demand at the product level, factoring in key variables like seasonality, historical performance, and the depth of planned promotions. Instead of relying on gut instinct or high-level averages, you get a data-backed forecast tailored to each SKU.

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Beyond just predicting demand, Conjura helps set stock cover targets by considering sales velocity, ad budget allocation, and supplier lead times. This ensures you’re stocking the right amount of each product, enough to meet demand without tying up unnecessary cash.

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It also helps identify tail SKUs, the long tail of products that likely won’t benefit from deep inventory or aggressive promotion. By deprioritizing these SKUs in your ordering and marketing plan, you can focus your resources where they’ll have the most impact.

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After Black Friday, actual sales data can be fed back into the model, helping you refine future forecasts, especially for Q1 planning. The result is a smarter, more agile approach to inventory that protects both your revenue and your profit margin.

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Best AI Tools for eCommerce (That Will Actually Help During Black Friday 2025)

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Looking to build out your Black Friday tech stack? Here’s a short list of AI tools that deliver real value during peak:

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AI for Forecasting

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Conjura AI Inventory Forecasting
Models demand at SKU level, helping operators avoid both out-of-stock and overstock disasters.

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AI for Decision Support

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Owly AI Agent (by Conjura)
Turns your eCommerce data into daily “do this next” recommendations. Think of it as a revenue ops assistant built for marketers and merchandisers.

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AI for Creative & Messaging

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Use tools like Jasper or AdCreative.ai to quickly generate ad variants, social headlines, and A/B test copy angles.

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AI for Customer Support

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Tools like Gorgias and Tidio use AI to reduce WISMO (“Where is my order?”) tickets and help with post-purchase flows, especially important when returns spike in December.

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Remember: AI should enhance your strategy, not replace it. Tools like Conjura help you focus your AI where it matters most, profit-driving decisions.

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If you're interested in learning about more industry-leading AI tools to help your eCommerce business you can read our guide here.

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2025 Black Friday Checklist 

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Here’s a recap of what your team should have locked in before the big day:

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• All eCommerce data sources connected and refreshing daily
  
  
• Contribution profit targets set by product & category
  
  
• SKU-level discount guardrails defined
  
  
• Forecasts aligned with stock cover and ad budget
  
  
• Pre-tested creative formats & offers with winning variants ready
  
  
• Daily dashboards built and team responsibilities assigned
  
  
• Refund-prone SKUs identified and monitored
  
  
• Saved views set up for heroes, risks, and ad reallocation
  
  
• Owly AI trained and ready to deploy alerts
  
  
• Post-BFCM plan to retain new customers and manage returns
  
  

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Black Friday Is a Margin Game, Play to Win

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In 2025, the brands that win Black Friday aren’t just the loudest. They’re the smartest.

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They understand that profit > revenue, and that better data leads to better decisions, across pricing, inventory, promotions, and spend.

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Whether you’re running your first BFCM or scaling toward $100M GMV, tools like Conjura and Owly AI can give you the clarity, control, and confidence to trade smarter, not just harder.

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Book your demo of Conjura and Owly AI here.

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