What should your Black Friday and Cyber Monday email checklist include?

Confirm which products qualify, which markets can buy and whether the offer works with existing codes. Ask the store owner to check margin and available stock. A headline cannot fix a code that fails at checkout. Record the start and end in the market's local time and explain any restrictions in plain language. The campaign should not imply the entire catalog is reduced when exclusions apply.

Plan backward from the sale and reserve time for corrections, not only design. The Black Friday calendar explains the US shopping date. EU stores should also check local trading and consumer requirements before using sale claims. A cross-border campaign needs the correct currency and delivery expectations on the linked page. Do not make the email promise dispatch or delivery that your operations team has not confirmed.

A teaser can set expectations, a launch announces the available offer and a reminder helps readers choose. Cyber Monday should have a genuine reason to exist: another product focus, a useful comparison or a real closing time. Changing the subject line while repeating the same email is not a content plan. Write the purpose and destination for each message before deciding when it should go out.

Keep the sequence illustrative rather than treating it as a universal send count. A store with a short, focused promotion may need a different calendar from a broader assortment with category-specific audiences. If a planned item sells out, replace the product and recheck the linked page. Only use “last chance” when the relevant offer actually ends. Never restart a deadline simply because another reminder is ready.

Check purchase activity and relevance before each reminder. Someone who bought the featured product may need order or care information instead of another push for that item. A customer browsing a different category may not benefit from the same offer. Keep subscribed audiences and suppression rules intact, and review the overlap with cart, checkout and welcome flows.

Do not build a reminder audience only from people marked as non-openers. Open tracking can be affected by privacy tools, so a recorded open is not a dependable account of human reading. Use purchase and meaningful click behavior where available and avoid escalating frequency because an open report looks quiet. A cautious exclusion protects the customer experience better than another broad send whose relevance nobody can explain.

Send the actual campaign to a real inbox. Click every product and button, apply the code in the eligible market and confirm that cart restrictions match the copy. Check phone rendering, image descriptions and the sender identity. Review the landing page without being signed in as a staff member. A preview can hide the permissions or stock state a real shopper encounters.

After the sale, remove outdated offer language and check any active flows that mention the promotion. Continue with useful buyer follow-up, product use and accurate delivery information. Review clicked orders and the messages customers received together, rather than declaring a winning subject line from opens alone. Keep a note of code failures, sold-out products and support questions so the next sale starts with a better checklist, not only a copied design.

Keep a shared brief with the campaign purpose, intended audience, product links, photos and any offer terms. The person preparing the email should be able to build it without guessing what the discount covers or whether a product is available. Mark unresolved information clearly rather than filling gaps with assumptions. A useful brief is a working record, not a presentation that nobody updates.

Name the person who gives final approval and agree where feedback belongs. Collect comments in the same place so a corrected price does not get lost between email threads. Send an inbox test with the real links and ask the reviewer to check the offer, products and wording. Do not schedule until approval is explicit. If a deadline changes, update both the email and the linked store page before repeating the test.

After a send, read the result alongside its purpose. A product launch and a customer-care message do not have identical jobs. Start with delivered messages, meaningful clicks, orders linked to clicks and unsubscribes. Keep the same definitions and reporting settings when comparing periods. An impressive open rate does not establish that somebody read the email or bought because of it.

Clicked revenue is money attributed to a recorded click within the account's configured window. It is not the same as total store revenue, and it does not prove incremental sales. Record the reporting window, currency and campaign names with your notes. If stock, price or site performance changed, include that context before blaming the creative. Finish the review with a practical next change, such as a more relevant destination or clearer product explanation, rather than a promise about future revenue.

Flowsplash is a newsletter studio that designs, writes and sends Klaviyo newsletters for e-commerce brands. Our Newsletters plan includes 8 sends per 4 weeks for €990 or $990, excluding VAT. We plan the period together, write and design the emails, build and test them in your Klaviyo, check inbox placement and schedule after your approval. Your software subscription remains separate.

The Newsletters + Flows plan costs €1,390 or $1,390 per 4 weeks, excluding VAT. It adds welcome, abandoned cart and checkout, browse abandonment, post-purchase and winback flows, with a quarterly review. Flows are not sold separately. Both plans have a 12-week start period, then run month to month with 30 days notice. You provide products, photos and things to promote. We work in your account, never export your lists and leave everything we build with you.