Black Friday Playbook: Scale Strategically with Blend

Your guide to making this your most profitable weekend ever with Blend AI. We’ve put together some actionable tips and made a playbook for you to go into the busiest time of the year with confidence.

💰 1. Know Your Numbers (So You Scale into Profit)

Before you turn up spend, know exactly what “winning” looks like for your business.

Discounts and volume can hide low margins so recalculate your breakeven and target metrics.

Your key numbers:

• Average Order Value (AOV): What’s the typical order size?
• Profit Margin (%): After product costs, shipping, fees.
• Breakeven ROAS = 1 / (Profit Margin %)
  • Example: 40% margin → Breakeven ROAS = 2.5x
• Breakeven CPA = AOV ÷ Breakeven ROAS
  • Example: $60 AOV / 2.5 = $24 CPA

💡 If you’re offering 50% off, your margin might drop to 20%. That means your breakeven ROAS jumps to 5x

Don’t scale ads until you’re clearing that number. The only exception here is if your repeat purchase rate is strong and your LTV & cash flow allows for you to be unprofitable on the first order but be careful, knowing these numbers is crucial.

Use your Blend dashboard to track your blended ROAS & CPO daily so you’re scaling into profit not into loss. But ads are only one area of your business so don’t rely on your ad data as a sole indicator of business health.

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💎 2. Craft an Irresistible Offer

Black Friday isn’t just about discounts, it’s about value perception.

Brands who win have clear, bold, easy-to-understand offers that drive action. In a perfect world, you would have tested a number of offers in previous sales as well as in the months coming up to the sale via micro campaigns or even emails to know what gets real cut through with your audience.

But if you haven’t done any offer testing, don’t worry! You can work with the numbers you worked out before and try find a sweet spot that will drive attention without putting your profit underwater.

Make sure you consider a few offer structures, it doesn’t have to be a flat % off, you could add value and increase key metrics like your AOV or LTV by trying offers like gifts, subscription only discounts, bundles etc.

Offer examples:

• “Buy One, Get One 50% Off” - higher AOV, protects margin
• “Free Shipping + Gift for Orders Over $75” - increases basket size
• “Exclusive Early Access for Subscribers” - builds urgency and loyalty

💡 Keep your offer simple enough to explain in 3 seconds, that’s all the attention you get in an ad.

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📅 3. Use a Black Friday Sales Calendar

Map your entire week before it begins. You don’t need chaos, you need organised cadence.

You might want to include the following:

• Launch Dates
• Hype Campaigns
• When to post, send emails, change creative
• Mid-Sale Activations
• Last Chance Offers

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Here's what it might look like:

Nov 10–17: Warm-Up Campaigns

• Tease the sale
• Build audiences
• Collect emails

Nov 18–24: Early Access Sale

• Reward subscribers
• Test offers
• Find ad winners

Nov 25 (Black Friday): Main Push

• Maximize spend
• Scale winning ads and offers

Nov 26–28 (Cyber Weekend): Retarget + Upsell

• Target recent visitors
• Emphasize urgency

Nov 29–Dec 2 (Cyber Monday): Final Chance

• Use “Ends Tonight” messaging
• Clear remaining stock

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💡 Schedule your email and SMS sends now. Sync ad creative with each phase for consistency and recall.

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📊 4. Monitor Results Daily & Move Fast

Black Friday isn’t “set and forget.” With demand peaking, check your dashboards every day (or even more).

Watch your Blend Platform for:

• ROAS: Over Breakeven = Room for scale
• Winning Creative: Strong Creative = Opportunity to Iterate or Create More

Make sure to measure business wide metrics as well like:

• Total Revenue & Ad Attributed Revenue - not all of your revenue will be from paid ads, so you don’t want to scale blindly when the ads aren’t performing that well
• MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) - this will tell you how much of your total revenue was spend on marketing across all marketing efforts, not just ads
• AOV (Average Order Value) - if your AOV drops, your breakeven numbers will too so try bundles or free shipping thresholds to push it back up

💡 Momentum compounds, don’t wait to “optimise next week.” In BFCM, hours matter.

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🎨 5. Use Your Creative Analysis Tab in Blend AI

Blend’s Creative Analysis Tab is your secret weapon. Your winners will emerge fast and your job is to duplicate them, and iterate on them fast to double down on performance.

Look inside of your Creative Analysis Tab for:

• AI Performance Idea: Know exactly what ads to create to win during Black Friday
• Attention & Creative Scores: Understand in seconds which ads are winning then deep dive into why
• Visual hooks: UGC, fast motion, product close-ups
• Formats that deliver: Reels often outperform static in this season

Then create variants fast:

• Inside of each creative the 8 Creative Pillars will tell you exactly how to iterate for better performance
• You’ll also see strengths and weaknesses to know what to keep consistent

💡 If you aren’t a Blend user and want a free trial at Creative Analysis, sign up here

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🚀 6. When to Increase Budget (and When Not To)

Scaling isn’t guesswork, it’s pattern recognition. If you’re seeing good signals during the most demanding time of the year, you should take advantage of that but only when it makes sense to your bottom line.

There is a million ways to do this but some general advice

Increase budget when:

• ROAS is above breakeven for 48–72 hours.
• ROAS is increasing steadily
• You have increased spend and ROAS hasn’t dropped
• Inventory can handle demand
• You have room to scale on your bottom line

Hold or pause when:

• ROAS is dropping towards or below breakeven over 2+ days
• Ad fatigue shows and you don’t have new creative ready to launch
• Supply or shipping lags behind demand

💡 Don’t freak out and make too many changes in the one day, you need enough spend to go through your ads to get reliable and consistent data for decision making

Confidence Beats Hesitation

Black Friday is the best time all year to grow aggressively, because demand is on your side. Blend AI tools give you the clarity to act fast and scale profitably as long as you’re across your key numbers and business health.

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