At Smoke Cartel, there were exactly two days a year that were never optional, no matter how anyone was feeling that week: Black Friday and 4/20. Both were all-hands-on-deck for the entire team.
We made a point of never letting mandatory mean grim. Cupcakes showed up on both days without fail. "Mandatory cupcakes" to go with the mandatory shift turned into a tradition the team actually looked forward to. 🧁
But the cupcakes weren't what made Black Friday work. What made it work happened months earlier. This year Black Friday lands on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, so if you're reading this in October, you're right on time.
Build the training in the slow season
One habit made every seasonal hiring push faster than the one before it: we built the training materials during the slow season, not the week the new seasonal class walked in. By the time Black Friday hiring started, the curriculum, the FAQs, and the shadowing schedule already existed, tested and refined from the last cycle. A new hire's first week was spent learning the job instead of everyone around them improvising how to teach it.
The same goes for saved replies. Write the ones you know you'll need before the volume hits: "where's my order," "my tracking says delivered but I never got it," "my tracking hasn't updated," and "can I still change my address." Treat them as a starting draft your team adjusts for each person, not a script they paste and send.
Freeze your site before peak season
In January 2017, a site redesign triggered an error that quietly stopped every outgoing email from our store, order confirmations and internal alerts included, for two weeks before anyone caught it. Our email backlog ballooned past 800 messages. Our chargebacks went through the roof for about two months. "We issued a lot of refunds," I told a reporter afterward. "I'm not going to give you a number because it would make me a little sick."
Don't launch a redesign, a new app, or a new checkout flow in November. Pick a freeze date, finish your changes before it, and then place a real test order yourself. Confirm the order email, the shipping email, and your internal notifications all actually arrive.
Staff for when your customers actually shop
When our customer service numbers collapsed, the data showed the problem wasn't effort. It was hours. Most customer inquiries were landing when nobody at Smoke Cartel was awake to answer them. We were asleep during the hours our customers were shopping.
Moving to 24/7 live chat, with order status, shipping, and conversation history visible in one place, cut our average response time from two days to one hour. Customer satisfaction rose 11% while inquiry volume grew 58%. Black Friday weekend is the worst possible time to find out your coverage has gaps. Pull your order and inquiry data by hour from last year's sale and schedule people around it. Our targets were email within 2 hours (4 max) and chat within 5 minutes (30 max).
Build your list before the sale, not during it
We grew our email list from zero to 500,000 subscribers. A lot of that came from giving people a genuinely fun reason to sign up before a big moment. One year we made a two-and-a-half-minute parody of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," rewritten line by line around our warehouse instead of Santa's workshop. The mechanic was simple: subscribe to enter, the window closed a week later, and we announced a winner a couple of days after that. No funnel, no purchase required.
If you start collecting emails the week of Black Friday, you're too late. Start now, and give people a reason to sign up that isn't just "get 10% off."
Make every promotion traceable
Every promotional postcard we mailed had its own unique barcode that doubled as that customer's coupon code. It wasn't automated. We scanned and typed them in by hand at fulfillment. But it meant we could trace an order back to a specific postcard and a specific campaign instead of guessing which marketing dollars worked.
Do the same with every BFCM channel: a separate code for email, SMS, each influencer, and each ad audience. Later in my career I moved away from big-name paid placements toward micro-influencers, with codes tied to specific launches instead of a flat sponsorship fee. Reach is rentable. Trust isn't, and the smaller the account, the more of it you're actually borrowing.
Plan for what happens after the click
Black Friday doesn't end when the order is placed. It ends when the customer has the product and is happy with it.
- Out-of-stock orders: never reply with "pick something else around that price." Have a real recommendation ready. When nothing matched, we offered store credit with a bonus on top: an extra $5 on orders under $50, $10 under $120, and $15 over $120. Our returning-customer rate climbed to 27% while that policy was in effect.
- Shipping protection: anything over $100 shipped insured, automatically.
- Chargebacks: check them weekly through December. Over 1% of monthly volume and your processor audits you.
Say thank you like you mean it
I've handwritten more than 300 holiday cards and mailed them to our top customers. It doesn't scale, and that's the point. After the sale, while your competitors are still blasting discount emails, a handwritten note to your best customers is the thing they'll actually remember.
Your BFCM prep timeline
- Now (early October): pull last year's sales data by hour and by channel. Set your site freeze date. Start building your list.
- By early November: finish seasonal training and saved replies. Create unique codes for every channel. Lock in your coverage schedule.
- Freeze date (about two weeks out): no site changes. Place a test order and check every email.
- BFCM weekend: watch response times and inventory hourly. Mandatory cupcakes.
- December: track chargebacks weekly, clear the review and question backlog, and write the thank-you cards.
Want the book when it's ready?
This post pulls from several chapters of The Team You Build, the book I'm writing about building a team that will outlast you. Drop your email below and I'll let you know when it's out, along with new posts on operations, e-commerce, and building teams.
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Want a second set of eyes on your Black Friday plan? Book a call with me.