Black Friday announcement messages for your store: teaser, launch and last call

Most Black Friday announcement advice is about the inbox: a teaser email, a launch email, a last-chance text. The shoppers who land on your store from an ad, a search or a friend's link need the same news, on the page they are looking at.

This guide gives you three on-site announcements for Black Friday week, a teaser, a launch message and a last call, with sample copy, the dates to set and how to make each one show as news. It works alongside the emails and texts you already send.

The core messages use NotiFeed and NotiPop, which are on every Atomato plan. Scheduling needs Scale or Enterprise+, and there is a manual route for the free Starter plan.

Three messages, three jobs

A Black Friday announcement on your store changes during the week. Plan it as three separate messages:

• Teaser. Runs the week before. Says when the sale starts and what will be in it, and points to the products worth a look now.
• Launch. Runs from the first hour of the sale. States the offer, the end date and any code, and links to the sale collection.
• Last call. Runs on the final day. Says what ends and when, in the shopper's terms.

The reason to keep them separate is the bell. Its unread badge counts feed messages a shopper hasn't seen yet. Editing a message keeps it the same message, so a shopper who saw your teaser won't see your rewrite as new, even if you change every word. A new message lights the badge again.

The teaser: tell shoppers when, not just that

A teaser that says "Something big is coming" gives a shopper nothing to act on. Give the day, the hour if you know it, and one reason to come back. Create it under Promote a sale or launch, starting from the Holiday Announcement template. Replace the sample image and text with your own, and switch on Call to action to add a button.

A sample teaser:

Black Friday starts Friday 27 November at 9 AM

Up to 30% off coats and knitwear, until Cyber Monday. See this year's picks now so you know what to grab.

Button: See the picks

Link the button to a collection, not the home page. Clicks to product, collection or search pages get the longest window, six hours, for a later add to cart to count toward the message, as long as the shopper checks out in the same browser within 30 days.

If you want an early list for launch day, a signup card in the feed can collect emails for your email platform, or phone numbers for Klaviyo or Mailchimp. NotiEmail and NotiSMS are on Enterprise+. The steps are in Promote a sale or product launch.

The launch: the offer, the end and the link

The launch message carries the details shoppers will look for again on Saturday and Sunday: what is off, until when, and whether they need a code.

Black Friday: 30% off coats and knitwear

No code needed. Ends Monday 30 November at 11:59 PM. Free shipping over $75.

Button: Shop the sale

Atomato doesn't create discount codes for these messages. Set up the discount in Shopify first, with its own end date there, then put the real offer in the message.

For shoppers who never open the bell, add a NotiPop, a small non-blocking message on the page. Start from the Sitewide Promo template under Encourage shoppers to take action, link it to the sale collection and give it a short Delay. Once seen in a browser, a NotiPop doesn't show again on later pages, though shoppers can reopen it from the sticky alert tab unless you choose Hide it completely. Keep it to one line and one link. On Starter, one NotiPop campaign can be active at a time.

The last call: a new message for the final day

By Monday, many shoppers who came back over the weekend have seen the launch message. A last call is how the bell tells them something changed.

Last day: 30% off ends at midnight

Coats and knitwear are still 30% off until 11:59 PM tonight. After that, prices go back up.

Button: Shop before midnight

Add it as a new message, not an edit of the launch one, and take the launch message down at the same time so shoppers don't see two versions of the same sale. Do the same for the NotiPop: editing one doesn't reset it for shoppers who already saw it, so a last-day reminder needs a new NotiPop.

Atomato remembers which messages a shopper has seen in their browser, so a shopper who saw the launch message on a laptop can still see a badge for it on their phone. More on how it behaves in what the unread badge on your bell means for your store.

A worked example: one store's Black Friday calendar

Say a clothing store on Scale runs its sale from 9 AM on Friday 27 November to the end of Cyber Monday, 30 November. A schedule belongs to a whole campaign, not to each message, so each phase gets its own campaign:

1. "BF teaser" NotiFeed campaign. Starts 9 AM on Friday 20 November, ends 9 AM on Friday 27 November.
2. "BF launch" NotiFeed and NotiPop campaigns. Start 9 AM on 27 November, end 12 AM on Monday 30 November (midnight on Sunday night).
3. "BF last call" NotiFeed and NotiPop campaigns. Start 12 AM on 30 November, end 12 AM on Tuesday 1 December.

Set each one on the campaign's Schedule tab. Times are in whole hours and use the time zone of the computer you schedule from, not your store's, so convert first if they differ. The full steps are in Schedule a campaign to start and end. If the store also switches to a sale theme, Theme Launcher, on every plan, can publish it at 9 AM on the 27th. Turn on the Atomato app embed in that theme and save it first, or your bell and messages disappear when it goes live.

On the free Starter plan

Starter runs one NotiFeed campaign and one NotiPop campaign at a time, with one message each, and the Schedule tab is locked. The same plan still works by hand. While a NotiFeed or NotiPop campaign is active, Atomato won't save another of that type, even as a draft, so at each handover pause the current campaign on its summary page first, then create and save the next. Set calendar reminders for 9 AM on 20 and 27 November, midnight on Sunday 29 November, and midnight on Monday 30 November to pause the last call.

What this does not do

• Atomato doesn't send the teaser, launch or last-call emails or texts. Your email and SMS platforms do that.
• Messages don't show on Shopify checkout, the thank-you page, POS or headless stores.
• There are no frequency caps and no targeting by location or by new versus returning visitors.
• A NotiPop can't apply a discount code, and ending a NotiFeed or NotiPop campaign doesn't end a discount you set up in Shopify.

For how the teaser, launch and last call fit with your welcome offer and other sale messages, see how to plan Black Friday on-site messages that don't stack. And when the sale ends, the day after Cyber Monday covers what replaces it.

Next step

Create the teaser now. On Scale or Enterprise+, set its start for a week before the sale and schedule the launch and last call as separate campaigns. On the free Starter plan, have their copy ready for each handover. More planning help is on the Black Friday Cyber Monday page.

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