Black Friday email examples by industry
Fashion and apparel
lululemon
Black Friday. Go early.
Beauty
Sephora
The only red in this email is the lipstick
Ulta Beauty
It’s on. Black Friday at Ulta Beauty.
Outdoor
Patagonia
Fifteen Black Fridays later
Make one for your brand
Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any AI with the Nitrosend MCP connected, and put your own website in place of [your website]. Which assistants work?
Using Nitrosend, design and build a Black Friday email for my brand, in the style of the concept emails on https://nitrosend.com/email-examples/seasonal/black-friday My brand's website is [your website]. Read it for my logo, colours, fonts, products and tone of voice. If Nitrosend is not connected yet, read https://nitrosend.com/SKILL.md and follow it to connect the Nitrosend MCP server (https://api.nitrosend.com/mcp), then ask me to sign in or create a free account at app.nitrosend.com. On Claude.ai use claude.ai/directory/nitrosend; in ChatGPT, install the Nitrosend app. Then write and design the email in Nitrosend and send me a test.
What a Black Friday email is
A Black Friday email is a promotional email tied to the sale on the day after US Thanksgiving: the preview before it, the launch on the day, and the last call before it ends. Most offer a discount, and the best ones give the reader a reason to open this one out of dozens.
We collected 113 Black Friday emails from 88 brands in two ordinary inboxes, between 2016 and 2025. This page shows 35 of them, from 34 brands.1
Browse all 35 Black Friday emails
Filter by what the email is doing, or search a brand or subject line. Open any one to see it full length, with its subject line, notes on what it does, and a prompt that rebuilds it in your own brand. The grid opens with recent sends from each stage of the sale.
Pure Zone
VIP Early Access to Black Friday Sale
Scoop Whole Beauty
Hey [NAME], 2 DAYS TO GO UNTIL BLACK FRIDAY 🖤
Kitchen Warehouse
Black Friday: Up to 70% off RRP
Fresh Body
Final Hours of Our Black Friday Sale
Tangle
Black Friday deals are annoying, but here's one worth looking at.
Master of Malt
Want to opt out of Black Friday emails?
EB Games
⚡ Psst… [NAME], Want a Black Friday Preview?
b.box for kids
Black Friday is LIVE! Up to 80% off* starts now 🖤
ManlyLaptops.Com.Au
Black Friday Final Call ⏳15% OFF Storewide
Elixr Health Club
🖤 Black Friday Sale - Rest of the Year FREE!
Inoreader
Black Friday offer: Get 6 extra months with an annual Pro plan! 🎁
Nudie Glow
🖤 Black Friday SALE: Up to 50% OFF + 10% OFF sitewide 🖤
Openhagen
🎸This Black Friday choose décor designed for your guitar
Melrose Health
Black Friday Is LIVE: Up To 60% Off 💥
Saguaro
It’s Here: Black Friday Deals Start Now!
ElevenLabs
Come Back to ElevenLabs for $1 — Black Friday Week Only
Century - Darling Quarter Theatre
LIMITED TIME BLACK FRIDAY OFFER - Love Actually The Musical Parody
BlockBlueLight
Black Friday Deal: Win a Sauna Blanket Today
Highland Titles
Beat the Black Friday Rush – 25% Off Everything!
Nathalie Niddam
Curated Black Friday Deals for Our Community ONLY 😱
Highland Titles
Bigger Than Black Friday! 30% off Tartan Tuesday
Wello Works
OUR BLACK FRIDAY SALE IS HERE | WELLO WORKS
Ecoriginals
EcoNaps Black Friday Sale - Live Now 💚
Hackerlily
It’s now or never: Black Friday prices are nearly gone![NAME]!
Black Friday email examples by approach
What the 113 Black Friday emails are doing
sorted by hand from the subject line, send date and the email itself| Approach | Emails | Share | One to open |
|---|---|---|---|
| The sale is live | 67 | 59% | Kitchen Warehouse, 2025: "Black Friday: Up to 70% off RRP" |
| Last chance | 15 | 13% | Fresh Body, 2025: "Final Hours of Our Black Friday Sale" |
| Early access and countdown | 13 | 12% | Pure Zone, 2025: "VIP Early Access to Black Friday Sale" |
| Something other than a discount | 10 | 9% | Master of Malt, 2023: "Want to opt out of Black Friday emails?" |
| Deal roundups and guides | 7 | 6% | Nathalie Niddam, 2025: "Curated Black Friday Deals for Our Community ONLY 😱" |
| Sale extended | 1 | 1% | Spalding, 2020: "Black Friday Sale EXTENDED!" (not shown) |
Most Black Friday emails say one thing: the sale is on. 67 of the 113, 59%, are a launch. The ones worth copying do one of four other jobs.
Early access and countdown emails
13 of the 113 warm the list up before the sale opens. Pure Zone sent "VIP Early Access to Black Friday Sale" more than two weeks before the day. EB Games asked "Want a Black Friday Preview?" and gave the date and time its prices would be revealed. Scoop Whole Beauty counted down in the subject line, "2 DAYS TO GO UNTIL BLACK FRIDAY". A preview gives your best customers first pick and gets you into the inbox before everyone else does.
Last chance emails
15 of the 113 are a final call. They are short and lead with the deadline: Fresh Body's "Final Hours of Our Black Friday Sale", Cuddle Buddy's "Ends Today!", and Programming for Marketers' plain text "LAST CALL", which states the midnight cut-off in its second line. ManlyLaptops put its price next to a named competitor's for each featured product, which answers the question a deal hunter asks before buying.
Emails that offer something other than a discount
10 of the 113 step around the price war. Master of Malt wrote "We can be a bit much sometimes. We know." and put one button in the email: opt out of Black Friday emails and keep the regular ones. That keeps a subscriber who would otherwise unsubscribe. Tangle's founder wrote a long letter headed "Black Friday deals are annoying, but here's one worth looking at." Elixr Health Club gave new members the rest of the year free instead of a percentage, and Highland Titles ran "Tartan Tuesday" ten days early, only for existing customers. The Hustle sent a forwarded internal draft, "[NEEDS APPROVAL] Black Friday email draft", with the offer below it.
Sale extended emails
Only 1 of the 113 extends the sale: Spalding's "Black Friday Sale EXTENDED!" in 2020. Most brands stop on the day. 8 of the 113 arrived after it, and 6 of those are last calls rather than extensions. If you extend, keep it to a day or two and say so in the subject line, or the deadline in every earlier email stops meaning anything.
When to send Black Friday emails
When the 113 Black Friday emails arrived
by the date in the sender's own time zone, against that year's Black Friday| When | Emails | Share |
|---|---|---|
| More than a week before | 34 | 30% |
| In the week before | 41 | 36% |
| On Black Friday | 30 | 27% |
| The weekend after | 5 | 4% |
| Cyber Monday or later | 3 | 3% |
Black Friday email starts early. 75 of the 113, 66%, arrived before the day, and 34 of those came more than a week out. The day itself is the single busiest: 30 emails, 27%. After it, the inbox goes quiet.
That matches the plan SmartrMail gave Shopify stores in its 2020 Black Friday email planning video: start talking about the sale four weeks out, add one extra email a week to your normal schedule, and from about a week before, send daily. Segment as you go, so someone who bought yesterday gets something other than another sale email.
Do not wake up an old list for it. A list of 100,000 people who signed up four years ago and have not heard from you since will mark five sale emails as spam, and that damage outlasts the sale. SmartrMail told merchants to drop those lists, on the SUMO Heavy podcast in 2020. If you need the list, warm it up in October with something that is not a sale, and check where your emails are landing before November.
How Black Friday emails differ from other sale emails
Black Friday emails against other promotional emails and every other email
113 Black Friday, 3,471 other promotional and 12,189 other emails, same two inboxes| What we measured | Black Friday | Other promotional | Every other email |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent tone | 60% | 28% | 12% |
| An emoji in the subject line | 41% | 26% | 15% |
| A percentage in the subject line | 26% | 14% | 5% |
| A word in capitals in the subject line | 27% | 15% | 11% |
| Hero image | 36% | 25% | 12% |
| Product grid | 18% | 8% | 4% |
| Exactly one call to action | 35% | 33% | 30% |
| Plain text layout | 24% | 23% | 32% |
| Warm tone | 12% | 17% | 15% |
Black Friday emails shout. 60% are written in an urgent tone, more than twice the rate of other promotional emails (28%). 26% put the discount in the subject line, against 14%, and 41% use an emoji there, against 26%.
They also show more product. 18% carry a product grid, against 8% of other promotional emails, and 36% open on a hero image.
So the usual Black Friday email looks like every other one in the inbox that week. When 59% of the sends say "the sale is live" in capitals with a percentage, a calm subject line or an email that offers something other than a discount is the one that stands out. Tangle and Master of Malt both did that.
The "Every other email" column includes the promotional emails.
Next to this one
Black Friday is one occasion in our seasonal and holiday email examples, and the sale usually ends three days later with Cyber Monday emails. The same library, cut by the job the email does: sale emails, discount offer emails, promotional emails and, for the shoppers who leave a cart behind in the rush, abandoned cart emails.
Questions about Black Friday emails
The offer, the deadline and one clear button. 26% of the 113 Black Friday emails we collected put the discount in the subject line, and the strongest last-chance emails lead with the end time. A hero image or a short product grid shows what is on sale. Everything else is optional.
Earlier than the day. 66% of the 113 we collected arrived before Black Friday, and 27% on the day itself. A common plan is a preview two to four weeks out, daily sends in the final week, a launch on the morning, and a last call before it ends.
One extra email a week from about four weeks out, then one a day in the final week, to people who opted in and still open. Skip anyone who bought in the last few days. Of the 113 we collected, 15 were last-chance emails sent close to the deadline.
Offer something other than a discount. 10 of the 113 emails we collected did: Master of Malt let readers opt out of Black Friday emails, Tangle's founder wrote a letter calling Black Friday deals annoying, and Highland Titles ran its own sale day ten days early for existing customers.
The offer or the deadline, in a few words. 41% of the Black Friday subject lines we collected use an emoji and 26% a percentage, so both are common that week. A plain line like "Want to opt out of Black Friday emails?" stands out because it looks different.
35 of the 113 Black Friday emails we collected are shown. Most of the rest have not been rendered full length for the library yet. We also left out repeat sends of a template from a brand already in the grid, and one July sale that only borrowed the name.
The emails under each industry are concept emails designed using the Nitrosend MCP. Sephora, Ulta Beauty, lululemon and Patagonia are not Nitrosend customers and did not send or endorse them.