Prepare your shopping bags: Black Friday 2025 is upon us, and this year it’s going to be bigger than ever! In the past few years, it’s become abundantly clear that businesses cannot rely solely on single-channel sales (be it eCommerce or retail), and need to implement additional strategies. Doing so definitely pays off – literally. In 2024, Black Friday generated a whopping $74.4 billion global spend, marking a 5% increase compared to the previous year. In the past two decades especially, BF has become the biggest commercial holiday, rivaling Christmas even. Making this an event, you simply have to nail loyalty-wise as well.
Which is quite hard to accomplish if you’re still struggling with outdated, lagging tech, and not enough modern features to fulfill your loyalty dream. Make sure to download our super handy Replatforming Playbook and open a world of possibilities!
Start With the Right Promotions and Reel In Every Customer
Black Friday is basically a Formula 1 race weekend. It takes months of preparation, yet everything depends on your ability to pivot at the last minute and perform under immense pressure. As a marketer, you’re racing against time, racing against competitors, racing against your own budget. A modern loyalty program gives you the perfect head start to reach P1, but what happens if you don’t have one just yet? That’s when promotions enter the race. Mind you, we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill average promotions. We’re talking about next-level ones, powered by the right promotion engine, which can execute campaigns quickly—no dev time, no bottlenecks.
And why is that so significant? Hand over your heart, let’s be honest here: Last-minute changes happen every single time with Black Friday campaigns. That’s why flexible tech could be the number one differentiator. With Antavo’s Promotion Engine, you can test, tweak, and launch campaigns fast—even across multiple channels—without sacrificing personalization or control. Plus, it lets you limit the number of times a promotion can be activated/redeemed, which allows you to stick to your budget more than ever before (plus, you get extra brownie points from Finance).
As an extra bonus, using our Promotion Engine will provide you with ample experience (and a mighty headstart) on using Antavo’s products, leaving the door open for later expansion into loyalty.
10 Types of Promotion Examples for Black Friday
Now you know the basics, it’s time to get down to business. Using our Promotion Engine, you’re not stuck with just one kind of promotion. Antavo supports 10+ types, giving you the agility to match promotions to your marketing goals. That flexibility lets you stay relevant, react in real time, and keep your audience engaged with minimal effort.
Let’s see some examples of fast-launch promotions across industries and channels:
- Bonus Products (Beauty Retail): Buy any moisturizer and receive a bonus travel-size cleanser—perfect for cross-selling skincare essentials at checkout.
- Bundle (Electronics): Offer a laptop + mouse + sleeve bundle at a discounted total price to simplify the purchase decision and boost basket size.
- Buy X for Total Y (Grocery): Mix and match any 4 snack items for $10—drives multi-item purchases and promotes less popular SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit).
- Buy X Get 1 Free (Quick Service Restaurant): Buy 4 coffees, get the 5th free—easy to roll out via printed coupons or mobile POS.
- Cross Selling (Fashion Retail): Your customer’s ready to purchase a new pair of shoes? Offer a 30% discount on socks or insoles for the next 24 hours—online or in-store.
- Free Sample (Luxury Beauty): Include a mini perfume vial with every fragrance purchase to encourage trial and repeat buys.
- Price Reduction (Consumer Electronics): Apply a temporary $50 off for older smartphone models to clear inventory fast.
- Product Set (Wellness Brand): Create curated sleep kits with pillow spray, eye mask, and tea—priced attractively as a themed set.
- Promo Code (Ecommerce Retailer): Use influencer-driven promo codes like “BlackFridayVIP” to offer sitewide discounts and track campaign performance.
- Promotional Pricing (Home Goods): “This Weekend Only” pricing on bedding collections to drive urgency both online and in-store.
Arm Yourself With a Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs are excellent customer retention tools that help you influence customer behavior and drive any business goal you want. Launching one takes time, though, which is why you should start working on your concept well before Black Friday.
A loyalty program can boost your Black Friday marketing strategy in multiple ways, through limited-time promotions, in-person events, gamified challenges, member perks like early access, or a motivational reward distribution. Utilizing these tools, you can incentivize customers to make an initial purchase (or extra purchases) in order to redeem highly desired benefits.
Another driving factor is the rewards. Move beyond coupons: shoppers want something meaningful or experiential, like tickets to a runway show, branded merchandise, or a hard-to-come-by reservation for dinner at a top restaurant (which is where third-party partners come in handy).
Naturally, such high-end rewards require customers to spend a lot of loyalty points, so only the most committed customers will be able to redeem them. But that’s the beauty of it: exclusive rewards motivate customers to increase their purchase frequency and basket value, meaning they’ll stay with you far beyond Black Friday.
Engage for the long term: Black Friday purchases lay the foundation, but to keep customers around, make sure you highlight incentives early in your email campaign. Curate special gift categories and use gamified profiling to get customer data early. Then, use that data to surprise customers with super-relevant offers and experiential rewards.
Not Just Any Loyalty Program, but a Loyalty Program Planned With an AI Agent!
Incorporating both tried-and-true best practices, and innovative solutions can feel overwhelming. Occasionally you might even feel stuck, or uninspired. This is exactly why Antavo – as an AI-powered Loyalty Platform – launched Timi AI, as a major feature of our one-of-a-kind Loyalty Planner. The Planner helps centralize and visualize the process of launching a loyalty program and enables you to drastically shorten project timelines. Timi AI is our AI agent based on the company’s senior business analyst, Timi Garai.
As a feature of the Loyalty Planner, she will operate like a brand-new team member with a wealth of knowledge about loyalty programs. She can guide you through the planning process, help you optimize your ideas, put together workflows, and provide explanations whenever you need them.
The Best Black Friday Loyalty Program Strategies for 2025
1. Make sure your program is visible
This might feel like strange strategic advice, but it’s probably the most essential of them all. During Black Friday, there will be a multitude of first-time shoppers, and non-loyalty members in your stores or on your website. Make sure to bring your loyalty proposition into focus, highlight rewards and benefits, emphasize ease of access, and educate your employees about the program, so they’ll be able to provide sufficient help to customers inquiring about the program.
On the other hand, don’t bite the hand that feeds you – in other words, don’t forget about your already existing loyalty program members! Make sure to refresh their memory about the program, send out fresh updates and notifications, utilize the loyalty data you have, and make sure you’re targeting the right segments with the right messages. You can also introduce tier-specific, or VIP Black Friday offers. More on these in our upcoming segments!
2. Limited-time free delivery is a go-to incentive
Free shipping has always been high on most loyalty program members’ wishlists. However, this incentive is a must-have for Black Friday. Free delivery means that customers don’t need to endure the crowds — and packages arrive at their doorstep without any extra charges. That’s a major time- and cost-saver!
It’s a versatile Black Friday concept that works across many different industries, whether it’s a food delivery service or a retail loyalty program. Making free shipping a fully accessible benefit to all members (even brand-new ones) will help you boost acquisition significantly. And don’t worry – you can make it a time-limited benefit that is only available during your Black Friday sales event.
Alternatively, if you don’t love the idea of giving away such a premium loyalty reward — even temporarily — you can offer standard free shipping for regular members while reserving premium, next-day free shipping for top-tier members. This way you won’t devalue your top spenders’ privileges.
3. Early access is full of potential
When it comes to loyalty program rewards, there’s one opportunity that many companies overlook: early access. It’s essentially free on your end, as you only need a loyalty platform that allows you to set up access to certain products or sales based on customer segments. Yet, it’s a perk that customers go crazy for.
Offering early sale access as a Black Friday loyalty program feature puts you one step ahead of the competition. Customers will use this opportunity to order their favorite products days before the rush begins. And since they will finish their shopping before Black Friday, they won’t be swayed by your competitors’ offers.
Early access as a loyalty program benefit works best if you have tiers: you can reserve it for Silver- or Gold-tier members, which motivates freshly enrolled customers to increase their purchase volume and enter the top tiers. (Not to mention, the privilege of early access is quite thrilling!)
4. Engage customers outside of the buying cycle
If you are looking to give customers a more relevant loyalty program experience and foster emotional loyalty (which remains long after your Black Friday sale is over), rewarding non-transactional activities is the way to go.
The point here is to allow customers to earn points and rewards for referring friends, writing product reviews, answering survey questions, bringing back old clothes to the store for recycling, and so on. Doing so keeps members engaged with the loyalty program, builds trust and appreciation, and helps them stock up on points before the next Black Friday sales period.
As a seller of mountaineering products, Bergzeit takes this concept to the absolute next level. Taking full advantage of Antavo’s activity-tracking app integrations, the award-winning Bergzeit Club program empowers loyalty members to earn points for what they love: being active.
5. Reach Out to the Right Audience: Targeting Gen Z
Gen Z may be the most brand-aware generation, but their loyalty must be earned—and re-earned. With over $360B in spending power, they expect brands to be fast, fun, and flexible. Loyalty promotions that target Gen Z need to go beyond discounts and speak their language: think mobile-first, gamified, and experience-rich. Since 65% of Gen Z prefers mobile apps to engage with loyalty programs, marketers must ensure rewards are accessible with a tap, not a wait.
When time is short and attention spans are shorter, promotions must feel fresh and relevant. That’s where creative loyalty promotions come in—tied to values, exclusivity, or instant gratification. The goal isn’t just to earn points—it’s to earn trust, engagement, and shares. How? Let’s see some examples!
1. Free “surprise” gift for uploading UGC or reviews
Why it works: Gen Z values brand interaction and self-expression. Offering rewards for content creation taps into their social media habits and love of recognition.
Practical example: A beauty retailer offers a mystery gift (e.g., a mini lip gloss or sample-sized highlighter) for uploading a product review or tagging the brand in a TikTok or Instagram post. This fuels organic reach and increases trust through peer validation.
2. Points pooling with friends to unlock exclusive merch
Why it works: Gen Z shops socially. They often discover brands and shop in groups, whether in real life or online. Shared goals and rewards foster community and increase collective engagement.
Practical example: A sneaker brand allows members to create “crew” groups in their loyalty app. When a crew earns a combined 10,000 points, they unlock access to exclusive drop raffles or co-branded gear. This incentivizes referrals and strengthens program stickiness.
Ready to explore more about Gen Z’s loyalty habits? Check out our latest Global Customer Loyalty Report for more insights!
Get a Headstart for Black Friday 2025 With Antavo’s Technology!
The launch of a loyalty program shouldn’t be rushed, as it usually takes months to implement the whole system. Same with a revamp, although, in case you’re able to kick things off in the summer, you could have things up and running by the holiday season. If you’re reading this article a bit late, don’t worry, promotions are there to help you out. Check out Antavo’s Promotion Engine and our related Promotion Strategies blog article to see how to quickly elevate your strategy.
Ready to hear more? Get in touch with our experts: Book a demo or send us your loyalty program RFP.
Make sure to also check out our Replatforming Playbook and don’t miss the opportunity to take your loyalty program to the next level!
Zsuzsanna is a Loyalty Specialist with years of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Zsuzsanna is known for having an analytic approach and high-level communication skills, helping her deliver engaging content. In her free time, she enjoys watching Formula 1 and listening to endless Taylor Swift playlists.
