Personalize your Black Friday marketing to increase revenue in 2025

For marketers, there are few business days more important than Black Friday. Some teams prepare for it all year, finely tuning content and ad campaigns to create stand-out customer journeys, drive brand engagement, and boost sales. 

With good reason: the value of Black Friday online sales has been growing year-on-year, with a record $10.8 billion spent online on Black Friday 2024 — a 10% increase on 2023. 

And yet, whether you're targeting customers in the aisles or in your online store, Black Friday is by no means a guaranteed marketing slam-dunk. No matter how appealing your Black Friday deals are, there are plenty of ways your efforts could fall short of the mark this holiday season if you fail to connect with the people whose attention you need to capture. 

Think about it. In the run to Black Friday, potential customers are bombarded with digital content: dozens of promotional emails, SMS messages, and ads, with each campaign offering special discounts and deals. Many potential customers will click on these promotions only to find that, upon visiting your website to explore what’s on offer, their journey feels disjointed. 

Maybe product pages don't match the compelling campaign copy that initially caught their attention, or maybe they can’t find the exact deals they saw in your social media campaigns — the point is, inconsistencies in the shopping experience can be jarring and confusing. More often than not, those inconsistencies frustrate visitors, making them hesitant to explore further, or complete a purchase.

In the 2025 holiday season, customers expect a seamless journey that takes them from an ad to their purchase — and when that expectation isn't met, they’re quick to abandon your online store for a competitor’s.

But here's the good news: there's a straightforward solution to enhancing your customers’ Black Friday journeys that doesn’t involve increasing your ad spend: content personalization. 

Personalization is about ensuring the content of your ads aligns perfectly with the pages they lead to — so that both existing and new customers get not only the experience they expect, but one optimized for them across websites, mobile devices, and other online platforms. In other words, one that's more likely to result in a purchase. 

In this post, we’re going to explore some key Black Friday personalization strategies to help you attract shoppers, and drive conversions and sales on the day itself.

Paid traffic personalization

For many businesses, the jump from paid ad to brand webpage creates a jarring disconnect. That’s because the messaging that visitors encounter on the landing page frequently deviates from the ad copy that brought them there.

On the other hand, when an ad's content aligns perfectly with the content of the page it leads to, the conversion rate increases. That’s a consequence of message matching — which bridges the gap between ads and the page, and creates a seamless and satisfying user experience.

More importantly, message matching doesn't require you to increase your ad spend. Rather, it focuses on optimizing the existing resources to deliver more impactful experiences.

For an example of this kind of personalization in action, check out Contentful customer Ruggable’s experiences implementing their Black Friday strategy with Contentful. 

Ruggable recognized that their customer base comprised two primary segments: dog owners and cat owners. The marketing team capitalized on this insight by launching two separate paid campaigns targeting each group. They then extended this personalization strategy right through to their website, where visitors would receive one of the two following experiences:

• Dog-related campaigns: Visitors who landed on Ruggable's website via dog-related paid campaigns were greeted with dog-centric content. This included images of dogs enjoying Ruggable's rugs, testimonials from dog-owning customers, and even a special collection of rugs ideal for households with dogs. This tailored experience resonated strongly with dog owners, making them feel understood, and catered to.

• Cat-related campaigns: Visitors arriving from cat-related paid campaigns were met with (you’ve guessed it) cat-related content. This included pictures of cats lounging on Ruggable's rugs, reviews from cat-parent customers, and a curated selection of rugs perfect for feline-friendly homes. This experience appealed specifically to cat owners, and emphasized the brand's understanding of their needs.

By matching the ad message to the landing page experience, Ruggable created a seamless journey for their customers — which resulted in a 25% increase in conversion rate and a sevenfold increase in click-through rate. Even better, using Contentful’s tools, the time it took to create that personalized content reduced dramatically — from two days to 30 minutes. 

This example demonstrates just how powerful an impact personalization can have, particularly when it's consistently applied across the customer journey, from paid ads to landing pages.

Email campaign and SMS traffic personalization

Emails and SMSes are common starting points for customer journeys, but it can be challenging to maintain consistency across those initial touchpoints and eventual purchases. 

What if you could send out an email marketing campaign or an SMS campaign, and tailor the entire content experience from that point onward? Let’s talk about urchin tracking modules (UTM).

UTMs are snippets of text added to the end of a URL that essentially label it, offering specific information about the traffic it generates. In short, you can use UTMs to find out where traffic is coming from. 

By leveraging UTM parameters, organizations can craft unique, personalized experiences for visitors that arrive from different email and SMS campaigns. That means, whether a customer clicks on a link from an email about special Black Friday sales or an SMS about a flash discount, they’ll land on a page that speaks directly to their personal interests and needs.

Focusing on emails and SMSes as part of a seamless, personalized customer journey is a way to make Black Friday campaigns feel less like mass-market advertising strategies, and more like bespoke shopping experiences. 

Loyalty personalization

Even in the eye of the Black Friday storm, every interaction on your site is an opportunity to convert a visitor into a customer, and that's especially true for customers that have shopped with you before. 

With that in mind, by tailoring the user experience based on individual behaviors, you're not just showing customers that you understand them, but making the path to conversion smoother and more compelling.

Contentful customer Pets Deli, a market leader in the European direct-to-consumer (D2C) pet food industry, recognized the power of personalization and used that insight to shape their approach to Black Friday.

As part of their strategy, the Pets Deli marketing team decided they didn’t want to offer a generic experience to all website visitors. Instead, they meticulously analyzed their customers’ past purchasing behavior, and used that data to create distinct customer segments. 

Then, for each customer segment, Pets Deli created a unique set of prices and promotions — each pitched to appeal to the specific needs and preferences of that group. This approach wasn’t a case of testing random price variations or promotional offers, but understanding what customers valued, and tailoring their offerings accordingly.

The strategy worked, resulting in a 51% increase in conversion rates.

By offering personalized experiences, and appealing to customers' unique needs, Pets Deli not only enhanced the shopping experience but significantly boosted their bottom line.

Personalize Black Friday with Contentful 

Is your brand ready for Black Friday? Have you thought about how you're going to connect your content to your customers, or how you’re going to promote bundle deals or limited-time deals? Or if you're going to offer exclusive early access to loyal customers?

Don’t leave your Black Friday marketing strategy to chance. Build your campaign with Contentful Personalization and a suite of native AI-powered personalization tools that can help you meet your customers’ expectations on Black Friday and beyond. 

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