How To Use Gleam For Your Black Friday Promotions

Black Friday 2026 falls on 27 November and Cyber Monday on 30 November. Most of your customers will shop it. In Deloitte's 2025 Black Friday-Cyber Monday survey, 82% of US shoppers said they planned to shop that weekend.

Source: Deloitte, 2025 (1,200 US consumers surveyed in October).

So the problem isn't getting people to shop. It's getting them to shop with you while every other store in your category is shouting at the same time.

Below are the campaigns we'd run, roughly in the order you'd launch them. Each one has a template you can copy, with the prize, the Actions, when to run it and what to check afterwards.

If you'd rather see the templates first, our team walks through five of their favourites in this video:

Launch a giveaway two to three weeks out and you're collecting emails before the inboxes fill up with everyone else's deals. Every person who enters is someone you can email the morning your sale opens.

• Prize: Something from your own range, or a gift card to spend in the sale. A generic prize like an iPad pulls in prize hunters who'll never buy from you
• Actions: Lead with a newsletter Subscribe, then a Visit a Page to your Black Friday deals page. The template also has a Secret Code and a daily "check back" bonus to bring people back
• Timing: Open it around 6 November and close it the day before your sale, so the winner announcement doubles as your launch email
• Measure: The Conversion Rate on your Summary tab, and the Actions report under Reporting to see which Actions people actually did

The template asks for 13 Actions, which is a lot (more Actions usually means fewer people finish entering). Cut it to the four or five you'll actually use.

This one's for stores that want a list of people who've said, in so many words, "tell me when the sale starts". Everyone who registers gets in a day early, and one of them wins a voucher to spend.

The template keeps it to two Actions: subscribe to your newsletter, then refer friends with Viral Share for extra entries. That's the right length. Registration should take ten seconds.

Run it from early November until the night before early access opens. Then send the early access link to your new subscribers only, and compare their order rate with the rest of your list. That gap tells you whether it's worth doing again next year.

One day of deals is easy to miss. Seven days of prizes gives people a reason to come back to you every day of Black Friday week.

Set it up with Multiple Prizes, one per day, and draw each day's winner from the Winners tab while the campaign is still running. You don't have to wait for it to end.

The template's best trick is a "Day #2 Teaser" Action that previews tomorrow's prize. Swap the teaser each morning and you've got a reason to post every day, and a reason for people to come back. A daily Bonus Action does the same job for entries.

Run it from 20 to 26 November, so day seven lands the day before Black Friday. Watch how many people come back on day two and day three. If almost nobody does, your daily prizes aren't different enough from each other.

Find a brand whose customers would like yours, but who doesn't sell what you sell. A coffee roaster and a grinder brand. A beard oil and a razor. You each bring an audience and half the prize, and both lists grow.

The template is our own giveaway with Beardbrand. Each brand gets its own newsletter Subscribe, so you both leave with a list. There's a Secret Code worth 3 entries and a big bonus that unlocks only after nine other Actions.

Agree three things before you build it: who owns the campaign, who ships the prize, and how you'll split the email list afterwards (both brands need to be named on the signup, so people know who'll email them). Then compare how many subscribers each brand got. If one partner's audience barely showed up, you know who to skip next year.

A flash sale gets one purchase. A referral discount gets your customer to bring a friend, while the friend's still comparing deals.

Under30Experiences timed theirs for Black Friday. A referred friend got $100 off their first trip on top of the $200 sale discount, and the person who referred them got $100 in credit to spend in the sale.

The Rewards template asks for an email first, then a referral. The 25% off reward unlocks once a friend enters through the person's unique link.

Gleam sees the friend enter, not the friend buy. If you only want to reward real orders, give each new friend a discount code of their own and pay out to the referrer once that code is used in your store.

Most Black Friday sales offer one flat percentage. Tiered Rewards let people earn a bigger discount by doing more for you.

In the template, a newsletter signup unlocks 10% off. Four Actions unlock 20%, and six unlock 30%. Each tier is a Coupon Action with its own Actions Required number.

Price the top tier so you'd still be happy if everyone reached it. Then check which tier most people stopped at. If almost nobody reaches 30%, the gap between tiers is too big.

The cheapest sale to win back is the one that's already in the cart. On Black Friday, your shopper has five other stores open in other tabs.

A Capture that shows when someone's about to leave can remind them what's in their cart and offer a reason to finish: a code, a free gift or free shipping.

Use a code that only this popup gives out, so every order that uses it in your store came from the popup. Keep it smaller than your headline sale discount, or regular shoppers will learn to abandon their carts on purpose.

Some shoppers will spend more to get free shipping, and some will leave over a surprise shipping cost at checkout. A free shipping coupon covers both.

Show it to first-time visitors rather than everyone (your regulars probably know your shipping costs already). Set the coupon with a minimum spend in your store, and watch whether your average order goes up while it's live.

Hide codes across your site, your emails and your socials, and people read your Black Friday pages properly while they hunt for them.

The template has three Secret Code Actions, one per clue, and the second is worth 5 entries. Hide that one somewhere you really want people to look, like the product page you're pushing hardest.

For the prize, early access to the sale or a cart filled up to a set value works well. Run it for the week before Black Friday, and use the Actions report to see which clue most people got stuck on.

Give people who do the most for you first pick of the sale. They get the best stock, and you open slightly ahead of everyone else's Black Friday emails.

This is a Rewards campaign, so nobody has to win. The template unlocks early access codes for a mailing list signup plus social Actions. Use a list of single-use codes rather than one shared code, or it'll be on a deal site by lunchtime.

Open it about a week before the sale and email the codes the day before you launch publicly. The number that matters is how many early access codes got used in your store, not how many were claimed.

A photo contest gets your customers showing your product in their own homes, which is the social proof other Black Friday shoppers trust.

The template asks for a newsletter signup, a photo upload and a Viral Share. Run it in the fortnight before Black Friday, so you've got fresh customer photos for your sale emails and product pages. Offer a gift card or a feature on your channels as the prize.

Measure it by how many photos you'd actually use, not by entry count. Fifty good photos beat 500 blurry ones.

A popup reminds visitors that your sale is on and sends them to the page with your best deals before they wander off.

Point it at one page, not your homepage. If you're running the early access Reward too, add an Exclude if Visited URL rule for your early access page, so people who've already seen the offer don't get it again.

A deadline people can see makes them decide now. Put a countdown on your site in the week before the sale, counting down to the moment it opens, then switch it to count down to the end.

With a Countdown Capture, you set the time zone and the exact time to count down to. Use your store's time zone, not your own, if you sell across borders.

Try the Limited Time Offer Countdown Template to start from a finished design.

A lot of Black Friday browsing happens on phones, and your bio link is often the first click from a social post. Instagram lets you add up to five links to your bio, so there's room for your sale and a giveaway.

Run a giveaway straight from your Linktree to turn people scrolling past into followers and subscribers:

Or offer a Black Friday code to people who arrive from your bio, and give that code to nobody else. Then every order that uses it came from Instagram.

For more ideas, see our Linktree Ideas for Growing Your Audience.