Pre-Peak Playbook: Activating High-Intent Customers in 2025

When it comes to Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), most brands focus their energy on the weekend itself—launching doorbuster deals, overhauling onsite creative, and hoping their ad budgets stretch far enough. But by the time peak hits, it’s often too late to influence who is showing up or how likely they are to convert.

That’s why smart ecommerce teams are shifting their BFCM strategies earlier in the calendar, investing in high-intent traffic acquisition well before Black Friday begins. From exclusive early-access campaigns to personalized email journeys and loyalty-first messaging, the goal isn’t just more traffic. It’s better traffic, qualified shoppers who are ready to buy.

In this guide, we’ve partnered with Nosto, the Commerce Experience Platform (CXP) for personalization; Tapcart, the mobile app builder for Shopify brands;  Genie Goals, a performance marketing agency; and  Velstar, a Shopify Plus agency,  to break down tactical, proven ways to build and convert early interest.

Each strategy is designed to help brands maximize ROAS, reduce reliance on deep discounts, and build momentum that lasts well beyond Cyber Monday.

Planning for a High-ROI Peak Period

To kick things off, we spoke to Velstar, a Shopify Premier partner that delivers full-funnel growth strategies for some of the world’s top ecommerce brands. Their approach to BFCM is rooted in clarity: starting early, setting goals, and aligning every customer journey to measurable outcomes.

In the marketing madness that is Black Friday planning, it’s easy to jump straight into building your campaign assets. But the most successful campaigns aren’t born from a killer design. They’re built on a solid, pre-defined strategy. Before you even think about your first ad or email, you must have three non-negotiables in place to ensure a high return on investment.

1. Set clear goals 

What does success look like for your brand? Hitting a revenue target, acquiring new customers, or increasing average order value? Having these metrics defined from the outset provides your roadmap.

2. Make a truly compelling offer. 

In a sea of discounts, your proposition must be genuinely valuable for it to stand out. Whether it’s an exclusive bundle or a tiered discount, your offer is the driving force of your campaign.

3. Tailor your messaging to your audience.

This is where pre-peak personalisation is vital. A generic homepage can instantly break trust when a user clicks on a targeted ad. The most powerful way to avoid this is by delivering a consistent, personalised user journey where your advert creative and on-site experiences are seamlessly aligned.

Platforms like Nosto make this so much easier. For example, a sports brand can run distinct ad campaigns for men and women. When a potential customer clicks, Nosto recognises the source and automatically serves them a personalised homepage based on their gender, with messaging and products that perfectly match the ad.

One campaign, two very different target audiences, two very personalised user journeys. Nosto allows us to create this with ease.

By focusing on these strategic pillars before the creative build, you transform your Black Friday campaign from a chaotic race into a predictable, high-performing event.

Personalization That Turns Early Traffic Into High-Intent Shoppers

Picking up where Velstar leaves off, Nosto shows how to bring that personalization strategy to life. Here are three proven tactics for turning early BFCM traffic into high-intent shoppers:

1. Turn Email Clicks Into High-Intent Journeys

Brands invest heavily in email campaigns to build BFCM anticipation. But too often, shoppers land on static, generic pages that don’t match the email’s message or intent.

Instead, by using Personalized Content and Category Merchandising, marketers can tailor which products are sent through email channels to every shopper. For example, a fashion brand linking to a “Fall Favorites” campaign can automatically reorder products based on the shopper’s previous browsing or purchase history, increasing product discovery and add-to-cart rates.

2. Create Early Access Landing Pages That Feel Personal

Early access campaigns are a great way to generate urgency, but they often fall flat when the experience feels mass-market.

Using Nosto’s Segmentation and Insights, merchants can tailor early-access pages with targeted banners, product recommendations, and content blocks for:

• Returning customers
• Loyalty program members
• VIP email segments
• Geo- or interest-based cohorts

The result? Shoppers land not just on your site, but in the part of your store that feels built for them.

3. Maximize ROAS by Personalizing for Paid Traffic

Not all ad clicks are equal. First-time visitors from paid campaigns are often landing cold, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way.

Using real-time behavioral cues, brands can segment these visitors instantly and tailor homepage layouts, collection rankings, and messaging to reflect their source, campaign intent, or device. This helps shorten the path to relevance, reduces bounce, and increases ROAS without increasing spend.

Patience Pays Off with Paid Ads

Next, we turned to Genie Goals, a performance marketing agency that helps ecommerce brands grow through data-led acquisition strategies. Their advice? BFCM doesn’t start in November—it starts in September.

Get ahead of the competition

When it comes to Black Friday, the weeks leading up to it, often starting as early as September and October, are critical for audience building, especially in paid channels. 

For many brands, relying solely on November activity is a risky strategy. With CPCs surging and bigger players going “all in” with heavy discounts, the smarter approach is to invest early in awareness and consideration. 

Then, by  November, your brand will already be familiar to customers, giving you a competitive edge when it’s time to convert with strong offers. Consumers are thoughtful, price-sensitive, and selective; they want the best deal on products they already desire. Make sure they know your brand early, so when the deal lands, they’re ready to buy.

By laying the groundwork ahead of time, you ensure potential customers are already familiar with your brand before they see your Black Friday offers.

What does the data say?

In 2024, reports found that brands that invested in early-funnel activity saw massive ROAS gains:

• +22% lift for small brands investing 5% in upper-funnel activity (Fospha)
• +218% lift for large brands investing 10%+ early (Fospha)
• Early shoppers spent 45% more than late starters (metadata)

These insights underline one key point: intent must be built early, before competition and costs peak.

What does this look like across different channels?

Meta: Grow audiences with diverse creative and prospecting campaigns. 

PPC: Optimize Shopping campaigns to capture research-driven browsing.

Affiliate:  Ensure you don’t overlook high-value content placements, such as gift guides or influencer partnerships, which drive consideration before conversion.

The challenge is that results in October may not immediately reflect strong ROAS. This can raise questions internally, but patience pays off.

Prep Your Push Notifications Before Peak

Finally, to understand how mobile apps are reshaping BFCM engagement, we spoke to Tapcart, the Shopify mobile app builder that helps brands connect directly with shoppers through push notifications.

Tapcart’s 2025 BFCM Report shows that nearly two-thirds of shoppers begin by October, and they expect to engage with brands multiple times throughout the season. This means your most valuable customers actually want to hear from you early and often—especially if you’re giving them first access to the best deals.

That’s why leading merchants are leaning into mobile apps and push notifications to reach high-intent shoppers before the peak. Unlike crowded inboxes or costly ads, push notifications deliver direct, instant communication that drives action at the right moment.

Take Volcom, the skate, surf, and snowboarding lifestyle brand. Ahead of BFCM, Volcom promoted its app through email, socials, and website banners, then engaged customers with tailored push notifications featuring holiday deals. The results?

• 1,290% increase in in-app sales in 30 days
• 18% of all sales now come through the app
• Ongoing growth in daily active users post-BFCM

Push notifications outperform other channels during this season: they’re 181.5% more likely to drive a purchase than paid ads and 94.9% more likely than SMS. Combined with omnichannel promotion, they don’t just create instant traffic spikes—they build lasting customer habits.

Make your app the HQ for BFCM. Use push notifications for early access offers and VIP exclusives. Brands like Volcom show that the right message at the right time turns holiday browsers into long-term loyalists.

Key Takeaway

Black Friday doesn’t start in November anymore. High-intent traffic is built in September and October, and personalization is what turns that interest into sales.

Whether you’re building your strategy with Velstar, delivering personalization with Nosto, launching top-of-funnel ads with Genie Goals, or driving early engagement with Tapcart—the message is clear:

Start early. Get personal. And make every touchpoint count.

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Contributors

Velstar: An award-winning Shopify Premier partner agency that delivers full-funnel strategies built for ecommerce growth.

Nosto: The intelligent Commerce Experience Platform (CXP) that gives brands the tools to personalize every touchpoint and turn shoppers into buyers.

Genie Goals: A performance marketing agency that helps ecommerce brands scale through data-led advertising strategies.

Tapcart: The mobile app builder trusted by Shopify brands to turn browsers into loyal app users and revenue.