The best Black Friday sales don't come together the week before. They're planned months ahead, so that when the busiest shopping weekend of the year arrives, the only thing left to do is watch the orders roll in. This playbook walks through exactly how to set up a BFCM campaign you can schedule once and forget.
The framework is always the same: a clear calendar, the right products, sensible discounts, a little urgency, and automation doing the heavy lifting.
1. Start with a calendar, not a discount
Before you decide how much to mark down, decide when things happen. Map out your early-access window, the main BFCM weekend, and any extended Cyber Week tail. Working backwards from those dates tells you when assets, emails and product selections need to be ready.
2. Pick your products with filters
You rarely want to discount literally everything at the same rate. Use filters to bulk-select by collection, tag, product type or vendor - then layer in exclusion rules to protect new arrivals or low-margin items. A few minutes of setup here saves hours of manual price edits later.
Set your sale up once, and let it start, run and end on its own. The goal is to be present for your customers, not babysitting price changes.
3. Set discounts that protect margin
Decide your headline offer, then make sure shoppers can't stack extra codes on top of it. Blocking discount-code stacking during the sale keeps your advertised price the real floor - no surprise margin erosion at checkout.
4. Add urgency that feels honest
A live countdown timer on each discounted product tells shoppers the truth: this price ends soon. Pair it with sale badges and an announcement bar so the offer is obvious from the first page they land on. No theme edits required - the storefront widget handles it.
5. Schedule it and walk away
This is the part that turns a stressful weekend into a calm one. Set exact start and end times, and your sale launches and ends automatically - reverting every price back to normal when it's over. Here's a quick pre-launch checklist:
- Products selected and exclusions applied
- Discount set and code-stacking blocked
- Countdown timer, badges and banner enabled
- Sale collection generated for email and social
- Start and end times double-checked in your timezone
Do this once, well ahead of time, and BFCM becomes the easiest weekend of your year. Try Disco free and get your first scheduled sale live in minutes.