How to Plan BFCM Offers Without Killing Your Margins

Last Updated on September 9, 2026 by Ewen Finser

The easiest BFCM offer to create is 25% off everything.

It is also one of the easiest ways for a small DTC brand to discover that a record sales weekend does not necessarily mean a profitable one.

Not everything you sell has the same margins baked in. Some you overpaid for and some you got for a bargain. That’s where the flat 25% can really bite into profit. 

The pressure is understandable. Competitors are running sales, customers are waiting for deals, and paid traffic gets more expensive as everyone fights in the arena. It can feel like you need a bigger discount just to stay competitive. And sometimes you do!

But the question is not, “What discount should we run?”

It is, “How much margin can we afford to give up and still keep the profits high?”

That changes the way you plan the entire promotion. Instead of choosing a discount first and hoping the numbers work out, you start with the margin you need to protect and build the offer around it. This is key, use it as the first stepping stone.

Start with your margin floor

Before deciding what your BFCM promotion looks like, work out what a typical order is actually worth to the business. And each product you sell has a different cost basis. 

Start with revenue and subtract the costs that move with each sale. Depending on the business, that can include landed product costs, payment processing, fulfillment, shipping subsidies, returns and other variable expenses.

What’s left is your remaining margin. Now decide what that number needs to look like during BFCM.

Say a product sells for $100 and leaves you with $55 in remaining margin before marketing and overhead. A 25% discount takes the selling price to $75. Your variable costs do not necessarily fall by 25%, so the effect on your remaining margin can be much larger than the actual discount suggests.

That does not mean 25% off is automatically a bad promotion. Not at all. It simply means you should understand the tradeoff before putting it on the site. There are instances where it makes total sense but definitely check your margins first!

Do the same exercise for your key products and likely bundles. Then establish a margin floor. Basically, go through every product you intend to sell with a fine-tooth comb. Searching for the actual margin before the proposed discount.

If an offer pushes you below that floor, it needs to have a very good reason for existing. It’s all good and well to push a lot of units during the sale but if the margins aren’t there then you are losing money and you are simply moving inventory i.e. giving it away. You shouldn’t have to do that.

This is also where customer acquisition comes into the picture. BFCM can bring more shoppers, but those shoppers are not free. If customer acquisition costs rise while you are also giving away more of the selling price, your margin gets squeezed from both sides. This is a real struggle!

Three ways to build a BFCM offer

Once you know what you can afford, you can decide what kind of promotion makes the most sense for your business model.

For many small DTC brands, there are three basic routes.

1. Flat percentage off sitewide

This is the simplest option.

We are all consumers and when we see this promoted on a site, it is enticing. However, how does it look from the seller’s side? Sometimes not so good if they haven’t done the margin analysis for each item. 

The customer sees the offer immediately, understands it without having to do any math, and can apply it to whatever they want.

The problem is that you are giving the same discount to every product regardless of what your landed costs were i.e. discounting products that may have vastly different margins.

If your highest-margin product can comfortably absorb that percentage but another product cannot, a sitewide promotion treats them exactly the same. But the true profit won’t be there. 

There is also no built-in reason for the customer to increase their order. A shopper spending $50 gets the same percentage discount as someone spending $200.

If the economics work and simplicity is the priority, a flat discount can still be the right answer. Just make sure you have chosen it because the numbers support it, not because everyone else is doing it. Without margins, you won’t have a business for long, so stay vigilant with reviewing your margins.

2. Tiered purchase offers

Tiered offers take a different approach. Instead of giving everyone the same discount, you give customers a reason to spend more.

For example:

Spend $75, get 10% off.

Spend $125, get 15% off.

Spend $175, get 20% off.

The numbers are only examples. Your thresholds should be based on your existing AOV and margins.

If your average order is $65, a $75 threshold might be a realistic nudge. The goal is to move customers into larger orders without giving away your strongest incentive on every order.

You can also structure the tiers around products or perks rather than increasing the percentage discount.

For example, a customer might receive free shipping at one level, a discount at the next, and a premium bundle at the highest level.

This can be especially useful when you want to increase AOV without simply cutting more from the selling price.

3. GWP: Give them something instead of taking money off

A GWP, or gift with purchase, is another strong option during BFCM.

Instead of saying, “Take 25% off,” you are saying, “Spend $X and we’ll give you this.”

The difference is important as the customer can perceive a much higher value than the actual cost to the brand.

Imagine a product that costs you $10 to produce but normally sells for $35. Offering that product free when someone spends $150 may feel like a substantial deal to the customer. But your actual cost is $10, not $35.

That can make a GWP much easier on the margin than a large percentage discount. It also gives you a way to encourage larger orders.

For example:

Spend $100, get a free accessory.

Spend $150, get a larger gift.

Spend $200, get an exclusive product or premium gift set.

Again, the thresholds need to come from your numbers. Start with your current AOV and work upward from there.

The gift itself also needs some thought. A slow-moving product, accessory, sample set, seasonal item or exclusive BFCM product can all make sense, provided the customer sees enough value in it. This is key with this direction.

And there is a psychological advantage here. “Free” can feel more exciting than “15% off,” even when the actual economics are better for the brand.

If you want to spend more time working through the offer itself, check out the Craft Offers That Convert playbook from the DTC Operator. It is specifically designed around creating and pressure-testing effective offers.

You do not have to give everyone the same offer

The other mistake small brands make is assuming every customer needs the same incentive. They don’t.

Someone who has purchased from you three times this year already knows the brand. They may respond to early access, an exclusive bundle or a GWP without needing your biggest discount.

A first-time visitor is different. They may need more of an incentive to take the risk of trying you for the first time. A lapsed customer is different as well.

Existing customers could get early access. New customers could see a first-purchase offer. High-value customers could get an exclusive perk. Lapsed customers could get a targeted reason to return. The structuring is very important.

This changes your strategy from personalization for the sake of it to meeting your aims while preserving profit margin.

You are not giving your strongest incentive to someone who may have bought anyway. Be particular in the offers! What’s your audience for the offers? 

Choose the products carefully

Not every product needs to be part of the BFCM promotion. Look at your margins, inventory and sales history before choosing what gets featured.

Your best seller may not be your best product to discount, especially if they are high demand. A high-margin accessory might be a better candidate for a bundle or GWP. A product with limited inventory may not need additional demand at all.

Think about what you actually want or need to sell more of.

If you have excess inventory that you need to move, BFCM can be a good opportunity to build it into a bundle or gift. If inventory is tight, creating a huge promotion around that product could create a fulfillment problem.

The offer also has to work operationally.  If a bundle takes twice as long to pick and pack, or a GWP creates a new fulfillment step for every order, account for that before launch.

Margin is not just the price minus product cost. The more complicated the promotion becomes, the more important it is to understand what it costs you to actually land it and deliver it.

Build the calendar before Black Friday

BFCM is not really one weekend anymore.

Adobe reported $44.2 billion in U.S. online spending during Cyber Week in 2025, including $11.8 billion on Black Friday and $14.25 billion on Cyber Monday. Black Friday also grew faster year over year than Cyber Monday.

For a small brand, the takeaway is not that you need to spend more. It is that customers are shopping early and competition for attention is very high.

So build the campaign before the weekend arrives. Do it now.

Four to six weeks out: Decide the margin floor, offer structure, products, inventory requirements and customer segments.

Three to four weeks out: Start building the audience. Grow your email and SMS lists and begin teasing that something is coming.

Two weeks out: Start revealing more of the promotion. Give people a reason to wait for your event rather than buying somewhere else.

One week out: Lock everything down. Landing pages, email and SMS campaigns, inventory, fulfillment, customer service and shipping expectations should all be ready.

BFCM: Run the plan. Do not start inventing new discounts every few hours because a competitor changed its homepage.

After BFCM: End the promotion and start measuring.

If you want a more complete framework for the planning and sequencing side, there’s a second DTC Operator playbook I’d recommend: Win Black Friday & Cyber Monday. It is built specifically around planning the BFCM campaign, so it complements the offer-focused issue rather than replacing it.

Do not let the discount keep growing

One of the easiest ways to wreck BFCM economics is to keep adding incentives.

You start with 20% off. Then sales are slower than expected, so you add free shipping. Then you add a gift. Then someone suggests another coupon.

Before long, you have created a fantastic offer for the customer and a terrible one for the business. Decide in advance what can stack and what cannot.

Also give the promotion a real end date. Even a timer on your website will help. It’s a good strategy and adds a sense of urgency to the purchase.

If the same BFCM offer keeps running into December, customers learn that waiting for a discount is worth it. That can make future full-price sales harder. 

Measure the promotion by profit, not just revenue

When BFCM is over, revenue is only the beginning of the analysis.

Look at contribution margin dollars and percentage, AOV, conversion rate, acquisition cost, units per order and returns. Separate new customers from returning customers.

Then look at the individual offers. How did each one perform?

Did the tiered promotion actually move people into larger orders? Did the GWP get customers to cross the spending threshold? Did the flat discount bring in enough quality sales to justify the margin it cost? Did existing customers buy earlier because of early access? 

Those answers tell you much more than whether BFCM was your biggest sales weekend. A promotion can produce record revenue and still deliver minimal profit.

The one worth repeating is the one that produced enough profitable margin to justify what you gave away in discount or GWP.

Build next year’s BFCM from this year’s data

Do not wait until next October to think about what worked.

Once the numbers are in, document the winners.

Keep track of which offer produced the best contribution margin, which products moved, which segments responded, which thresholds customers actually reached and which incentives were barely used.

You may discover that a static sitewide discount drove plenty of revenue but produced less contribution profit than the GWP. Or you may find that the tiered offer lifted AOV but created too much fulfillment complexity.

That way, next year’s campaign won’t start from scratch, but will be informed by what you learned this year.

Build BFCM around the margin

There will always be another brand offering a bigger discount.

You do not have to beat them. Go for margin!

For a small DTC brand, the goal is to create an offer that customers genuinely value without giving away more margin than you need to.

That might be a straightforward sitewide discount if the economics support it. It might be a tiered offer that encourages customers to spend more.

Or it might be a GWP that gives the customer a high-perceived-value bonus while costing the brand relatively little. The important thing is deciding that before the campaign goes live.

Start with the margin you need to protect. Then decide what customer behavior you want to change. Build the offer around those two things.

That is a much better place to start than simply asking, “How big should our Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount be?”