Campaigns built for specific customer groups tend to perform better than one-size-fits-all sends.

Shoppers will see more marketing messages during Cyber Week than at any other point in the year. Stand out by sending messages built for the person receiving them.

Marketers and shoppers agree:

• 72% of marketers name better targeting and segmentation as the lever that improves engagement most
• 52% of marketers whose BFCM performance improved last year credit better targeting and segmentation
• 80% of shoppers are more likely to ignore brands that send irrelevant messages

You'll still want at least one full-list send on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But the segmented campaigns you layer on top are what makes your biggest sends of the year feel personal, timely, and relevant.

Here are the seven audiences to define before Cyber Week—and how to refine them with Audiences AI.

1. VIP customers

Who they are: Your most valuable customers.

Why they matter: VIPs are primed to shop your sale. They already trust your brand, so they tend to convert at higher rates, spend more per order, and are less likely to get distracted by competitors' offers.

How to define them: What makes a customer a "VIP" is up to you. It could be loyalty program members, top spenders, frequent purchasers, or a combination of criteria.

How to engage them for BFCM: VIPs respond to recognition, so build your BFCM plan for this segment around exclusivity. When we asked shoppers which type of offer makes them most likely to keep shopping with a brand, the #1 answer—at 41%—was exclusive discounts for VIPs only.

Leading up to BFCM, give VIPs sneak peeks or early access to your deals. During the sale, reward them with perks other shoppers don't get—the ones they say they value most:

• Free or faster shipping (65%)
• Points they can redeem for rewards (59%)
• Members-only sales or discounts (51%)

2. Engaged subscribers

Who they are: Subscribers who have recently interacted with your brand through campaign clicks, purchases, or website visits.

Why they matter: Engaged subscribers are actively opening and clicking your campaigns, so they're more likely to engage and convert. Since they've been paying attention to your brand, they may already be waiting for your BFCM deals.

How to define them: Your engagement threshold depends on your typical sending frequency and what works for your brand. A good starting rule of thumb: subscribers who have clicked at least one email or text within the last two to four weeks. Test different thresholds—watching opt-out and conversion rates—to find your sweet spot.

You can also get more granular with engagement levels, like "brand enthusiasts" who clicked a campaign in the last seven days, who you can message even more frequently.

How to engage them for BFCM: This segment can handle higher message frequency without a spike in opt-outs, so they can generally be sent your whole BFCM promotional calendar:

• Build anticipation with sneak peeks of your upcoming deals
• Help them build their wishlists with gift guides and product recommendations
• Send your full promotional sequence when deals go live
• Follow up with reminders and last-chance messaging

“A smaller, highly engaged segment will almost always outperform a large, cold one, and deliverability is a big part of why. At the end of the day, a message that lands in the inbox and gets seen by a thousand people beats one that gets blasted to a hundred thousand and buried in spam. Protecting your sender reputation heading into BFCM is just as important as the offer itself."

– Courtney Syrop, CRM Director at Lunar Solar Group

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3. Unengaged subscribers

Who they are: Subscribers who haven't clicked on one of your messages recently.

Why they matter: These subscribers haven't clicked lately, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them. They opted in, showing initial interest in your brand—and many unengaged subscribers wait for big sales like BFCM to shop. That makes Cyber Week the perfect time to re-engage them.

How to define them: Your unengaged segment is defined in tandem with your engaged segment. Any subscriber who's not in one of your engaged tiers goes here.

How to engage them for BFCM: While you may send fewer messages to this segment throughout the year to match their pace, use the weeks leading up to BFCM to warm these relationships back up:

• Reintroduce them to your brand and products to remind them why they subscribed in the first place.
• Preview your deals as Black Friday gets closer to build excitement.
• When your deals launch, lead with your most compelling offers—your biggest discounts or bestselling products with strong social proof.

Make it a gradual build so you don't overwhelm them.

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4. Buyer intent personas

Who they are: Subscribers segmented by their purchase intent.

Why they matter: BFCM shoppers fall into distinct patterns. According to Eli Weiss, VP Advocacy at Yotpo, “Each group needs a different approach. Treat them the same and you either fatigue your list or send catch-all messages that convert at lower rates.”

How to define and engage them: Some of these patterns overlap with the other segments in this guide. Treat intent as a lens you layer over your other behavioral segments. Eli says the most common intent patterns BFCM shoppers fall into are:

• The gift buyer: Buying for someone else, as determined by a pre-purchase question (welcome popup, conversational SMS, RCS Suggested Replies) or post-purchase survey. Before purchase, target them with gift guides. After purchase, they have low personal intent so are best moved toward referral incentives.
• The discount buyer: Shoppers acquired pre-BFCM through sign-up units that have a BFCM-specific hook or during BFCM. They came for the deal, after Cyber Week, they need education about product quality and long-term value.
• The curious buyer: Browsed across categories and clicked on multiple campaigns. Great candidate for personalized recommendations and loyalty program invites.
• The early loyalist: Purchased more than once or showed strong engagement. Give them a clear path into higher-value behavior: recommend their next purchase, surface loyalty points they can redeem, and reward behaviors that deepen the relationship, like leaving a review.

5. Product affinity or interest-based segments

Who they are: Subscribers segmented by their specific interests, preferences, or past purchase behavior—like the product categories they've bought or browsed, or zero-party data you've collected.

Why they matter: These segments let you get more specific with your targeting during BFCM. Instead of promoting your entire sale to everyone, you can showcase the products each subscriber is most likely to want. Shoppers say that's what moves them: 68% prefer BFCM messages featuring relevant products over generic promos.

How to define them: Use the data you've collected about subscriber preferences and behavior:

• Purchase or browse history: Segment by product categories they've bought or browsed on your site (e.g., men's vs. women's clothing, skincare vs. makeup, dog vs. cat supplies)
• Zero-party data: Use information subscribers shared in sign-up units, quizzes, or two-way text conversations (e.g., skin concerns, pet type, exercise preferences)

How to engage them for BFCM: Tailor your messaging to showcase the products most relevant to each segment:

• Feature products from their preferred categories in your imagery
• Highlight deals on complementary products to items they've purchased
• Speak to their specific needs or lifestyle

6. BFCM purchasers

Who they are: Subscribers who purchased during your BFCM sale

Why they matter: 

How to define them: Purchased during your BFCM sale

How to engage them for BFCM: With BFCM purchasers, you have two options during Cyber Week:

• Exclude them after purchase: Give them some breathing room from promos after they convert.
• Re-engage during Cyber Week: 68% of shoppers remember making multiple separate purchases from at least one brand during BFCM last year, so don’t fully exclude them from the rest of your promos. These are customers who have proven interest in your brand.

And of course after BFCM, this is a segment to invest your retention efforts in.

7. Geographic segments

Who they are: Subscribers segmented by their location—city, state, country, or region.

Why they matter: Location-based segmentation lets you create more relevant experiences during BFCM. You can promote weather-appropriate products, highlight local store events, and tailor your messaging to regional preferences.

How to define them: It depends on how you want to use this information. You could segment by:

• Climate: Separate subscribers in warmer vs. colder regions
• Store proximity: Subscribers within a certain radius of your physical stores
• Region: Different states or countries you operate in

How to engage them for BFCM: Geographic segments open up plenty of ways to reach Cyber Week shoppers:

• Weather-based targeting: Promote snow gear to subscribers facing cold weather while highlighting lighter layers for those in warmer climates
• Local store events: Invite nearby subscribers to in-store BFCM events, exclusive shopping hours, or curbside pickup promotions
• Regional inventory: Highlight products that are popular or available in specific markets
• Cultural relevance: Tailor messaging to regional events, local sports teams, or cultural preferences

Refine every segment with Audiences AI

Manual segmentation is a strong foundation, but it has limits. You could miss high-intent subscribers who don't fit your predefined criteria—or include subscribers who aren't actually likely to convert.

Audiences AI, part of the Attentive AI Pro suite, uses predictive analytics to identify patterns in your customer data that would be impossible to spot manually. Then it recommends which subscribers to include and exclude from each campaign based on their likelihood to purchase—even when they don't fit your segment definitions.

The impact shows up across channels: brands see a 15–20% average boost to SMS campaign revenue and a 20–30% average revenue lift or more with Audiences AI for Email.

Attentive customers put those gains in context:

• Thread increased CVR by 40%
• Estella Bartlett saw revenue lifts of up to 32.1% on optimized campaigns

During Cyber Week, when send volume is high, Audiences AI helps you expand your segments with likely converters you might have missed—and keeps optimizing as shopper behavior changes throughout your sale.

Learn more about Attentive AI Pro and get a demo.

Avoid common segmentation mistakes

Well-built segments can still underperform if you run into a few common issues:

• Over-segmentation: Segments that are too small (under 1,000 subscribers) make it hard to draw clear insights from your targeting, and managing dozens of tiny segments adds manual work before Cyber Week. There are exceptions for hyper-targeted efforts like prize winners or loyalty tiers—but if you're spending hours maintaining micro-segments, Audiences AI can help.
• Static segments: Instead, set up dynamic segments that update automatically based on subscriber behavior. A subscriber who was "unengaged" last month might have made a purchase this week—they should move to your engaged segment without you having to rebuild the segments.
• Overlapping segments without exclusion logic: Make sure subscribers who qualify for multiple segments aren't getting duplicate messages. Stacked sends lead to fatigue and higher opt-out rates.
• Not tracking segment performance: Watch conversion rate, revenue per recipient, and opt-out rate for each segment. That data tells you which definitions to refine and which audiences are your most valuable.

Next read

You have the audiences. Now put them to work when intent amplifies. 

Every VIP early-access send, engaged-subscriber sequence, and interest-based promo you mapped above belongs in your Cyber Week calendar.

Get inspiration from 16 messages to send during BFCM:

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More from The Edit

• The First- and Zero-Party Data to Prioritize for BFCM
• 9 Advanced Audience Segments You Should Build (and Why)

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Disclosure: Where this material includes Attentive proprietary internal product, platform, or performance data, certain benchmarks, summaries, statistics, or insights may have been compiled or analyzed with AI-assisted tools using Attentive proprietary internal data believed to be reliable. AI-assisted analysis was subject to internal review, but may contain errors, omissions, or limitations, and the data reflects the applicable dataset, methodology, assumptions, and time period used for the analysis. Unless otherwise stated, the data has not been independently audited or verified by a third party and may not be representative of all customers, industries, campaigns, use cases, or time periods. This material is provided for general marketing and informational purposes only and does not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction of future performance, savings, revenue, conversion rates, deliverability, engagement, or other business outcomes. Individual results may vary.