Last year, Cyber Week subscribers made up just 0.8% of brands' lists—but drove 22% of their Cyber Week revenue.

As Black Friday nears, your sign-up units do more work. They build your list of shoppers waiting for your sale, then capture the high-intent visitors your sale brings in. 

Here’s how to update your sign-up units before and during BFCM to capture more high-intent subscribers who are ready to buy.

1. Add BFCM-specific hooks to your sign-up units

The subscribers you gain in the weeks before Black Friday are particularly valuable—shoppers who join between June and mid-November have historically posted higher AOVs during Cyber Week than earlier subscribers.

And they're ready to be asked: 93% of BFCM shoppers say the right incentive would get them to subscribe to a new brand before Cyber Week.

As BFCM approaches, adding sale-specific hooks in your sign-up units pull just as much weight as an evergreen welcome discount.

What shoppers said would motivate them to subscribe before BFCM:

• 52%: Early access to BFCM deals before they're public
• 51%: Alerts when specific items go on sale during BFCM
• 49%: A standard welcome discount on their first order
• 45%: A preview of the BFCM deals coming

Knowing your best offers of the year are coming gives shoppers a reason to join now—and it doesn't require launching your deals early or deepening your welcome offer.

2. Keep your sign-up units live through Cyber Week

Some brands pause their pop-ups during BFCM so a welcome offer doesn't compete with the main sale. It's an understandable instinct—but it turns off list growth at the exact moment your site traffic peaks.

And the subscribers who join during the sale are worth capturing: in 2025, subscribers who signed up during Cyber Week made up just 0.8% of brands' lists—but drove 22% of their Cyber Week revenue.

To avoid an offer conflict: remove your evergreen discount and mirror your on-site deal in your sign-up unit.

“The subscribers you capture now are among the highest converters during the holiday season. At Alchemy Worx, we see this short window as a critical acquisition sprint, not just for list growth, but for bottom-line performance.”

– Michelle Casey, Vice President of Strategy, Alchemy Worx

3. Give the unit itself a BFCM refresh

A BFCM-specific sign-up unit can capture attention from returning visitors who dismissed your evergreen unit.

Prioritize these changes:

• Copy: Name the sale and the offer.
• Imagery: Showcase the product categories or bestsellers featured in your BFCM sale.
• Urgency: Emphasize the time-sensitive nature of the sale in your copy—or make it visual with a countdown timer.
• Benefits: Spell out what subscribers get during the sale, like early access to daily deals or free shipping.

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4. Personalize sign-up unit timing with AI Grow

The tactics above sharpen your sign-up units—but static display rules still show every visitor your unit on the same schedule. That gap widens during BFCM, when traffic is high-volume, faster-moving, and full of first-time visitors your usual rules weren't tuned for.

AI Grow personalizes the sign-up experience to each shopper, using real-time behavioral signals to surface your sign-up unit at the moment they're most likely to subscribe. Instead of one timing rule for everyone, it learns from how visitors arrive, browse, and engage—and adjusts as BFCM behavior shifts.

The results: 25% more sign-ups from the same traffic, and 35% more welcome series revenue.

“AI Grow helped us improve the number of people who complete the full sign-up, sharing both SMS and email, which makes those subscribers more valuable. We’ve struggled with email collection in the past, so seeing more people finish the full SMS and email journey has been a big win.”

– Jonathan Peters, Digital Marketing Executive, Radley London

Learn how AI Grow can help you earn more subscribers from the same site traffic and get a demo.

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Once your sign-up units are ready to capture high-value subscribers before and during the sale, your next job is keeping those subscribers.

Marketers whose messaging performance improved last year were far more successful at retaining their BFCM-acquired customers—79% reported retaining them, versus 48% of everyone else.

One factor: Building the post-Cyber Week experience before the acquisition wave hits.

Learn how to turn BFCM's first-time buyers into repeat customers:

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More from The Edit

• 7 Ways to Grow a Higher-Value List Before BFCM
• How to Tune Your Behavioral Flows for BFCM
• 14 Pre-BFCM Campaigns to Reach Early Shoppers

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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.