9 Steps to Win Black Friday 2026 With Referral Marketing: Tips and Examples

Read time: 9 mins

Black Friday 2026 is on 27th November, but your customers will start talking about it long before then (and well into Q1).

Over Cyber Weekend 2025, brands on Mention Me saw orders per day jump 152% and referrals per day jump 112%, compared with an average day across the rest of the year.

According to Harvard Business Review, analysing data from 10 million Mention Me referral journeys, referred customers make up just 20% of new customers on average, yet generate 72% of new-customer profits over three years.

Below, we've mapped out nine steps to win as many new customers and maximise their lifetime value as possible this Black Friday, built on Mention Me platform data from peak 2025.

Black Friday 2025 in numbers

Across Cyber Weekend (28th November to 1st December 2025), compared with an average day in the rest of 2025:

• Orders per day rose 152%

• Referrals per day rose 112%

• Average order value rose 11%

Peak is now a month long. Across the whole of November 2025, orders per day rose 62%, referrals per day rose 44% and average order value rose 21% against the rest of the year.

1. Launch on 1st November, not the Friday

As the saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Every Black Friday, some retailers find themselves in the bittersweet scenario of outperforming expectations to such an extent that they run out of voucher codes.

This means customers miss out on their rewards for referring friends, and retailers lose potential sales...and valuable new customers. Avoid this fate by making sure you’ve got plenty of codes to give out, so as many happy customers can use your offer as possible.

You might still be up against persistent supply chain issues this year. To overcome this, anticipate which products are likely to sell out and have a strategy ready, such as being able to suggest similar available products.

Lastly, make sure your website is ready for a sudden surge in traffic. With virtually every brand running a Black Friday promotion, a website crash (even for just a few minutes) can be a costly mistake. We recommend running tests ahead of 27th November, so you can be confident that everything’s in place to make your campaign a success.

Preparing for peak shopping moments requires reliable tracking and execution. A referral marketing platform helps you coordinate referral activity and capture performance when it matters most.

Frugi gave out aprons as part of its Black Friday referral offer.

2. Make your incentive irresistable

With almost every brand running a Black Friday deal, your referral offer has to stand out. Start with your own site. If any live offer beats your referral reward for a new customer, lift the friend's side above it.

Referral asks your customer to do something, so it has to win. Set your stacking rule on day one too, so your codes and copy are built around it from the start.

Then tailor the reward. Do your customers respond better to a percentage off or a fixed sum? Would a referred friend rather have a free gift or a competition entry?

Double discounts, with money off for both sides, tend to perform particularly well. For subscription brands, a free month can beat any discount.

With the upgraded Mention Me experience, you can answer those questions yourself. The campaign builder lets you A/B test variants and edit each one independently.

The campaign insights panel shows live performance as peak unfolds, so you'll know which offer is winning while there's still time to act on it.

Boohoo ran a month-long campaign with double-sided incentives

3. Get creative with copy and design

Black Friday is a great opportunity to shout about your brand’s USPs and values. Use your referral campaign to reinforce your brand, from messaging and tone of voice to design. 

Using Black Friday-themed branding will make your promotion pop. Branch out from your traditional colour palette, adding splashes of black (or another bold colour) to grab attention and show you’re getting involved with the event.

Charlotte Tilbury leaned into the Black Friday 'magic' in 2025 through its copy and design

4. Promote, promote, promote

Now you’ve come up with a brilliant Black Friday referral campaign with an enticing discount and on-brand design, it’s time to get your customers to take notice. 

Black Friday is highly competitive, so your campaign needs to be easily visible and well-promoted at touchpoints throughout the customer journey to make an impact. 

Feature it on your homepage, display it as a post-purchase pop-up, shout about it on your socials — wherever your customers are looking, make sure they see it. Use your findings from A/B testing previous referral campaigns to optimise your promotion.

Display at the touchpoints you know your customers most engage with and use wording that resonates (for example, ‘give’ a reward rather than ‘get’ one, or vice versa).

Check out these Black Friday 2025 success stories from two brands that tweaked their campaigns:

5. Retarget customers

With so many brands competing for attention and shouting about their unmissable offers, it’s easy for customers to feel overwhelmed on Black Friday. They may well visit your site to browse, only to end up being distracted by another brand’s tempting offer.

This is when retargeting becomes important.

Strategically use ads to retarget visitors to your site who are yet to complete their purchase. This is even better if you can personalise the messages with different referral slogans (e.g. ‘Hey Jo, it’s not too late to get 30% off’).

You can complement these ads with follow-up emails, featuring recently viewed items or a reminder of the products they left in their basket. Customers will often shop around for the best deal, so they may well have realised the value of your offer and be ready to buy at this point.

PrettyLittleThing thought outside the box with its double incentive campaign

6. Create a buzz

Black Friday is intense, with every brand doing its best to cut through the noise and reach its target consumers. Take advantage of the fact that a friend or relative’s brand recommendation is the most trusted source of advertising by encouraging existing customers to spread the word about your brand.

Referral isn't the only way to do this — you could launch a competition encouraging user-generated content on Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.

It’s easy for a potential customer to scroll past an advert, but if they’re following numerous people (friends or influencers) all sharing content related to your Black Friday campaign, it’s bound to grab their attention.

Revolution Race ran a generous competition to win £900 for Black Friday 2025

7. Retarget the browsers

With every brand shouting about its deals, plenty of shoppers will visit your site and get distracted. Retarget them with personalised ads and follow-up emails featuring recently viewed items or their abandoned basket.

Shoppers compare deals over peak, so a well-timed reminder can catch them just as they realise yours is the best.

Reverse Life ran an exclusive Black Friday campaign last year that drove urgency

8. Follow through into January

Avoid the dreaded post-Black Friday sales slump by engaging with your customers throughout their journey. New customers are likely to have different characteristics than your existing ones — tailor your interactions to reflect this.

Bargain hunters who buy once and vanish are the classic Black Friday hangover. Referred customers are different. They're the ones most likely to come back.

Revert your peak reward in mid-December so it stays special. But keep your referral programme live through the January sale. Use retention emails and parcel inserts in December to win the second order.

Gozney ran a generous Black Friday 2025 campaign for referrers to entice them to return

Shoppers may have landed on your site on the hunt for a Black Friday bargain, but engaging with them in the right way can significantly increase the likelihood they'll return and buy again. Invite customers, for example, to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for exclusive access to new products.

Ask for NPS feedback to gauge customer satisfaction and pinpoint areas where you can improve. Feed referral data into your marketing automation platform so you can segment your referrers and give them the VIP treatment.

Rather than push the next sale, look to build meaningful relationships with your customers. This will keep you at the front of their minds as they continue their Christmas shopping.

9. Measure, measure, measure

Much of Black Friday word-of-mouth happens on dark social like WhatsApp group chats, and face to face. Standard analytics files it under direct traffic, which means you end up paying search for customers a friend had already convinced.

Name Share® lets referred friends enter their referrer's name at checkout, so you can see and reward those recommendations too. Track share rates, referred new customers and order values through peak, then use what you learn to plan next year.

Use segmentation and A/B testing to learn more about your customers and what most effectively drives desired actions throughout their journey and lifecycle. You can then use these insights to optimise your performance and craft future campaigns that acquire even more loyal customers.

How peak played out by vertical

Every vertical we tracked peaked in November. Here's how November 2025 compared with the September to October average:

• Fashion: referred new customers up 111%, orders up 99% 

• Beauty: referred new customers up 54%, orders up 119% 

• Health and wellness: referred new customers up 47%, orders up 44% 

• Home, pets and garden: referred new customers up 65%, orders up 48% 

• Home brands only: referred new customers up 137%, orders up 52% 

• Food and drink: referred new customers up 40%, orders up 42%

Go live in 3 days, pay nothing until January

Launch in 1 to 3 days, go live by 1st November, and you'll pay nothing until 1st January. Run your whole peak on Mention Me, then decide.

Send us your November order volume and AOV, and we'll send your Cyber Weekend referral forecast within two working days. Get your free forecast today.