Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year and I'm not here to debate (although I will drop a poll at the bottom of the newsletter). |
I grew up waking up to the Macy's Day Parade on TV, playing in the Turkey Bowl with extended friends and family, fighting with my mom to put on football instead of the dog show, then sitting on the couch for hours with my family until it was time to go to dinner wherever we were celebrating. |
Thanksgiving became a lot more entertaining during and after college. Getting a little too drunk the night before at the hometown bars, running into your exes, and seeing all of your best friends growing up was always an absolute riot. |
I'm thankful for all of those incredible memories. |
But I'm not going to make this whole post some sappy shit about my childhood and share what I'm thankful for. Instead I want to share the behind the scenes of Thanksgiving and Black Friday here at beehiiv. |
We give the entire company off both Thursday and Friday because I'm not a monster. I can't believe some employers expect people to work (or worse, travel back and commute to the office) on the day after Thanksgiving. Chill out. |
Back in my college fraternity days, each Thanksgiving we would create a thread and drop a list of things that we were thankful for. It mostly consisted of making fun of each other and recalling the best moments from the year. It was always the most entertaining way to spend Thanksgiving while hungover on the couch watching football. |
A few years ago, I decided to bring that tradition to beehiiv. I kick off each Thursday morning with a fresh thread listing off what I'm most thankful for. |
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People reply-all and join in one after the other throughout the day, each trying to outdo the ridiculousness of the prior email. It's my favorite tradition and so incredibly wholesome. |
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Outside of just good vibes, this time of year drives a ton of revenue for the business. |
We didn't always offer some sort of Black Friday promotion. I had always assumed that Black Friday / Cyber Monday (BFCM) was only for retail brands and consumer goods. I never really saw SaaS companies offering deals around the holidays. |
Plus, I vividly recall some alleged guru on X ranting about how software businesses should never offer discounts. Related: don't listen to most advice you get on the internet; there's no one size fits all. |
In our second year, our growth lead made a strong case for doing some sort of BFCM promotion. We landed on offering 20% off annual plans. Getting users to upgrade to an annual plan is killer for a few (somewhat obvious) reasons: |
You get cash upfront. Rather than waiting 10 months (or in this case, 8 months) to collect revenue, you get paid immediately and can deploy that cash to grow the business. Improves churn. Users on an annual plan are much less likely to churn… because they already paid for the full year.
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In the months leading up to November 2023, we were generating $300-400K per month in revenue. With BFCM, we more than doubled our revenue and experienced our first $1M month (which was an absolute rush). |
Last year we ran it back with an almost identical playbook… and it delivered yet again. We were generating roughly $1M per month leading up to November, and we generated $1.7M (+70% MoM) in November with the promotion. |
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This year is a bit wonky with Cyber Monday (yesterday) landing in December. Cyber Monday is usually the biggest day of the promotion because people love to procrastinate (and are also busy traveling the week prior). That said — as you can (kind of) see from the chart above, we closed more than $2.5M in revenue this November. |
When considering revenue from the Ad Network and Boosts, we smashed through $3M in monthly revenue for the first time ever (actually closer to $4M than $3M tbh). A nice little milestone that I'm thankful for. |
Behind the scenes, there's actually quite a lot of coordination required to pull off the promotion. Here's a quick run through of what's going on… |
First and foremost is creating the 2025BFCM code that users input to claim the promotion. There are a million and a half different rules and exceptions put into place to avoid abuse, but I'll spare you all terms and conditions here. |
We create a dedicated Black Friday landing page to drive traffic to across channels. It clearly showcases the promotion, flexes our latest features, and compares our product to competitors. |
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I remember the days back when Black Friday actually started on Friday. These days companies seem to launch their promos earlier and earlier in the week, and we are no exception. This year we kicked off our promotion the Monday of Thanksgiving and fired off a promotional email to our users. |
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The image-heavy and consumer-centric styled emails are a bit out of character relative to our normal comms, but we have tested them in previous years and they perform super well for the occasion. |
We also have an entire social schedule of clever posts throughout the week to drive additional awareness to the promotion. Somehow, embarrassing me and photoshopping my face onto turkeys and other things has become our weapon of choice. |
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Or perhaps that trend began back in 2023 when we genuinely ran out of ideas for content so I came up with this masterpiece (and it somehow worked). Being a young startup with no ego is the best because you can try dumb things that either work, or you can laugh about (or both). |
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We've come a long way. |
There's quite a lot of other moving parts happening behind the scenes between growth, operations, engineering, and support to ensure we really juice it for all that we can. This year being our third go at it, it's a pretty well-oiled machine. |
Although, I do have to warn you about the comedown. When the promotion hits, it pulls forward a ton of revenue. You'll end up converting a lot of high-intent users that were lurking, which means there is a lot less demand in the immediate aftermath of the promotion. |
Due to that, and the end of year holidays, December revenue is usually a bit of a slump. A little comedown after a big dopamine high hasn't stopped me before though (translation: worth it). |
Edit: |
Just as I was about to fire off the newsletter this morning, we decided to extend the promotion until midnight tonight. Here's the email I just sent to our users a few minutes ago: |
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If you want to support your favorite newsletter writer, or more importantly, want to build something truly special, there's never been a better time to get started. |
You can redeem 20% off annual plans for just another few hours 👈 |
Oh, and don't forget to vote in the poll so we can settle this debate once and for all… |
What's the best holiday? |
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If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/black-friday-2025 |
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