Prepare for Black Friday Cyber Monday with Personalization

Personalization and Advanced KDP are paid add-ons to Klaviyo's standard marketing application. You can also use these features during an active trial. Head to our billing guide to learn how to purchase these plans.

You will learn

• Which Personalization features to set up before Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM)
• What each feature improves and how to use it during peak season
• How to check what's working

Before you begin

Peak season brings more sends, offers with hard start and end times, and a wave of first-time buyers. Setting up Personalization in the weeks before Black Friday gives you time to test features and lock in your settings before volume picks up.

This guide covers where Personalization fits in your BFCM plan. For deliverability, segmentation, and flow prep, start with the Klaviyo Academy guides under Additional resources.

Next Best Product also requires Catalog insights to be set up.

At a glance

Set up early

Some settings take time to apply while others need more lead time to see reliable results, so leave a buffer before your first BFCM send:

• New to Personalization or starting a trial: RFM, predictions, and Next Best Product take 24 to 48 hours to populate
• Next Best Product setting changes: up to 24 hours to apply
• New RFM model properties: up to 2 hours to apply
• Personalized Send Time and Audience Optimization: results 24 hours after each campaign finishes
• Personalized Content in Flows: usually several weeks to see reliable results

Test these features before Black Friday.

Audience Optimization

Audience Optimization removes profiles that are unlikely to engage or convert, or likely to unsubscribe, before a campaign sends. It's designed to cut unsubscribes while holding conversion steady. It works in email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, push, and omnichannel campaigns.

Use it to:

• Protect your list as you expand to a broader audience for your biggest sale sends
• Add less engaged groups to sale sends once you've warmed up your sending volume

Keep in mind:

• It works alongside your BFCM sending ramp, not in place of it. Follow Land in the inbox on BFCM to build up volume gradually.
• Check the estimated count when you turn it on to see how many profiles it will skip, and review them afterward in Recipient activity > Optimized.
• Turn it off for messages you've promised to everyone on a list, like early access codes.

To turn it on, add an audience in the campaign's Audience step, then turn on Audience Optimization.

Personalized Send Time

Personalized Send Time sends a campaign to each recipient at their predicted best time, within a delivery window you set, in their local time. It's available for email, SMS, push, and WhatsApp campaigns. It's designed to lift opens and clicks.

Use it for:

• Teasers, previews, and early access announcements
• Gift guides and product roundups
• Holiday campaigns after Cyber Monday
• Cyber 5 sends from the BFCM daily sending guide, with each delivery window set to the morning, afternoon, or evening slot

Use a fixed send time for:

• Flash sales and offers that end tonight
• Launches that open at a set clock time, like a doorbuster
• Same-day sends, since Personalized Send Time must be scheduled at least a day ahead

When you schedule:

• Set the delivery window to the hours your offer is live.
• Schedule early in the day. If a recipient's window has already passed, they get the message the next day.
• Space out same-day campaigns that go to overlapping audiences, since Smart Sending may skip some recipients.
• Expect a narrower window for SMS, which follows quiet hours.

RFM analysis

RFM analysis groups customers by how recently, how often, and how much they buy. You can use RFM groups in segments, flow splits, and show/hide logic, or trigger flows from RFM segments. Find it under Personalization > Customer insights > RFM analysis.

Use it to:

• Treat Champions and Loyal customers as your VIPs, with early access or perks instead of your deepest discount
• Save your strongest offers for Needs Attention and At Risk customers
• Win back your Inactive group, with Audience Optimization on to drop profiles likely to unsubscribe

Before BFCM:

• Add engagement and consent criteria to every RFM segment you send to, as covered in Use winning segmentation strategies for BFCM. RFM groups are based on purchases, not on email or text engagement.
• Finalize your RFM model settings. Changing them resets each profile's Previous RFM group to Unknown, which can affect RFM-triggered flows.
• Add a filter to RFM-triggered flows, like win-back, so anyone who places an order exits. Many customers will change groups during BFCM, and profiles update every 24 hours.

Next Best Product

Next Best Product recommends the product each customer is most likely to buy next, based on their most recent purchase. Best Cross-Sell Date predicts the best time to cross-sell to them. You can add Next Best Product to email, SMS, RCS, and WhatsApp messages.

Before BFCM:

• Exclude products you don't want recommended, like gift cards or doorbusters likely to sell out, and set price and stock filters. Go to Personalization > Catalog insights > Advanced settings > Edit next best product settings. Changes can take up to 24 hours.
• Check which products are bought together in Catalog insights, and use them to build BFCM bundles and add-on offers.
• Turn on the Next best product cross-sell flow from the flow library. It follows up with each customer on their Best Cross-Sell Date, so a first BFCM order can turn into a second one.

After BFCM:

• Holiday gifts become each buyer's most recent purchase, so spot-check a few profiles' recommendations before your January cross-sell sends.
• For more ways to bring first-time buyers back, see Turn BFCM shoppers into repeat customers.

Personalized Content in Flows

Personalized Content in Flows uses AI to adapt the copy of an SMS, or the plain text in an MMS or RCS message, in a flow to how engaged each customer is right now. Your links, offers, and dynamic tags stay exactly as you set them, and every personalized message is automatically A/B tested against your original. Klaviyo also aims to keep each personalized version within the same number of message segments as your original. It works in Added to Cart, Viewed Product, Started Checkout, Back in Stock, Price Drop, and Win Back flows, and it's included with the Personalization plan.

Use it to:

• Give active shoppers a more direct nudge in cart and checkout texts, and shoppers who've only browsed a softer one
• Keep texts from sounding repetitive while customers hear from you more often. It considers the marketing messages each customer received in the past week and varies the wording.

Before BFCM:

• Set your brand voice under Content > Media & brand > Brand > Voice. It's your main control over tone and guardrails, like words to avoid and formatting rules.
• Make your BFCM edits to the message first, then toggle on Personalize this message in the message drawer. Any later change to the copy, offers, or tags resets the test, including reverting after BFCM.
• Turn it on across supported flows now.
• If you add BFCM-only messages or flow paths, turn it on for each new message, since it applies message by message.

Keep in mind:

• About half of customers receive your original message as the control group.
• It can't be turned on for a message with an active A/B test.

Funnel and Cohort Analysis

• During the peak, use Funnel Analysis to find where shoppers drop off. Create a segment from that drop-off and send a flow aimed at that moment.
• After the peak, use Cohort Analysis to track repeat purchases from customers whose first order came during BFCM, and time your Q1 sends to match.

Discount Affinity (Preview)

Discount Affinity labels each customer as a Deal seeker, Mixed buyer, Full-price buyer, and Unknown (not enough order history), based on how often their orders from the last 2 years used a discount compared with your typical customer. It reads discounts from your ecommerce integration Placed Order events, not just Klaviyo coupon codes. The affinity score is saved on each profile – use it in segments, campaign audiences, flow profile filters, or splits so that you can stop sending your deepest codes to customers who mostly buy at full price.

Use it to:

• Give Full-price buyers in your Champions or Loyal RFM groups early access to your BFCM collection, instead of your deepest code
• Save your deepest offer, like a Cyber Monday extension or a last-call clearance send, for Deal seekers.
• Split your abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows so Full-price buyers get a reminder with no code and Deal seekers get your BFCM code.
• Pair it with RFM groups. For example, send Needs Attention customers with low affinity a VIP message without a code, and give At Risk customers with high affinity the offer.

Before BFCM:

• Spot-check a few profiles in your Full-price buyers segment. Sale and markdown prices don't count as discounts, so if you run sales by lowering product prices, some sale shoppers will show as Full-price buyers.
• If most first orders use a welcome code, add a condition for customers with more than 1 order when you target Deal seekers.
• Unknown is likely most of your list. Decide what Unknown gets, such as your standard BFCM offer.

Keep in mind:

• Use it anywhere profile properties work, including segments, flow splits, and show/hide blocks. Values update daily.
• Sales you run as sitewide price changes in your store aren't counted as discounts, so the score is strongest if you mostly discount with codes and offers.
• Some profiles are in a control group with a randomized value, so your segments include some customers outside their actual group.
• During the beta, you can't show or hide a coupon block by Discount Affinity. Use separate campaigns or a flow split to send different offers.

Measure results

Personalized Send Time, Audience Optimization, and Personalized Content in Flows each compare against a control group, so their results show the lift the feature caused. BFCM won't look like a typical week, so read those results against the control group instead of your usual baseline.

• Personalized Send Time: compare personalized and control recipients in the campaign report and the account-level performance view.
• Audience Optimization: see profiles removed on each campaign's Audience Optimization card, and expand its impact section for the change in unsubscribe rate across campaigns.
• Personalized Content in Flows: check the Performance section on each message for click rate and placed orders. Numbers stay grey until they reach 90% statistical significance.
• RFM and Next Best Product: the Personalization homepage shows attributed revenue from sends that used these features, not a measured lift. Star your RFM segments to track their size and Historic CLV in Audience Performance.

Pre-BFCM checklist

• Finalize RFM model settings and build BFCM segments with engagement and consent criteria
• Update Next Best Product exclusions and stock filters at least a day before your first send
• Turn on the Next best product cross-sell flow
• Set your brand voice, finish your BFCM flow edits, then turn on Personalized Content in supported SMS flows
• Decide which campaigns get Personalized Send Time and which need a fixed send time
• Test Personalized Send Time and Audience Optimization on a few campaigns
• Add an order-based exit filter to RFM-triggered flows
• Space out same-day campaigns that go to overlapping audiences

Additional resources

Klaviyo Academy

• Land in the inbox on Black Friday Cyber Monday
• BFCM daily sending guide
• Use winning segmentation strategies for BFCM
• Prepare your flows for BFCM
• Turn BFCM shoppers into repeat customers

Help Center

• Drive performance with right time delivery using Personalized Send Time
• Improve campaign performance with Audience Optimization
• Tailor your SMS flow messages with Personalized Content in Flows
• Understanding campaign schedule and send options
• How to build a segment using RFM properties
• How to avoid over-discounting using RFM groups
• How to create a retention flow triggered off of RFM groups and customer behavior changes
• Getting started with the Catalog Insights dashboards
• Customizing your next best product (NBP) recommendations
• How to create a dynamic cross-sell flow using the product analysis report