Want to create the best Shopify store experience for your customers this Black Friday? Great! Buckle up because this year’s Black Friday extravaganza is about to get a whole lot more exciting!

Get ready to dive headfirst into the retail chaos, armed with the secret weapons of subscription-based bliss.

We’re about to reveal how some of the savviest businesses on the planet have turned Black Friday into a subscription funhouse that’s as irresistible as that extra slice of pie on Thanksgiving.

Whether you’re into binge-watching, snacking, grooming, or even strutting your stuff in fancy undies, this Black Friday, we’ve got the scoop on how to offer the best deals, position yourself as the sweetest brand, and strut your stuff in style—all while mastering the art of subscriptions.

So, grab a cup of coffee and let’s explore how to transform your Shopify store on Black Friday into a subscription powerhouse that’s as entertaining as it is profitable

16 Ways to Boost Sales on Your Shopify Store for Black Friday

These strategies not only enhance the subscriber experience but also make your Shopify store a dynamic and profitable hub for subscription-based services.

Here are the 5 ways to prepare your e-commerce store for Black Friday.

To boost revenue, the highest ROI comes from being creative with recurring orders and subscription offers on your Shopify store.

1. Create a Gift Guide for the Holidays

In your gift guide you can showcase your different products that you have on your store for the holiday season including limited edition products, merchandise, and of course your subscriptions. This is the perfect way to showcase your subscription offerings including gift subscriptions. A gift guide is the perfect way to kick off the holiday season and you can include it in a newsletter which helps potential and existing customers learn about new products and deals you have for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

2. Tiered Subscription Plans

Elevate your subscription game by offering tiered plans. Create different subscription levels, each with its own unique perks, pricing, and exclusives. This not only caters to a broader range of customers but also encourages them to upgrade for more benefits, thus boosting your average order value. This is especially powerful for digital memberships.

3. Limited-Edition Subscription Boxes

Generate buzz by occasionally releasing limited-edition subscription boxes, especially during the holiday season. These themed boxes could coincide with special occasions or holidays like Black Friday, offering exclusive products or rare freebies. Scarcity and exclusivity tend to entice subscribers to act swiftly.

4. Loyalty Programs

Implement a loyalty program within your subscriptions. Reward long-term subscribers with discounts, early access to sales, or even surprise freebies. The more they engage, the more they earn, creating a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

5. Up-selling and Cross-Selling

Maximize your revenue potential by using up-selling and cross-selling techniques within your subscription service. Suggest complementary products or premium add-ons during the subscription process to increase the overall order value.

6. Gamify the Experience

Gamification is a playful way to engage subscribers. The best way to gamify the shopping experience is to offer contests on your social media with free giveaways and freebies to get people to share your social accounts and spread word of mouth marketing.

7. Bundling Subscription Products

Having a Build your Own Bundle on your website is the best way to let customers choose what they want to subscribe to on an ongoing basis. This is also the best way to lower the cancellation rates because people are hand-selecting what they want instead of you picking it out for them, so there will be a higher success rate that they like the items. Ongoing offers a Build Your Own Box and a Bundle & Save subscription feature for Shopify stores.

8. Create a Black Friday Page on your store

This page on your website can be dedicated to all your black Friday deals. You’ll want a call to action with a button that takes them straight to your most popular subscription product, or a collection of subscription products to choose from.

9. Offer Free Shipping for Black Friday

It’s no secret that offering free shipping is a sure way to get people to order your products. And yet many online stores do not offer free shipping, but they wonder why they have so many abandoned carts. If margins are tight and you’re wondering how do I offer free shipping when the price of everything is going up, you can recalculate the price of the product to be more expensive and then include the shipping in it. This lets the customer to see the total price on the product page which would have shipping already in it, which can help them see the value in the pricing because they don’t have to pay an additional fee for shipping.

10. Offer Fast Shipping for Black Friday

Not only is free shipping the new norm but now fast shipping is also commonly expected. Amazon Prime now offers “1 day delivery” which is has created a new normal for how fast people expect to get their delivery. It’s important to let your customers know your delivery is fast & reliable, so it can remove any hesitation from the buyer that it will arrive quickly.

11. Offer Different Price Points

What if you could offer low-end pricing and high-end pricing on the same product? Seem too good to be true, it’s not! You can do this with Ongoing Subscriptions. For example…if you offer a subscription product, it’s nice to be able to offer lower priced options such as a “basic” version or smaller version of a product. You can also offer a higher priced option or “deluxe” version of the product so that you can capture different customers at various price points.

12. Create Black Friday Coupon Codes

Don’t make your customers search for a coupon code, make it easy for them this Black Friday by creating a help article with 1-5 different coupon codes that they can use on their holiday order. This is a great way to make it easier for the shopper to actually buy your product, because you gave them a deal to save money.

13. Limited Edition product for the Holiday

Everyone loves a limited edition. It’s the best way to encourage people to spend some money on your website because it’s not an everyday product but only a seasonal product that will be around for a short amount of time and then no longer available after the holidays or when it sells out. It’s also possible to offer the limited edition product on a subscription basis (let’s say for 3 months) until it runs out. Ongoing subscriptions has advanced subscription inventory controls that will know if a product is out of stock so that it won’t create an order if you no longer have the product or need to get rid of a SKU.

14. Give a Free Gift for Black Friday

One of our best black Friday ecommerce tips to grow your sales is to offer a free gift for Black Friday. This makes ordering a subscription a no brainer when there is a freebie involved, this creates foam which is fear of missing out and people don’t want to miss out on your free gift. It should be a limited time free gift only for Black Friday and Cyber Monday with a deadline and expiration date to order by. Best of all you can offer the free gift only if they subscribe.

15. Offer a Discount for the First 3 Shipments

You can create a discount for your subscription products that only applies to the first three shipments. If you don’t currently offer discounts on your subscriptions, this will then apply a discount to them, and then it falls off after the 3rd shipment, and your products will go back to being their regular price. If you already have a subscription discount, the discount code will get applied on top to sweeten the deal even more, and again fall off after three shipments. This also discourages people from cancelling after the first order because they’ll still get the discount on their 2nd and 3rd subscription order, which keeps them on longer, and hopefully they’ll stay on forever if they like the product.

16. Offer Quantity Discounts for Subscriptions

With Ongoing subscriptions, you can offer a subscription discount if a customer orders a certain amount of items. Let’s say you want them to order 2 or more items, you can make it so that they have to subscribe to two products or more so that they can get the subscription discount. This can be achieved with our Build aa Box / Bundle & Save subscription feature. Having a minimum item amount is helpful for increasing the average order volume (basically it gets people to buy more products which earns your more money).

Case Studies of Subscription Companies – Black Friday Ecommerce Tips

These case studies show how businesses that use Shopify for their e-commerce websites along with subscriptions can boost Black Friday sales and enhance customer loyalty.

I’m going to take a look at six coffee companies who offer subscriptions.

Imagine having the power to deliver your awesome products to your customers doorstep whenever they wanted. The subscription model is your key to making this a reality. Let’s take a closer look at some renowned companies that have mastered this art

Blue Bottle Coffee uses the Shopify platform to create a website where they can offer coffee products. This company uses the power of subscriptions to deliver fresh coffee beans directly to the homes of coffee lovers. They’ve transformed the coffee experience into a subscription service that feels like receiving a cherished gift in the mailbox.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: Blue Bottle Coffee offers special a special Black Friday promotion to subscribers, including limited edition coffee releases and discounts which they promote on social media & via their newsletter.

Trade Coffee acts as a matchmaker, connecting customers with coffee that perfectly suits their preferences. By utilizing the Shopify platform and a subscriptions model Trade Coffee creates personalized coffee experiences, strengthening customer bonds by delivering exactly what they desire.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: Get a free bag of coffee with any gift subscription purchase. Ongoing Subscriptions offers Gift subscriptions which are perfect for the holiday season. We can help you offer a free bag of coffee with gift subscription orders, which helps increase subscription sales because customers are not only buying coffee subscriptions for themselves but they’re also buying coffee subscriptions for their friends and family members.

Stumptown Coffee takes coffee delivery to another level through the Shopify platform. Their subscription service feels like a treasure chest filled with coveted coffee gems, all ready to be savored.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: Stumptown’s Coffee has a holiday gift guide showcasing their limited edition coffee flavors as well as their subscription offers. They also offer free shipping over $40 and 15% off the first three shipments of coffee with a coupon code, advertised in an announcement bar at the top of the website.

MistoBox operates like an exclusive coffee club, offering subscribers a taste of various unique coffee brands. They’ve created a community of coffee enthusiasts through this approach.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: Misto has offered a flat $5 shipping rate on their coffee products to help incentivize customers to order with them easily. They also have two versions of their coffee, a Basic version and a Deluxe version so that they capture both sides of the market. A simple example is if you have a subscription box you can have a “deluxe” version and a “Basic” version. It’s nice to be able to offer two different price points so customers can pick the one that they want.

Craft Coffee turns every subscription box into a coffee-themed party. Their adventurous approach keeps customers engaged and excited about what’s brewing next.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: Craft coffee created a page on their website dedicated to all things Black Friday. This is super smart because if people google “craft coffee black Friday” this is the page that pulls up as the first result on Google. This is a great way to use the power of google to your advantage. Having a page with your black Friday deals helps to showcase your discounts and offerings to your customers without them having to go out of their way to find it. This will increase the likelihood of getting a sale, and converting that shopper into a paying subscriber.

Driftaway Coffee, a coffee subscription company has an online store with Shopify and they offers coffee subscriptions on their DTC website. Their clean design and straight-forward offerings make them a great example of a business that uses subscriptions to generate customer loyalty & recurring revenue.

Black Friday Subscriptions Offer: For Black Friday, they offer special discounts to subscribers, encouraging new sign-ups and retention of existing customers. One of the things I noticed they did really well was they created a help doc with easy access to their subscription products with quick links to the subscription products with the coupon codes spelled out right there on the same page.

Black Friday Boost: Retail Magic!

On a special day known as Black Friday, subscriptions take things up a notch:

Offering Black Friday discounts to subscribers is like a golden opportunity to make your customers feel appreciated, encouraging them to keep coming back.

Providing limited-edition goodies and exclusive items is akin to creating a buzz and excitement that’s hard to resist.

Gamification elements, such as badges or rewards, make the subscription experience even more engaging, turning subscribers into enthusiastic participants in your brand’s journey

No matter your passion or product that you’re selling, these subscription models are your gateway to increased revenue and stronger customer relationships.

By taking a page from these successful companies that have harnessed the power of Shopify and subscriptions, you can elevate your business to new heights.

It’s time to unlock the secrets of subscription success and apply them to your own venture. Raise your entrepreneurial spirit and let’s embark on this journey together!

Install Ongoing Subscriptions today & grow your Shopify store.