Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Dates for 2025

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are crucial dates in the marketing calendar. They’re also important dates if you work in retail. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two days in the year when goods and products are heavily discounted so that consumers can secure a bargain. Over the years, it has become far more competitive between businesses, each one fighting against the others to pull customers into their stores and onto their websites. But when are Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2025? Let’s take a look.

When is Black Friday 2025?

Black Friday 2025 is on 28th November. While some retailers will only hold their deals for that one day, others will hold the event over the weekend or even for the next week or so. However, these days, most retailers will start offering their discounts, albeit not as generously, at the start of the month, in preparation for larger drops in price on Black Friday. As such, some businesses will refer to November as Black November. 

When is Cyber Monday 2025?

Cyber Monday is held on the Monday after Black Friday. In 2025, Cyber Monday is being held on 1st December. As previously mentioned, some retailers will have discount sales starting on Black Friday and ending on Cyber Monday. While some businesses will allow for continued in-store discounts on Cyber Monday, many will move their deals online, hence the term’Cyber’ Monday. Cyber Monday is more prominent in the world of e-commerce.

Why do Black Friday & Cyber Monday still matter (& what’s changed in 2025)?

Before diving into tactics for marketing Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, let’s understand the landscape and key trends so that your preparation is better grounded. Firstly, Cyber Monday and Black Friday continue to drive disproportionately large volumes of sales and traffic for many retailers, according to Dodigital. The same source also claims that, in 2024, mobile devices accounted for a very high share of traffic and sales, reinforcing that mobile-first optimisation is not optional.

In addition, owned channels, such as email, SMS, push, and app notifications, are becoming more important relative to “always buy ads”. This is because competition (and ad costs) intensifies around that period and having strong direct relationships with your audience gives you more control, claims MobiLoud.

As well as this, AI, personalisation, dynamic offers and real-time decisioning are gaining traction, such as generative AI chatbots and offer optimisation techniques. Finally, consumers are more savvy (and sceptical) of discounts, so transparency, trust and brand alignment matter now more than ever before.

How to prepare for Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2025

To prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, regardless of the industry you work in, your main priority is to offer attractive sales, deals and discounts. It needs to be generous for people to bite. Refrain from running the same deals as you did throughout the year just gone, because consumers won’t feel like it’s lucrative to make a purchase on Black Friday or Cyber Monday if they can hold out until after Christmas and get the same thing for the same price then. You want to be competitive, so make your deals stand out from what your competitors are offering their customers. 

If you’re a marketer who is preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then the main thing you can do is get ahead of the game. Plan out and start launching social media campaigns, come up with seasonal article ideas to draw people in and maybe look into leads for a press release. If the client you’re writing for is offering bigger discounts than ever before, or when compared to their competitors, why not shout from the rooftops about it sooner rather than later? Other ways to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing are as follows:

• Set out clear goals and guardrails – define what “success” means and hit some KPIs, such as total revenue, return on ad spend, customer retention, profit margins and more
• Data, segmentation and personalisation – use last year’s data to identify the best deals that people bought into. Segment your audience and personalise your emails for good measure
• Prioritise owned media and low-cost channels – rely on first-party assets, such as emails, newsletters, push notifications, app notifications and social media posts
• Testing, anticipation and VIP access – tease early with “coming soon” deals not to be missed. Offer VIP early access to discounts and use “gated” teasers involving signing up for newsletters or mailing lists, for instance. Test it on a focus group before launch
• Creative, messaging and urgency – plan some creative messages to grab people’s attention. Highlight the value in context and make customers feel valued with personalisation and more

Do you need some help with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing in 2025? If so, then get in touch with a member of our friendly, specialist team today. We are proud to offer SEO, PPC, content writing and website design services, to name just a few of the marketing services we provide clients throughout the country.