A Black Friday Giveaway is an ideal campaign for retailers to run during the most crucial month of the year. 

Hosting a giveaway in November will make your brand stand out in a sea of incredible offers from competitors. More users will discover your offers, which means more leads, more traffic, and more sales over the Black Friday weekend. 

All of this is why giveaways are excellent for promoting your brand’s Black Friday offers. 

We know this because we analyzed past Black Friday giveaways to find some interesting results. These brands successfully promoted their Black Friday specials, increased website traffic, and more by hosting a giveaway before Black Friday.

We have these case studies, giveaway examples, and giveaway ideas here for you to explore and learn more about hosting your own Black Friday giveaway.

But first, let’s take a closer look at the benefits of Black Friday Giveaways.

Black Friday 2024 Update

“Black Friday isn’t what it used to be.”

The average consumer

Due to volatile economies globally and businesses consistently improving their marketing strategies, Black Friday is no longer what it used to be in the good ol’ days.

This may seem discouraging. However, all is not lost! Many brands are still competing to deliver the best specials that are great value for money.

We have updated this post with this year’s Black Friday trends to help you stay ahead and on top of your marketing game. We also included some key predictions. Enjoy!

Black Friday 2024 Trends and Marketing Strategies

Email Marketing

• Send warm-up emails in the weeks leading to BF. Brands usually start mid-October. Consider using email marketing software that includes a lot of Black Friday templates to make the job easier.
• Reconcile your abandoned carts. Send out emails to recover income from abandoned carts in the weeks prior to BF. List BF Promos in those emails. You could inform those users if the items in their cart are going on sale.
• Sincerely thank customers who have participated in your BF promotions.

Social Media Marketing

• Tell a unique story by building social media threads and sequences that are in line with your 2024 BF promotions.
• People surf social media with a constant eye on BF specials. Don’t be generic. Create posts that will grab your audience’s attention.
• Use the best QR code generators to add an interactive element to your posts, leading customers directly to exclusive deals and discounts.

SMS Marketing

• SMS has an insane open rate of 99% as compared to email open rate of 18%.
• Limited Time Offers work well with SMS as users can instantly open the offer on their phone and make a purchase.

Cross Sell Discounts

Online shoppers love “one-stop shopping.” For example, a customer will purchase a smartphone, case, charger, and car accessory. However, the decision to make the purchase isn’t an easy one. Which is why discounted accessories can help motivate the customer to purchase the main item – The Smartphone.

Heavily discounting complimentary products can entice customers to buy the more expensive main product.

Black Friday Predictions

Here’s a quick rundown of Black Friday 2024 predictions from the web:

• Last year’s deals were not so convincing. Some retailers jacked their prices up to show large discounts after selling products at normal prices (see meme below). We hope this trend does not continue this year, with brands being more transparent with pricing.
• Sales may last longer. So, look out for deals that extend past Cyber Monday and into December. Some industries have excess stock to worry about and would try hard to clear their old stock before Christmas.
• A better macroeconomic environment and improved consumer confidence show more promising sales this year over the previous year.
• Trust and user experience will be a deal breaker. if your product is priced similarly to your competitor, customers will buy from you if they trust you more and believe you to be more reliable. Shipping times and prices will also be a contributing factor.
• People will look for larger, more sustainable products. Customers in need of fridges, TVs, and other expensive products will wait a few more months for Black Friday. Make it worth their while.
• Lifetime Deals are popular for software firms with monthly subscriptions. Lookout for these deals available for apps, games, and other software.

Remember to always keep an eye out for Black Friday Lists that include the essential products and services that you have an interest in.

Who Should Host Black Friday Giveaways?

The easy answer to this is Every brand that offers Black Friday deals!

However, not all brands and retail industries are created equal. This is why you should research giveaways more to find out if giveaways will be the right solution for your brand. 

The good news is that we have already researched Black Friday giveaways for you by analyzing real-world Black Friday giveaways and designing a few Black Friday giveaways ourselves. You can find all this in the sections below. 

Before we go through some examples of brands that should host Black Friday giveaways, let us take a look at some Black Friday stats: 

• 93.2 million people made purchases on Black Friday in 2019
• Average Black Friday savings are 37%
• 40% of shoppers make their purchases online
• 36% of consumers will do most of their holiday shopping over Black Friday

The best selling products over Black Friday are Clothing and Electronics. Furniture is also popular, but shoppers do prefer to make their purchases in-store. 

So to sum up, Black Friday Giveaways are great for these brands:

• SaaS 
• Clothing, fashion, and accessories
• Electronics
• Gaming 
• Furniture
• E-commerce/online stores

If your industry is not mentioned above and you are interested in hosting a Black Friday giveaway, contact us for more info and guidance. 

How Does a Black Friday Giveaway Benefit My Brand?

Giveaways in general come with tons of benefits such as:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Building email lists
• Boosting engagement and fans on socials 
• Increase in software or app downloads

Waiakea hosted a successful giveaway and achieved incredible results (see image below). 

Visit the Waiakea Giveaway Case Study to learn more.

While Black Friday can be the busiest day of the year for many, your brand can still easily be overlooked by eager consumers. It’s actually common for people to discover great deals only after Black Friday weekend!

People online are attracted to giveaways. You can use your giveaway to get more people to discover your Black Friday offers. This is why it’s best to host the giveaway before Black Friday.

More Benefits to Black Friday Giveaways

Let’s delve into how Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) giveaways can bring myriad benefits to your brand:

Traffic boost

Hosting a Black Friday giveaway on your website will motivate online users to visit your website. New users that just discovered your brand will want to look around your website to find out more about your brand.

Target audience

Choosing a relevant prize that your audience desires will attract those users to your giveaway. Attracting your target audience and driving that traffic to your website can boost Black Friday sales.

BFCM deal previews

Many brands don’t disclose their Black Friday deals until the last minute. Your brand can allow your giveaway entrants to preview your BFCM promos. This strategy will get more users, that are intrigued by your preview offers, to enter the giveaway, thus increasing the results of the campaign. 

Increased Brand Visibility

One of the primary reasons brands lean into giveaways during Black Friday is for enhanced brand visibility. When people share, like, or comment on your giveaway post on social platforms, it ensures that your brand gets attention from not just your target audience, but also from the networks of every individual who engages with your post.

Builds Customer Loyalty

Customers appreciate businesses that give them more than just a product or service. A well-executed giveaway can build a sense of loyalty among your customers, creating a stronger emotional connection with your brand.

Data Collection

Giveaways can be a goldmine for collecting customer data. This doesn’t mean exploiting personal information, but rather collecting insights into consumer preferences and habits. For instance, you can request participants to answer a short survey to enter the giveaway, providing valuable market research.

Cost-effective Marketing

Compared to other forms of advertising, a giveaway can be incredibly cost-effective. While there’s the cost of the product or service you’re giving away, the reach and engagement can often surpass traditional advertising channels in terms of ROI.

Increased Sales

While the idea of giving away products might seem counterintuitive to driving sales, it’s often the opposite. Many customers, after participating in a giveaway, browse other offerings or even make unplanned purchases. Offering a giveaway can be the bait that lures them into your sales funnel.

Social Media Growth

Want more followers on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? A giveaway can be your ticket. By making “following your account” a condition for participation, you can witness a boost in your followers count.

Black Friday Giveaway Examples

We analyzed 3 Black Friday Giveaways to find out why these campaigns were successful on the most popular retail weekend of the year. 

We hope that our findings will help you to discover a deeper understanding of how to host a Black Friday giveaway.

Microless Black Friday Giveaway – Online Store

• Entry Method: Follow and Tag the giveaway post to enter. Bonus entry for sharing the giveaway.
• Prize: NZXT Power Pack
• Ideal for: Online Stores, Physical Stores, or Gaming/Computer Brands

Microless is an online computer and electronics store. They are based in Dubai and have a respectable Instagram following of around 27K followers.

Microless hosted a Black Friday Giveaway to boost engagement and discoverability on its Instagram account. These goals would help Microless effectively market its Black Friday promos on Instagram and drive traffic back to its site.

The giveaway prize is a Power Pack from NZXT, which includes a PC case and power supply unit. It is not a conventional prize, but it is still appealing to Microless’ target audience.

Key Takeaways:

• It is a simple giveaway featuring a cool image and Instagram post, effectively creating brand exposure during Black Friday.
• The prize is appealing to gamers and computer enthusiasts. This is the ideal target audience for Microless, a company that sells computer peripherals and other electronics.

FGL BFCM Giveaway – Online Store

• Entry Method: Answer a question in the comments
• Prize: Assassin’s Creed Game
• Ideal for: Bloggers, Creators, or Micro-influencers

Free Game Lottery FGL is a micro-influencer/gamer that regularly hosts giveaways on Instagram. The “pick your game” giveaway is popular on the platform and is the basis of this campaign.

FGL hosted a giveaway that allowed entrants to choose between two Assassin’s Creed games (Origins and Odyssey). Instagram users had to place their answers in the comments section to enter.

Getting giveaway entrants to answer a question will boost engagement and create more visibility for the post and brand. The hard part is getting people to comment.

Asking people to make a choice and comment is an excellent idea, as it gives users the freedom to make their own decisions and comments. Consider asking engaging questions in your giveaway posts that encourage users to comment.

Key Takeaways:

• The entry method is simple and requires little action from the user, making the giveaway easily accessible to many. This leads to more entries, which equates to more comments, a major boost in engagement, and post visibility.
• Asking questions in social media posts gives users an exciting opportunity to engage. Asking someone which game they prefer will certainly elicit a quick and easy response, especially from a gamer.

2 Game Black Friday Giveaway – E-commerce

• Entry Method: Visit 2 Game website to enter (submit your email to enter)
• Prize: Winners can select a game of their choice
• Ideal for: Online stores looking to boost website traffic and Black Friday sales

2 Game is an online PC gaming marketplace. They sell games specifically for PC gaming platforms like Steam and Origin.

Getting more users to discover their platform over Black Friday was 2 Game’s goal. They achieved this with their successful Black Friday giveaway. 

Users had to visit the website, select a game from the Black Friday promotion list and submit their details to enter the giveaway. 

The giveaway drove a large targeted audience of gamers to the 2 Game platform over their Black Friday weekend. 

Only a select amount of games were on promotion (and could be won in the giveaway). This led giveaway entrants, that only discovered 2 Game, to go on and make other purchases on the website. 

The only missed opportunity here was social media engagement. 2 Game could have allowed users to submit bonus entries by engaging with the brand on social media (likes, comments, shares). 

Key Takeaways:

• This campaign is an excellent example of how an e-commerce brand can use a giveaway during a promotion to drive traffic and Black Friday sales.
• Winners could choose their prize from a selection of games. 2 Game was smart in only offering a limited selection as opposed to any game on their platform. This strategy drove entrants to purchase games that were not included in the giveaway. So, if you are offering your own products as a prize, don’t offer all of your products.
• The prize, being PC games, is an ideal prize to attract 2 Game’s ideal audience of PC gamers. Offering a general prize like a smartphone will get more entries, but most of those entries might not car for 2 Game’s services in the future.

The Diamond Guy Black Friday Giveaway – Instagram

• Entry Method: Engage with the brand on social media
• Prize: Bride and Groom outfits, jewelry, and makeup
• Ideal for: Niche brands that have a small number of social followers

The Diamond Guy is a business run by jewelry designer, Darren Phillips. Darren has a decent following online on social media with over 18k followers. 

Darren hosted a giveaway to boost engagement on his social media profile and to acquire more followers. The intriguing part about his giveaway is that he didn’t go about it alone. He had help from other brands.

This campaign is actually a partner giveaway. A giveaway that has multiple brands promoting it to achieve a larger collective result that can be shared with each other. Partners can each chip in to create a larger prize.

The Diamond Guy niched down into the wedding niche by partnering with bridal brands to form a massive prize that will attract a target audience of eager brides. 

An excellent strategy to build a large following of potential brides that will need jewelry from The Diamond Guy.

Key Takeaways:

• An excellent example of how to host a partner giveaway. 
• With a partner giveaway, your brand can team up with other brands to build a larger, more desirable prize that will attract more people. This means better results for all brands to share (more followers and engagement. 
• The Diamond guy can appeal to a broad audience of jewelry lovers. Instead, he chose to niche down to couples looking to get married (bridal niche). This is an excellent audience for him to tap into. He attracted this audience by teaming up with brands that specialize in bridal wear, suits, and other wedding accessories.

Pink Blush Black Friday Giveaway – YouTube

• Entry Method: Subscribe to enter
• Prize: Pink Blush Gift Card Giveaway – $100 
• Ideal for: Ideal for YouTube Influencers (and Micro-influencers)

Ashley Sarvak is a YouTube Influencer that creates content that is focused on fashion and beauty. 

She hosted a giveaway over Black Friday to promote clothing that she bought from ShopPinkBlush.com. The prize was a $100 Pink Blush gift card (also sponsored by the Pink Blush store). 

Users are required to subscribe to Ashley’s channel to enter. You can also follow her on Instagram to increase your chances of winning. 

We see a great collaboration here with Pink Blush and Ashley. Pink Blush sponsors a prize to Ashley and she promotes their brand and products in return. 

Ashley also gets to boost her subscribers by giving away the sponsored prize.

Key Takeaways:

• This campaign is an excellent example of how a brand and influencer can collab with each other to host a giveaway on YouTube. Both parties stand to benefit from a single giveaway. 
• If you have an online store and need help hosting a giveaway, then you can simply sponsor a prize to an influencer and watch them promote your brand and products. 
• Hosting the giveaway over Black Friday allows the Influencer to drum up as much hype possible to her channel/video. This leads to a larger audience over the Black Friday promo weekend, which can be directed to the sponsor’s website.

Stone Glow Candles Black Friday Giveaway – Instagram

• Entry Method: Follow Stoneglow and Scentit to enter
• Prize: Fragrance Goodie Box for 2 winners (includes perfumes and scented candles)
• Ideal for: Makeup brands, influencers, and online stores 

Stoneglow Candles is an online store that specialises in scented candles, diffusers, and more. They have an impressive Instagram profile and regularly post content to promote their store. 

A Black Friday Giveaway is an amazing campaign for Stoneglow to host. Especially if they wish to promote their site and stand out during November. 

Giving away scented candles may not seem extravagant for most, which is why Stoneglow teamed up with ScentitUK to create a bigger prize bundle that also included perfumes.

Key Takeaways:

• The giveaway post is clear and concise, with an easy entry method. 
• Products are well displayed and have a black-and-white theme in line with Black Friday
• Teaming up with another brand to create a bigger prize will potentially draw a larger audience to the giveaway.

Black Friday Giveaway Ideas with VYPER

The team here at VYPER is never short of awesome ideas for giveaways. We took two of our favorite Black Friday giveaway ideas and created concept landing pages. 

We hope you enjoy our ideas and designs. You are free to use or ideas as you wish. 

NB. The giveaways below are all demo campaigns created using our service. You can signup for free here and create your own designs using VYPER – https://vyper.io/user/register?redirect=freeaccount 

Fashion Nova Black Friday Giveaway (E-comm/Online Store)

• Entry Method – Visit our website to enter
• Prize – $600 Fashion Nova gift cards (1st place $300, 2nd place $200, 3rd place $100)
• Goal – Boost website traffic and promote Black Friday Deals

Fashion Nova is a popular online fashion store that ships exclusive clothing lines globally. Black Friday is an excellent opportunity for the brand to clear old stock out of its massive inventories.

E-commerce brands that giveaway gift cards are guaranteed to get users to visit their websites and view products. People want to see what they can potentially buy if they win those gift cards. 

Using gift cards as a prize is a great strategy for getting new users to discover your brand and its products. 

Also, if the gift card is for your own store, then expenses related to your giveaway prize will be at a minimum. The winner might spend the $300 gift card at your store, but the actual expense of the goods can be below $200! 

Fashion Nova can run their gift card giveaway and announce winners before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Users will be reluctant to spend if the giveaway ends afterward. 

Benefits of this campaign:

• An exciting giveaway campaign that can generate new leads, traffic, and massive hype before Black Friday, the busiest day of the year for retailers. This is why hosting the giveaway on the website will be ideal in driving traffic to the website. Users can preview Black Friday promo items. 
• Fashion Nova can promote the giveaway on their socials and email list. They can lead people from those channels to their website to take part in the giveaway.
• Gift cards (for the brand’s store) are excellent prizes that are affordable and allow giveaway winners (and entrants) to discover and engage with the online store.
• Allowing winners “early access” to Black Friday promos is a simple way to hype up your prize even more without it costing you anything.

VYPER Black Friday Giveaway (SaaS Brands)

• Entry Method – Purchase the VYPER BFCM Deal to enter
• Prize – SaaS Software Bundle (sponsored by partner brands)
• Goal – Black Friday sales and promotion

Here is an excellent idea for our very own SaaS giveaway:

Saas brands like Hyax, Helpcrunch, and SendX offer incredible lifetime (or exclusive) deals over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. VYPER could partner with a few of these brands to give away a massive SaaS Black Friday Deals bundle. 

If you want more info on the deals SaaS brands offer during BFCM, you can go over to our Best Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals post here.

For example, VYPER’s SaaS bundle prize can include the following:

• VYPER BFCM Deal – 50% Off
• Hyax BFCM Deal – 50% Off any plan
• Helpcrunch BFCM Deal – Get 25% off your first month or 45% off the first year
• SendX BFCM Deal – 40% OFF SendX Annual Plan

Users can visit VYPER to purchase the BFCM offer and enter the giveaway. The giveaway landing page can look like this:

Benefits of this campaign:

• Users have to visit the website to inquire or enter the giveaway. This strategy will instantly boost website traffic before Black Friday weekend. You can allow these users to preview your deals.
• To enter the giveaway, users will have to opt-in and purchase the service (BFCM offer). This entry method can boost sales or product inquiries. Such a strategy is ideal in getting new users to discover your brand and its products and services. 
• Instead of just a single prize, you can create a bigger prize by partnering with other brands. These brands can sponsor their own Black Friday deals and can also help to promote the giveaway to their audience. A giveaway with a larger prize and more brands helping out with promo will lead to better results. 

Hosting Your Own SaaS Giveaway (SaaS Prize Bundle Ideas)

To get the best results from a SaaS giveaway, your prize must be good enough to attract your brand’s target audience. SaaS brands in the B2B space might not get enough people to enter their giveaway if they only offer a single product. 

This is why a partner giveaway with other SaaS brands can be the ideal solution. As mentioned above, more brands mean more prizes and more people to help share and promote the giveaway. 

If you are considering a SaaS Partner Giveaway, you can go over the SaaS prize bundle ideas below to find inspiration for your campaign:

Email Marketing Bundle Idea

If your brand offers email marketing services similar to Mailchimp, then you can include the following brands in your prize bundle:

• Hubspot – CRM marketing software
• Marketo – Marketing automation software
• Canva – Graphic design service

Graphic Design Bundle Idea

Adobe already offers an impressive design suite and is willing to partner with brands and influencers like Parker Walbeck. 

You could give away an Adobe creative bundle or create your own bundle with these products:

• Topaz Labs – AI image editing software
• Canva – Graphic design service
• Photoshop – Access to a website that offers graphic design resources for Photoshop
• Online Courses –  Access to image editing and graphic design courses

Black Friday Giveaway Q&A

TL;DR

For many retailers, Black Friday is the best time of year (most amount of sales during this time). However, it can be challenging to stand out during Black Friday weekend. A Black Friday giveaway is the answer as it can generate massive hype, leads, and traffic to your website during November.

Black Friday giveaways are ideal for e-commerce brands as well as clothing, fashion, electronics, and furniture brands. However, if your brand does not fall under these categories, you can still host a giveaway during November to promote your offers.

By analyzing our giveaway examples, we found that brands usually host Black Friday giveaways to boost website traffic and generate leads during November (prior to Black Friday). Some brands also cleverly structured their giveaways to boost Black Friday Sales.

What do you think about Black Friday Giveaways? Are they the best option to promote your brand and product offers in November? Let us know in the comments.