The best Black Friday email subject lines are short, put the offer or the deadline in the first 30 characters, and change with every send. Most Australian stores do the opposite. They write one subject line in October, reuse a version of it for four days, and wonder why the third email in the weekend gets half the opens of the first.
What’s in This Article
Below are 40 subject lines you can copy, grouped by the day you will send them, plus the testing setup, the send calendar and the one-page scorecard we use to check a line before it goes out. Swap the placeholder offers for your real ones. Black Friday is Friday 27 November 2026, so the full run of sends starts earlier than most stores plan for.
This article covers subject lines and send timing only. If you need the full dates, deadlines and offer planning, start with our Black Friday Australia 2026 dates and deadlines guide and come back here when you are ready to write the emails.
Why Black Friday subject lines are harder to write than any other week
Your subscriber’s inbox in the last week of November is not the inbox they have in March. Klaviyo reported that its customers sent more than 10.7 billion emails and texts over the 2022 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, up 41% on 2021, and those messages drove $2.2 billion in revenue, or 37% of its brands’ online store BFCM revenue (Klaviyo BFCM aftermath report). Volume has only gone one way since.
In Australia the prize is real. CommBank iQ put total spend across the two-week Black Friday period in 2025 at $23.8 billion, with about $8 billion of it online, and Australia Post tracked roughly $1.5 billion in online spend across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. Australia Post also found 74% of shoppers had saved up for the sales. Those people are waiting for emails. They are also getting dozens of them.
That changes what a subject line has to do. In a normal week it sells the email. In Black Friday week it has to survive a crowded inbox, on a small screen, in about a second. Which brings us to the first hard rule.
Rule one: win the first 30 characters
Litmus puts a typical desktop inbox at around 60 characters of subject line and a phone at just 25 to 30 characters, and recommends keeping subject lines to about nine words (Litmus). Most of your Black Friday opens will come from a phone, so write for the 30-character version and treat the rest as a bonus.
Look at the screenshot. “Our biggest sale of the year, live now” reads fine on desktop. On a phone it becomes “Our biggest sale of the yea…” and the word that matters, “live”, is gone. “Black Friday is live” survives intact because it is 20 characters long.
A simple drill: write the line, count to character 30, and read only that part out loud. If it still makes someone want to open the email, keep it. If not, move the offer or the deadline to the front.
- Offer first. “25% off sitewide” beats “A little something for our favourite customers”.
- Deadline second. “Ends tonight at midnight AEDT” is 29 characters and does the whole job.
- Brand name last or never. The sender name already shows your brand. Repeating it in the subject line wastes characters.
- Pair it with preview text. The preview text is a second line of copy, usually 40 to 90 characters. Use it to finish the thought, not to repeat the subject line.
The 40 Black Friday subject lines, sorted by send
Every line below is under 50 characters, and most are under 40. Character counts are in brackets so you can see how each one behaves on mobile. Anything with a percentage is a placeholder: change it to your actual offer, and only say “today only” or “ends tonight” if that is true. Australian Consumer Law treats a subject line that promises something the email does not deliver as misleading conduct, and customers remember it.
Teaser and early access (Fri 20 to Thu 26 Nov)
Send these to your VIP and early access list first. The job is to make the list feel chosen, not to sell yet. If you have not built that list, our guide to the BFCM early access list walks through it.
- Your early access starts now (28)
- VIP list: Black Friday opens for you first (42)
- You’re in. Early access inside (30)
- Black Friday starts early for you (33)
- Shop the sale before everyone else (34)
- 48 hours early. Just for subscribers (36)
- Your code is ready. Sale opens Friday (37)
- Quick heads up before Friday (28)
Launch day (Fri 27 Nov)
Launch day usually carries two sends. Put the plain announcement in the morning and a different angle, such as bestsellers or a personalised pick, in the evening.
- Black Friday is live (20)
- It’s on: 25% off sitewide (25)
- Our biggest sale of the year, live now (38)
- 3 things worth grabbing today (29)
- {{ first_name }}, your Black Friday picks (41)
- Free shipping and 25% off. Today only (37)
- The bestsellers are moving fast (31)
- Back in stock for Black Friday only (35)
Saturday and Sunday (28 and 29 Nov)
By Saturday your best customers have either bought or are still deciding. These lines speak to the second group. Small Business Saturday is a genuine hook for a local brand, so use it if it fits.
- Small Business Saturday: thanks for backing us (46)
- Still thinking? Here’s what’s left (34)
- Low stock: these are nearly gone (32)
- What our customers bought on Friday (35)
- Your cart is on sale (20)
- Sunday only: free shipping upgrade (34)
- Sizes are running out. Here’s what’s left (41)
- Missed Friday? Nothing’s changed. Still on. (43)
Cyber Monday and last chance (Mon 30 Nov)
Urgency lines only work once. Keep the hard deadline language for Monday so it still means something. Our Cyber Monday Australia plan covers what the offer itself should be on the final day.
- Cyber Monday: last day to save (30)
- Ends tonight at midnight AEDT (29)
- Final hours. Don’t miss this (28)
- 6 hours left (12)
- Last call: Cyber Monday ends tonight (36)
- Order now for delivery before Christmas (39)
- Closing soon: your discount expires (35)
- Cyber Monday ends at midnight (29)
Segment-specific sends (any day)
These are the highest-converting lines in the list because they speak to what the person has already done. Use them on segments, not on your whole list.
- Thanks for being one of our best customers (42)
- Did you miss this? 25% off ends tonight (39)
- Still thinking about it? It’s on sale now (41)
- The {{ product }} you viewed is on sale (39)
- Time to restock? Your favourite is on sale (42)
- We saved you something. Welcome back (36)
- Your wishlist just got cheaper (30)
- Gift ideas under $50 (ships before Christmas) (45)
How deep should the discount in the subject line be?
Should you put the percentage in the subject line at all? Klaviyo looked at this across its customers for BFCM 2025. Average ecommerce discount depth fell from 29.6% in 2024 to 26.2% in 2025, yet same-site sales rose 11% (Klaviyo, December 2025). Deeper was not better.
More useful for subject lines: in its analysis, low average order value brands saw their strongest open rates with discounts of 20 to 29% off, while mid and high AOV brands did best at 30 to 39% off. Klaviyo’s own conclusion is that it depends on price point, category and how valuable the product feels. Its data is from US-heavy accounts and the open-rate charts were not readable in full, so treat it as a direction, not a rule.
Here is how we translate that for a typical Australian Shopify store:
- Under $60 average order value: test “20% off” and “25% off” in the subject line. Smaller numbers read as real.
- $60 to $150: test the percentage against a dollar figure, such as “$30 off your first order over $120”.
- Over $150: lead with the product or the benefit, and put the percentage in the preview text. High-ticket buyers want to know what they are buying first.
- Any size: if the offer is not a discount at all, such as a gift with purchase or early access, say that. It stands out against 25% off.
The bigger lesson in the Klaviyo data is that the stores doing best were not shouting the biggest number. They used early-access drops, VIP offers and time-sensitive reminders instead of a blanket markdown. Repeat-buyer purchases grew nearly 14% year on year, against about 9% for new buyers. Your existing customers are the ones who open, so write for them first.
What real brands did with a subject line
A few well-documented examples show how far a subject line can carry an offer, and they are useful because they break the “25% off” pattern.
- Goorin Bros sent “Psst! Still awake? Here’s 50% off!” for a sale that started on Thanksgiving night. It names the timing in a playful way and puts the offer in the same line.
- Cards Against Humanity went the other way in 2015 with “We want to sell you Nothing” and raised just over $71,000 selling literally nothing. The lesson is not to copy it. It is that a subject line that is different from the other 100 in the inbox earns attention. (Bird)
- REI followed up to 5.5 million people about closing on Black Friday as part of #OptOutside. A subject line that says something your competitors will not say is a strong move if it is true to your brand.
- Bose used “Black Friday is almost over” with two small icons for a last-chance send. Short, factual and with a deadline. (OptiMonk roundup)
- KeepCup, the Melbourne brand, ran 40% off storewide on a Cyber Monday against its usual 24%, and founder Abigail Forsyth called the discount an advertising expense rather than an inventory tactic. If you treat the discount as marketing spend, you will test the subject line that carries it just as carefully (SmartCompany).
Some of those examples are a few years old. The patterns have not changed: a clear offer, a real deadline or an honest, distinctive voice.
Send timing: one job per send
A subject line is only half the work. The other half is knowing why you are sending that email today. The calendar below is the structure we recommend to coaching members. Each send has one job, one audience and one metric. If you cannot say what a send is for in a sentence, do not send it.
The send times in the calendar are our suggestions for an Australian list, in AEDT, and you should test them against your own data. We lean towards early morning sends on the big days because phones are the first screen people check, but your best time depends on your audience. A mums-and-bubs brand will not behave like a gaming accessories brand.
Two things matter more than the exact minute. First, do not send the same subject line twice. Resend to non-openers with a different angle, and only after a gap. Our email frequency guide explains how many sends your list can handle before you start burning it. Second, protect your sender reputation before the peak, not during it. If your emails land in spam on 27 November, no subject line will rescue them, so check the basics in our Shopify email deliverability guide now.
Segment the subject line, not just the audience
The segment lines in the list above are the best performers for a simple reason: they refer to something the person has actually done. “The {{ product }} you viewed is on sale” gets opened because it is about them.
Klaviyo’s benchmark data shows why this matters. Across more than 183,000 Klaviyo customers, flows had a click rate of 5.58% against 1.69% for campaigns, even though campaigns made up 94.7% of sends and flows only 5.3%. Flows generated nearly 41% of total email revenue (Klaviyo benchmarks, 2026). Omnisend’s 2025 report tells the same story from 2024 data: automated emails drove 37% of email-attributed sales from just 2% of email volume (Omnisend).
Translated: your automated flows are the most profitable emails you send, and almost nobody updates their subject lines for Black Friday. Before the sale starts, change these:
- Abandoned cart flow. Add the sale to the first email: “Your cart is on sale” instead of “You left something behind”.
- Browse abandonment. Use the product name and the offer: “The {{ product }} you viewed is on sale”.
- Welcome flow. New subscribers who join during the sale should hear about it in email one, not email three.
- Post-purchase. Thank buyers and tell them about the Cyber Monday extension. Repeat buyers are the cheapest sales you will make.
A short list of segments to build before 20 November: VIPs (top 10% by spend), purchased in the last 90 days, engaged in the last 30 days but never bought, and unengaged for 90 days or more. Send the VIP segment the early access lines, the engaged non-buyers the “Still thinking about it?” lines, and keep the unengaged group out of your launch day sends so they do not drag down your deliverability.
Tool setup: how to A/B test a subject line in Klaviyo
You should test at least the launch day and the last-chance sends. Klaviyo and Omnisend both have a built-in subject line A/B test. These are the steps in Klaviyo, and the logic is the same in Omnisend:
- 1. Create the campaign and choose the segment. Use a segment large enough to test, at least a few thousand recipients. Below that, results are noise.
- 2. Turn on the A/B test at the subject line step and add a second variant. Change one thing only: offer in the line versus no offer, or a number versus a dollar figure.
- 3. Set the test group. We use around 20% of the list for the test and send the winner to the remaining 80%. The test is useless if the winner goes out after the deadline, so schedule it with time to spare.
- 4. Choose click rate or placed orders as the winning metric, not open rate. Klaviyo notes that Apple Mail Privacy Protection can register opens the subscriber did not make, so open rate can mislead.
- 5. Set a short test window of two to four hours for launch day, then let the system send the winner.
- 6. Log the result in a simple sheet: send, variants, winner, click rate, orders. By Cyber Monday you will have a record to guide next year.
Look at the example. Variant B has a higher open rate, but the number that matters is the click rate and the order rate. In a test like this, a subject line that sets expectations with a clear offer often draws fewer curious opens and more buyers. That is why we judge winners on orders per recipient, not opens.
The 7-point subject line scorecard (use it before you hit schedule)
This is the checklist we run on every Black Friday subject line with members. Print it, paste it into your campaign brief or keep it next to your scheduler. A line that fails two or more points should be rewritten.
- Can you read the point in 30 characters? If the key word is after character 30, rewrite.
- Does it carry one job? Tease, announce, remind or close. Not two at once.
- Is every claim true? If it says “ends tonight”, it ends tonight. Check your offer dates in Shopify.
- Is it different from your last send? Compare it with the previous subject line. If they look alike, one of them will be ignored.
- Does it match the email? The offer, product and deadline in the subject line must be the first thing in the email.
- Does it suit the segment? A VIP and a first-time subscriber should not get the same line.
- Is the preview text finishing the thought? Set it on purpose, every send. Default preview text is a wasted line.
The compound effect: how the pieces work together
None of this works in isolation. A sharp subject line on a send that lands in spam does nothing. A great send calendar with the same subject line four times burns the list. A tested subject line on your launch email helps, but the same test on your abandoned cart flow keeps paying every day for the next year.
Think of it as a chain. Early access lines build a warm group that buys on day one. Launch day lines turn that group into orders and tell you what offer works. Your weekend segment lines pick up the hesitant buyers. Cyber Monday lines close the gap with a real deadline. Updated flows catch everyone who browses in between. Each link makes the next cheaper, because you are working a list that already knows you.
The stores that get this right go in with the sends written, segments built, sender reputation checked and tests scheduled, so the week itself is monitoring, not writing. Start the first drafts this week. You have until 20 November to get the first send right.
Where to go from here
Inside eCommerce Circle, email is one of the core pillars we work on with every member, and Black Friday is where it shows up on the bottom line. If you want to see exactly where your store is being capped, take the free More Orders Scorecard. It takes two minutes and shows you which of the 10 P’s to fix first.
