October Email Ideas for Online Stores Before Black Friday

October’s forecast is a reason to look, not a sales guarantee

In its September 28 forecast, Adobe projected $95.8 billion in U.S. online spending during October 2026, including $9.9 billion during October 6–7. As of October 5, those are projections—not completed October sales.

Amazon announced Prime Big Deal Days for October 6–7, with deals exclusive to Prime members. Your independent store can send its own customer email without dressing it up as an Amazon offer.

The wrong takeaway is: “There’s a big spending forecast, so we need a big discount immediately.” Adobe’s forecast doesn’t tell you how much your store will capture, or whether sending during those dates will beat a later October message.

My recommendation: use the occasion to check whether you already have a good reason to contact past buyers. This is most useful when you can connect purchase history to a refill, a repeat purchase, or a genuinely compatible item.

If that connection is weak, skip the rushed campaign. A shopping event is a possible sending window, not a customer need.

Pick customers by what they bought and what they might need

Shopify identifies repeat customers, lapsed customers, and customers at risk of leaving as possible starting groups for retention outreach. For this email, I’d narrow the audience further: start with a specific past purchase.

Picture a store selling refillable hand soap. A useful starting group might be customers who bought the starter bottle and haven’t ordered a refill. That’s more actionable than “everyone who hasn’t opened an email lately.”

Review past orders and build a group you can explain in a sentence:

• •They bought the relevant product.
• •Based on the product and their order history, they may reasonably need more.
• •They haven’t already reordered or bought the item you’re recommending.

Use only contacts eligible for your marketing sends, and respect existing opt-outs.

Timing matters here. Shopify advises sending replenishment reminders shortly before a product is likely to need replacing, rather than letting a sales event determine the schedule. Don’t borrow another store’s refill interval; use what you know about your own product and customers.

There’s a real example of this kind of targeting. In a Shopify case study, vacuum brand Airsign identified launch customers who hadn’t been able to subscribe for replacement supplies, sent that group a tailored subscription discount, and reported about 30% conversion.

That’s one company’s reported result, not your expected conversion rate. The useful lesson is the audience choice: the offer addressed a specific gap for specific past buyers.

Choose the value before choosing the discount

Before drafting, check available stock, the shipping promise you can actually meet, and what any incentive would leave after costs.

Adobe projected peak discounts of 19% off listed prices during the October 6–7 event. That’s a forecast of a peak—not an instruction to subtract the same amount from your products.

For any proposed offer, work through the selling price after the discount, product cost, shipping you absorb, and other order costs you normally track. Decide what needs to remain for the offer to be worth running. If the offer fails that test, change it or leave it out.

Shopify recommends giving returning customers value beyond repeated discounts. Consider which message actually fits:

• •A refill reminder: Make the correct replacement easy to find. No discount required.
• •A useful companion product: Explain how it works with what the customer already owns, and verify compatibility.
• •A product-use tip: Help the customer get more from their purchase, with a relevant buying option only if it belongs.

For the hypothetical soap store, that could mean linking directly to the matching refill rather than advertising everything in the bathroom collection. Convenience is a reasonable offer. It doesn’t need a percentage sign attached.

Write an email with a clear product and a clear next step

Shopify recommends one primary call to action in a retention email. For this campaign, make it the action that answers the customer’s likely need—not a tour of your entire store.

Here’s hypothetical body copy for the refillable-soap example:

Subject: Running low on your [product name]?

Preview: Find the matching refill for your bottle.

Hi [first name],

If your [product name] is getting low, here’s the matching refill for the bottle you bought.

Choose your refill below, and check the product page for the current shipping estimate.

Button: Shop [product name] refills

Notice the “if.” You know what someone bought; you don’t necessarily know how quickly they used it.

Replace every placeholder, and make sure the compatibility statement is accurate. The button should lead to the relevant product or refill selection, not a homepage that asks the customer to start searching again.

If you’ve approved an incentive, explain its terms plainly near the button. Include a deadline only if it’s real. Otherwise, leave the countdown out.

Resist adding a second product launch, a review request, and a social-follow request. Those may deserve their own messages. This one has a job already.

Use a readiness check to choose your sending date

With the audience and offer settled, send yourself a test email and open it on your phone. Don’t stop at admiring the header.

Follow the actual buying path:

• •Tap the main button and confirm it reaches the intended product.
• •Check the selected size, variant, or refill compatibility.
• •Complete a test checkout using your store’s testing process, including any offer code.
• •Confirm that the shipping information matches what the email promises.
• •Check the unsubscribe option in the finished email.

If the offer, stock, and email are genuinely ready, October 6–7 is a reasonable window to try. If any part is shaky, choose a later October date that fits likely customer need. Don’t describe that later send as part of Amazon’s member event.

A calendar date isn’t a good reason to send people to the wrong product page. Finish the work before asking customers to finish the purchase.

Judge the campaign by what it leaves, not just what it sells

Before sending, decide what you’ll compare afterward. Use your usual results for a similar customer group and a comparable follow-up period where possible.

Record orders, discount costs, margin impact, and unsubscribes. Shopify includes margin impact among the measures for evaluating a segmented campaign; orders attributed to an email don’t settle whether the offer was worthwhile.

Ask practical questions when you review it. Was the money left after costs acceptable? Did customers buy the intended product? Were unsubscribes noticeably different from your usual sends? Did replies reveal that the reminder arrived too early or recommended the wrong item?

Treat those answers as guidance for the next campaign, not proof that a date or subject line caused every result. If you don’t have a useful comparison yet, make this your starting point rather than claiming an improvement you can’t show.

Save the audience rules and your notes. For your Black Friday planning, use what you learned from your own buyers—not Adobe’s forecast or Airsign’s reported conversion rate as a target.