How to build a Black Friday early-access list in 4 weeks

Why early access is worth it

Shoppers are already looking. In a survey of more than 2,000 Belgians by Test-Aankoop, 60% expected to buy something on Black Friday 2025, and 63% visited shops or their websites beforehand to look around. In the Netherlands, ABN AMRO's transaction data shows households spent on average 25% more on Black Friday than in the weeks before, between 2016 and 2024, and in 2025 the Wednesday and Thursday before Black Friday were almost as busy as the day itself.

So people start early anyway. An early-access list turns that looking around into a reason to come back to you.

Two European shops that do it:

• Organic Basics (Denmark) has a Black Friday page with a countdown and a sign-up for "early access to Black Friday deals at least 24 hours before the public".
• Woodendot (Portugal) gave subscribers three days of early access in 2025, from 21 to 23 November, at the same prices as its Black Week, plus €20 off orders above €300.

Week 1: set up the sign-up (26 October to 1 November)

Decide what early access means. Keep it simple: "Our Black Friday offer, three days before everyone else." Pick the days now, for example Tuesday 24 to Thursday 26 November, and write them in the sign-up text. A real date is honest and easier to promise than a vague "first access".

Write the consent wording. Under EU rules, you may only email new people about offers if they agreed first. The European Data Protection Board is clear that a pre-ticked box is not consent, and consent hidden in your terms and conditions is presumed not to be freely given. So:

• an empty checkbox or a clear sign-up button, with a sentence such as "Email me when early access opens, and about future offers. Unsubscribe any time.";
• say what they'll get and roughly how often;
• keep a record of who signed up and when. The Dutch regulator ACM says you should be able to prove consent for up to 5 years after sending.

Set it up in Shopify.

1. In the Shopify Forms app, create a sign-up form and add a tag, such as bf-early-access. Shopify adds the tag to every customer who completes the form.
2. Turn on double opt-in under Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications. People confirm by clicking a link in an email, which gives you a clean list and proof of consent.
3. Under Customers, create a segment for customer_tags containing bf-early-access and email_subscription_status = 'SUBSCRIBED'. This is your early-access list.

Shopify Messaging, the new name of Shopify Email, includes 10,000 free emails a month, which covers a small shop's early-access emails.

Weeks 2 and 3: collect sign-ups without ads (2 to 15 November)

Most of your list will come from people who already know you. Places to ask:

• Your website. A short banner or one question on product pages. Keep it small on phones: Google advises against popups that cover the whole page and suggests small banners instead, including for newsletter sign-ups. Don't expect much from a popup either; Klaviyo puts the median sign-up rate for popups at 2.3%, and Omnisend's data at about 2%. We compare the options in Black Friday popups vs one question.
• Order confirmations and parcels. A line in the confirmation email or a card in the box: "Want early access to our Black Friday offer? Sign up here." Use a short link or QR code.
• Your shop counter or market stall. A QR code next to the till.
• Social media. Tell followers the date of the early access and link to the sign-up page.

What about past customers? EU law has an exception for them. If you got their email address when they bought something, you may email them about your own similar products, as long as they could say no when they gave you the address and every email has an easy way to unsubscribe. Belgium and the Netherlands both apply this rule, and "similar" is judged by what the customer could reasonably expect. A short email to past buyers, "Early access opens on 24 November, do you want in?", is a good way to grow the list in week 3. This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice.

Week 4: set up the offer and the emails (16 to 22 November)

Create the discount. In Shopify, create an amount-off discount, set its eligibility to your early-access segment, and set the start and end dates to the early-access days. Only people in the segment can use it. If you'd rather not give a discount, a password-protected page or collection works too: Shopify's password page has a sign-up section built in, and you send the password to your list.

Check your prices. In the EU, an announced price reduction must show the lowest price of the last 30 days. The European Commission's guidance says this also applies to discount codes offered to potentially all consumers for a set period. An early-access code anyone can get by signing up probably falls under that, so show the 30-day lowest price. We explain how in the EU 30-day price rule for Black Friday. Or choose an offer that isn't a price reduction, such as a gift or free delivery; see Black Friday without big discounts.

Write three emails:

1. A week before: "Early access opens on Tuesday 24 November. Here's what's coming."
2. On the first day: the offer and the link, with the end date.
3. On the last day: "Early access ends tonight; the offer opens to everyone on Friday."

Asking the right people, at the right moment

The best sign-ups come from people who are already interested: they've visited more than once, or they're looking at your products right now. A general popup asks everyone the same thing on arrival.

Signal works the other way round. It reads what a visitor does on your shop and, when the answer would change what to offer, asks one short question, such as "What are you shopping for?". It offers the early-access sign-up to the visitors it fits, with your consent wording, and you see each sign-up with their answer. So you know who wants gifts and who's shopping for themselves before you write your emails. See how it works.

For the rest of the run-up, see our 5-week Black Friday plan for small online shops.