Black Week is one week. The holiday season most small shops actually sell through runs from early November to the January sales, and treating the whole stretch as one long Black Friday burns out both your list and your discount margin. Here's the fuller calendar, with Black Week itself covered in more depth in our Black Week email strategy post.
Early-mid November: warm the list
Before any offer goes out, send one or two low-pressure emails: new arrivals, a gift guide with no discount attached, an early-access signup. The National Retail Federation forecast 2025 holiday sales to surpass $1 trillion for the first time, and projected 63% of shoppers would hold off their main spending until Thanksgiving weekend. A list that's already engaged by then converts noticeably better than one hearing from you for the first time that week.
Black Week and Mikołajki (late November to December 6)
Covered in full in our Black Week post: the launch, reminder, and last-call sends, followed by the Mikołajki gift guide on December 6 that catches Polish shoppers in a suddenly quiet inbox.
Mid-December: shipping cutoffs
One clear email stating the last order date for guaranteed delivery before Christmas, repeated once a few days before the deadline. This is a genuinely useful email, not a sales pitch, and it reliably gets opened because people are actively looking for exactly this information.
Christmas week: last-minute options
For anyone past your shipping cutoff, a gift card or digital option email solves a real problem: the shopper who left it too late. Keep it brief and practical.
Between Christmas and New Year: say thank you
A short thank-you note, with no offer attached, performs better here than another discount. If you have gift cards out in the world, a gentle reminder that they exist and how to use them fits naturally in this window.
Early January: clearance and reset
A straightforward end-of-season clearance email, plus a light 'here's what's new this year' note, catches the post-holiday browsing spike without competing against a dozen Black Week-style blasts, since most senders have gone quiet by then.
Planning the whole run in one sitting, rather than scrambling week to week, is exactly what SendMerlin's campaign suggestions are for: it proposes the calendar against the retail dates, you approve or adjust each send, and the pre-send check still catches broken links and pricing typos before anything goes out at the moment they'd cost the most.
Frequently asked questions
When should holiday emails start?
Early-to-mid November for the first teaser, well before Black Week itself. The National Retail Federation's 2025 survey found 63% of consumers plan to wait until Thanksgiving weekend to do most of their shopping, but the list that converts that weekend is the one that was already warmed up in early November.
Is it worth emailing in January, after the holidays are over?
Yes. A short thank-you and a light clearance or restock email in early January catches holiday gift-card redemptions and post-season browsers, and it's usually the quietest inbox window of the quarter, which makes a plain, honest email stand out.