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Black Friday is the biggest week of the holiday shopping season for the beauty industry. Shoppers show up with gift lists, wish lists, and carts they started filling in October.
Which leaves every founder with a question: How big should your Black Friday discount be?
The good news is that the answer is smaller than most brands expect. Last season, shoppers spent more while the average discount shrank. Brands that held back on price grew fastest.
Below you'll find how deep to go, the offers that work harder than a bigger percentage, and the margin check to do before you commit. Let's run the numbers.
Key Takeaways
A 20-30% discount is the working sweet spot for beauty brands on Black Friday.
In 2025, brands that discounted the least grew the fastest.
Black Friday promotions like spend thresholds, tiered offers, and bundles raise average order value without lowering prices.
Shipping surcharges and ad costs peak around Black Friday, so each sale costs more to deliver that week.
How Much Discount on Black Friday Is Enough?
For most beauty brands, 20-30% off is enough. Treat it as a working benchmark. It's big enough for shoppers to notice and small enough for your margin to survive the weekend.
Most other Black Friday ideas you'll read start with a bigger percentage. Your offer will sit next to the best of them in every inbox. Don’t let that discourage you – you don't need impressive discounts to compete.
Here's how the three major tiers play out.
| Discount | What it does | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Under 15% | Easy to miss next to bigger banners, so it rarely changes behavior on its own | Early access for loyal customers, or paired with a free gift |
| 20-30% | Noticeable and credible, and most beauty margins can absorb it | Your main Black Friday offer |
| Over 40% | Trains shoppers to wait for the next sale, eats deep into profit, and chips at your brand identity | Clearing slow-moving or discontinued stock |
The gaps between the tiers come down to your margin. A product with a 70% gross margin can carry 30% off comfortably. One closer to 45% may do better at 15% off plus a free gift. Small businesses feel this most, because a thinner margin leaves less room for error.
Advice written for a clothing brand or an electronics store rarely fits beauty. A retailer selling big ticket items can run a deep discount and still keep a good profit. A serum that costs you about $12 has far less room.
Why Smaller Discounts Won in 2025
In 2025, shoppers spent more over Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) even as discounts shrank. Four data sources point the same way.
Klaviyo 2025 BFCM recap (10,000 brands)
Spending up 11% year over year, while discounts fell 10%.
Daily discounts capped at 30% on average across those brands.
Smallest discounters up 14%, the highest growth of any group.
Repeat-buyer revenue up 13.5%, outpacing new customers as they responded to VIP perks and exclusivity.
Shopify BFCM 2025 (merchants worldwide)
$114.70 average cart over the 2025 Black Friday weekend.
Cosmetics topped its list of product categories.
Adobe 2025 holiday data (US online shopping)
$44.2 billion in online sales across Cyber Week. Most of the money moves online.
17-31% off at the peak for US categories on Cyber Monday, with electronics at the top.
Salesforce Cyber Week 2025 projections (global)
40% off projected for makeup, the most heavily discounted category worldwide.
Plenty of retailers still chase online shoppers with deep cuts. The Black Friday sales growth went to brands that held their prices and gave shoppers other reasons to buy.
The full 2025 breakdown, plus what Selfnamed brands ordered most during BFCM, is in our free BFCM 2026 Guide.
Black Friday Sale Ideas That Raise Order Value
The strongest Black Friday sale ideas change what goes into the cart and leave the price tag alone. They're Black Friday promotions that lift average order value instead of cutting into it. Each offer below gives shoppers a reason to buy more instead of a reason to pay less.
Spend Thresholds
A spend threshold rewards a bigger basket. "Spend $75, get a free travel kit" asks for one more product and keeps every price where it is.
Set the threshold a little above your current average order value, roughly the price of one extra item. Too high and nobody reaches it. A free gift at the threshold makes the target feel worth reaching. Free shipping over a set amount works the same way.
Tiered Offers
A tiered discount system lets the discount grow with the order. "Buy 2, save 20%. Buy 3, save 30%" means your deepest cut only lands on your biggest baskets. Buy one, get one half price works the same way, and it comes out to 25% off across the pair.
Most Shopify bundle apps handle quantity breaks without any code. Set tiers up as automatic discounts so nobody has to remember a discount code at checkout.
Salons and any brick and mortar store can tier gift cards the same way. Sell a $100 gift card in store with $20 of bonus store credit that's valid from January, and the bonus brings the customer back after the holidays.
Bundles and Gift Sets
Bundles are the most brand-safe way to discount beauty on Black Friday. A cleanser, serum, and moisturizer sold as a routine set can carry a set price, while each product keeps its full price on its own.
Gift sets also make ready-made holiday gifts for gift buyers who don't know the recipient's routine, so put them at the top of your gift guides. In Selfnamed's 2025 production order data, the top collection boxes jumped as much as 33 times their usual weekly orders in BFCM.
Selfnamed's collection boxes come with a customizable sleeve for your branding. The wider range of bundles and sets also includes two-product duos for lower price points.
Gift With Purchase Ideas
A gift with purchase keeps your price exactly where it is and adds value on top. Everyone likes free stuff, and a free gift usually costs you less than a percentage off, because you only pay the gift's cost price. That makes it a cheap win for small businesses.
Here are gift with purchase ideas that suit beauty.
Sample sachets. A sample sachet of a product the customer hasn't tried yet gives them a reason to come back in January.
Travel sizes. A mini of your bestseller makes an easy stocking stuffer.
A branded extra. A headband, pouch, or cosmetic bag puts your name in front of the customer every day.
Tie the gift to a spend threshold and it lifts order value too. Then follow up with a post-purchase email that includes a discount code for a future purchase, so the sale keeps paying through the rest of the shopping season.
Limited Editions
A Black Friday exclusive set, scent, or label gives shoppers a reason to buy now that has nothing to do with price. Build it for the season instead of rebundling what's already on your shelf. Buyers can tell the difference.
Frame the urgency around stock. "Only 200 holiday kits" makes the set feel special and keeps the price intact. If you add a countdown timer, point it at a real end date. For more ways to sell sets, see our guide to marketing product collection boxes.
Black Friday Promotion Ideas Beyond the Discount
These Black Friday promotion ideas build demand before the weekend and keep it going after. Most cost little in margin, which makes them some of the most practical Black Friday ideas for small businesses.
hey also double as Black Friday marketing ideas for your email and social calendar. For the full channel plan, see our Black Friday marketing strategy for beauty brands.
Early Access and Sneak Peeks
Early access rewards your most loyal customers before the public sale opens. Give loyalty program members or VIP customers exclusive codes a day or two ahead, and send sneak peeks of the offer the week before. It's one of the cheapest Black Friday campaign ideas you can run.
Exclusive deals like these make customers feel valued and turn existing customers into your first wave of Black Friday sales. Add a countdown timer to the early-access email so VIPs know when their window closes, building Black Friday excitement long before the banners go up.
Sneak peeks work as a sign up incentive too. "Join the list to shop first" turns potential customers into subscribers in October, while attention is cheaper. Share the same sneak peeks in your social media marketing to reach potential customers who aren't on your list yet.
Gift Guides
Black Friday gift guides make choosing easy for gift buyers. Sort picks by price ("under $30", "under $50") or by recipient, and link each one to a set or bundle.
Helpful gift guides do the job of a shop assistant and improve the customer experience. In a salon or brick and mortar store, a printed version by the till works the same way.
Send gift guides again in early December, when holiday shopping turns to last-minute holiday gifts. They're one of the easiest Black Friday marketing ideas to reuse every year. A countdown timer to your last shipping date gives gift buyers a real deadline.
Cross-Selling at Checkout
Cross-selling adds a matching product at the moment a shopper is ready to buy. Someone buying a cleanser sees the toner. Someone buying a serum sees the eye cream.
Good cross-selling lifts average order value without touching the price of either product. You can also offer a higher priced version, like the full-size jar or the full set, as an upgrade.
Keep cross-selling to one or two relevant picks. A crowded checkout hurts the customer experience and can cost you the sale.
Daily Deals and Flash Sales
Daily deals let you go deeper on one product without cutting your whole range. It's one of the few Black Friday ideas where a deeper cut makes sense. Feature a different high-margin SKU each day across Cyber Week, then move on.
Flash sales work the same way over a few hours. Put a countdown timer on the real end time, and keep the deep discount to the one product with room for it. Mystery discounts, where shoppers reveal their offer at checkout, add a game to the same idea, as long as you cap the top prize. Use a single-use discount code for each flash sale so the deal doesn't leak to coupon sites.
Daily deals and flash sales also give your Black Friday campaign a reason to email every day of the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. Save a fresh offer for your Cyber Monday deals, so Monday doesn't repeat Friday.
Do the Margin Math First
Every point of discount comes out of your profit, so run the numbers on one product before you commit to any of your Black Friday promotions.
Take Selfnamed's Retinol Alternative Serum. The 30 ml bottle costs about $12 per unit. Say you sell it at $36, a 3x markup. That leaves $24 of gross profit per sale, a 67% margin.
$24.00 ÷ $9.60 = 2.5x the units at 40% off
| Offer | Price | Profit per unit | Units needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full price | $36.00 | $24.00 | 1.0x |
| 20% off | $28.80 | $16.80 | 1.43x |
| 40% off | $21.60 | $9.60 | 2.5x |
| Full price + $1 sample sachet | $36.00 | $23.00 | 1.04x |
At 20% off, you need to sell 43% more units just to earn the same profit. At 40% off, you need 2.5 times the units, and small businesses rarely have the traffic to make that up. A sample sachet as a free gift needs only about 4% more.
Prices here are rounded from the catalog. The retail price is your call, so plug in your own, along with your own product cost. If you run an online business, add payment fees and shipping if you cover them. If you're still setting prices, start with how to price skincare products.
A lower product cost gives every offer more room. Bulk pricing for this serum starts at about $9 per unit. On Selfnamed Pro, bulk orders of 25 units or more get up to 70% off, and dropshipping orders get up to 30% off.
Three Pricing Rules for Small Businesses in Beauty
These three rules keep your Black Friday deals profitable once the traffic arrives.
Discount high-margin SKUs only. A flat sitewide percentage treats every product as if it costs you the same. Put your deepest offer on the products with the most room. Salons can use our salon profit margin breakdown to see which retail lines have that room.
Bundle the hero instead of cutting it. If your bestseller already sells at full price, a discount gives away profit you'd have made anyway. Put it in a set, where it pulls the rest of the basket up.
Budget for the spikes. Shipping and ad costs climb in the week of Black Friday. Price your offer against what a sale costs that week.
Budget for Late-November Cost Spikes
Costs rise across the Black Friday shopping season, and they peak over the Thanksgiving weekend, right when your Black Friday sales land. Build shipping and ads into your margin math.
Carrier Surcharges
Supply Chain Dive reported that FedEx's 2026 demand surcharge on Ground residential and Home Delivery packages rises to $0.80 per package from November 23 to December 27. At last year's peak, it was $0.65. Many of UPS's 2026 holiday charges peak at that time as well.
Under a dollar per parcel adds up across a weekend of orders. Ask your fulfillment partner which surcharges they pass through, and add them to your per-order cost.
Ad Costs
Meta ads get pricier around Black Friday, exactly when your margin is thinnest. Lebesgue's analysis of $22.6 million in Meta spend found the median brand paid 59% more per 1,000 impressions in Black Friday week 2025 than in September.
On Black Friday itself, the jump was 84%. Beauty, health, and supplement brands in the sample saw a 42% rise, though Lebesgue notes its category groups are small.
There's an upside. Conversion rates rose too, and the median brand's cost per purchase fell 20%. So budget for pricier reach, then judge your ads on cost per purchase and profit.
Why October Launches Cost Less
In 2025, the median brand's Meta CPMs stayed within 7% of September levels until the week of November 10, according to the same Lebesgue data. In 2024, the climb started in mid-October, before the Black Friday season was in full swing.
That makes October the cheap window, and plenty of shoppers start their Black Friday shopping early anyway. Start your Black Friday marketing campaign then. Run a teaser, grow your email and SMS list, and test your creative before prices climb. Carrier demand surcharges are lower before Thanksgiving week too, so early orders ship for less.
Want the full plan? Our free BFCM 2026 Guide covers the month-by-month timeline, a channel-by-channel playbook, Selfnamed's 2025 bestsellers, and a checklist you can work through.
Choose Black Friday Sale Ideas That Keep Your Margin
Black Friday rewards beauty brands that know their numbers. A 20-30% discount, a spend threshold, or a well-built set moves shoppers without draining your profit.
Pick one main offer for your Black Friday deals and run the math on it first. Put your deepest cut on the products with room for it. Let bundles, gifts, gift guides, and limited editions do the rest of the work.
Look after the customers who already love your products. Early access, a loyalty program, and a thoughtful gift bring them back long after the holiday season.
The best Black Friday promotions give shoppers a reason to buy more. They also leave small businesses with a profit worth all those extra orders.
Plan the Black Friday season early, while reach and shipping are cheaper. Then let Black Friday do the selling.
Frequently Asked Questions
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For beauty brands, the strongest Black Friday promotion ideas raise order value without cutting price. Spend thresholds, tiered offers, routine bundles, gifts with purchase, and limited-edition sets all work. If you run a straight discount, 20-30% off is a sensible working range.
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Often, yes. A gift with purchase keeps your price intact and usually costs you less than a percentage off. On a serum that costs about $12 and sells for $36, a $1 sample sachet leaves $23 of profit per sale, while 20% off leaves $16.80.
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Many premium brands skip the percentage entirely. A deluxe gift, a limited holiday set, or early access for loyal customers adds value while the price stays where it is. That protects the brand's position long after Cyber Monday.
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Start with one clear offer you can afford, such as a spend threshold or a gift set. Open early to your email list, give loyal customers first access, and send gift guides in December. Hold back enough stock for the late gifting rush.
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Start in October. Ad costs and carrier surcharges are lower before the Thanksgiving weekend, and sneak peeks give your list a reason to buy first. Keep stock and offers live into December for late shoppers, since the holiday season runs well past Cyber Monday.
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