Black Friday Offers: Give Buyers a Reason Beyond Price

Monica Badiu, Email Copywriter & Copy Coach

Black Friday Offers: Give Buyers a Reason Beyond Price

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

A Black Friday discount tells someone what they could save. It doesn’t explain whether your course addresses the problem they’re facing, whether they’re ready for it, or why it deserves a place in their budget.

That distinction becomes especially important when every other email is advertising a sale. Your subscriber might be considering your course alongside Christmas gifts, a new laptop, and a completely different investment in their business. A lower price only answers one part of that decision.

A discount needs an offer people already understand
Your course competes with everything else in the budget
Buyer identity changes which message feels relevant
Speed and support can make an offer more useful
Customer language helps you explain what features mean
Rank the patterns, then check whether your offer fits
What to do this week
What to do next
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On Master The Inbox, I spoke with Charlotte “Charlie” Sargeant, founder of The Creative Strategy Lab, about building Black Friday offers around the reasons people buy. Charlie’s background is in paid social, with agency leadership experience overseeing creative strategy across more than £22 million in annual ad spend. Our conversation kept coming back to the same question: what do you know about your customer that should change your offer?

A discount needs an offer people already understand

Charlie described discounting as an easy decision to make because it doesn’t require much customer insight. You can put “70% off” in a subject line without knowing what your audience wants to change or what has stopped them from buying before.

It can also feel reassuring when competitors are doing the same thing. Their promotion goes live, and suddenly your planned offer feels too expensive. You start comparing percentages before you’ve compared the value each business is communicating.

But a subscriber who doesn’t understand why they need your course still has that problem when you reduce the price. They may also be wondering whether the material fits their experience, whether they’ll use it, and whether they have time to follow through.

One client campaign I shared in the episode used a 20% discount and five emails. We didn’t send an email on Black Friday itself, and the campaign generated a quarter of a million in revenue. The offer communicated value without making the discount do all the work.

That example isn’t a formula for choosing 20% or sending exactly five emails. It shows that a campaign can succeed without matching the deepest discounts in the market. Before choosing your percentage, write down the reason someone would want the product at all.

Your course competes with everything else in the budget

During a regular launch, you might focus on other courses teaching the same skill. Black Friday widens the decision. Someone can want your program and still choose to spend their available money elsewhere.

That means “learn this skill” may need more explanation. Why does that skill matter in their life or business? What could they do differently with it? Why would starting now be useful?

In our conversation, I talked about helping people picture the next six or 12 months. For course creators, that future context gives a buyer something more meaningful to consider than how many lessons they’ll receive.

For example, a language course might help a learner prepare for conversations on a planned trip. That is an illustrative application of the principle, not a result from the episode. Its relevance depends on whether travel is actually the reason your audience wants to learn.

Ask customers what they want to achieve next year. Then connect the answer to what your course can realistically help them do. A useful timeframe helps clarify value; it shouldn’t become a promise your program can’t support.

Buyer identity changes which message feels relevant

Charlie shared an example from a brand selling alternatives to designer fragrances. One customer took pride in finding a bargain. Another wanted to feel polished and put together while managing what they could afford.

Both could buy the same product. But the message that made the bargain hunter feel understood could put the second buyer off. Saving money had a different meaning for each person.

For course creators, experience level is a practical place to start applying this idea. A beginner may need to see that the first step is manageable. An advanced learner may need evidence that the program addresses a challenge they haven’t already solved.

This came up when we discussed subscribers who open emails but don’t engage further. An experienced learner can like your brand and still find the content too basic. A beginner can be interested in an advanced program while feeling completely unprepared for it.

Look at one promotional email and identify the person it assumes is reading. What do they already know? Where are they stuck? How do they describe their ability? If the answers are unclear, the message may be trying to address too many stages at once.

Speed and support can make an offer more useful

Price is only one possible obstacle. Some buyers want help because they don’t have time to keep figuring things out alone. Others know what they want and would prefer a direct conversation to another workshop before they can purchase.

Charlie described giving workshop registrants an option to book a call if they were ready to discuss her full service. That creates a next step for someone who already wants support.

We also discussed adding a faster route or a done-with-you version to a Black Friday offer. For a course creator, that might mean helping buyers apply the material rather than adding more lessons to the bundle. The right addition depends on the problem your audience describes.

If customers are struggling to implement what they learn, more content may leave that barrier untouched. Support that addresses the implementation problem could make the offer more relevant. You still need to decide whether you can deliver that support well and price it sensibly.

Review the questions buyers ask before purchasing. When those questions repeatedly concern time, getting started, or doing the work correctly, investigate those concerns before assuming the price needs to fall.

Customer language helps you explain what features mean

One of Charlie’s examples involved a Pinterest services provider who described her work through tasks: scheduling content and creating boards. Those tasks explained the service, but they didn’t fully explain why a customer would value it.

The next step was to describe what the work made possible. It saved the client time and reduced the planning they had to do, freeing their attention for other responsibilities.

Course creators face the same translation problem. You know why you built a workbook or added a lesson. A buyer sees another item on the page until you connect it to something they want to accomplish.

Testimonials can help you make that connection. Look for descriptions of what changed, what became easier, and what customers could do afterward. Charlie also uses Reddit to find specific language about frustrations people experience.

In one example, research for a sock brand surfaced a vivid complaint about a toe breaking through a new sock. The detail gave her language she wouldn’t have invented herself. The useful lesson for a course creator is to look for that same specificity in discussions about learning and applying your subject.

If you don’t yet have testimonials, competitor reviews can help you understand the market. Treat those comments as research into possible needs. They aren’t proof of your results, and the patterns still need checking against your own audience.

Rank the patterns, then check whether your offer fits

Collecting customer comments is only the first step. You also need to decide which observations deserve attention.

Charlie described counting how often a problem appeared. If a time-related frustration showed up 10 times and a technical concern appeared twice, she would start testing the more frequent issue. A rough tally can make that choice more deliberate.

Frequency alone doesn’t decide your positioning, though. The next question I ask is whether the offer can actually address the problem. A common frustration isn’t a useful promise if your course doesn’t help solve it.

My email research process then has two stages. First, I invite the list to answer a short survey about their struggles, their current situation and past attempts, and what they want to achieve next year.

After reviewing the responses, I use another email to test which problem, phrase, or description they identify with most. That helps connect the initial research to the people who may receive the Black Friday offer.

You can adapt those topics into three questions: What are you struggling with most? Where are you now, and what have you tried? What would you like to achieve next year? Use the responses to narrow the promise before writing the campaign.

What to do this week

Give your Black Friday offer a clearer foundation with these four steps:

Collect customer language. Start with testimonials, email replies, sales call notes, and relevant social comments. Keep the original wording alongside your notes.
Group recurring problems. Count repeated themes and note differences between beginner, intermediate, and advanced customers where they appear.
Match one problem to the offer. Identify the lesson, process, or support that helps address it. Explain what the buyer can do with that help.
Check the message with your list. Ask about current struggles and future goals, then follow up with a small set of descriptions based on their answers.

Before your next send, there’s an even smaller place to start: open five recent replies and find one repeated concern. Draft a paragraph showing how your offer addresses it. You can do that before deciding anything about the discount.

Your Black Friday campaign gets easier to explain when the offer reflects what your buyers want to change. Research gives you the language and the priorities to make that connection clear. The discount can then support a purchase whose value already makes sense.

What to do next

Explore the conversation with Charlotte Sargeant on Master The Inbox.
Plan your next campaign with the Black Friday podcast season.
Join the community → If you want to stay close to everything Monica is sharing on Q4 — offers, funnels, what to send your subscribers, copy teardowns, the full Black Friday strategy — the Master The Inbox Skool Community is free to join and active throughout the season.
If you’d rather not guess your way through Black Friday this year, check out the Black Friday Playbook for Course Creators. It has everything: the exact strategy to implement, the templates and even the swipe files to help you strategize and implement without guesswork and the last minute overwhelm.
Listen to the full episode → on Buzzsprout, on Spotify.