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In this newsletter, youâll find:
đ Which of last yearâs black friday emails deserve another run
đ Google warns against fake authors and reveals how long SEO changes take
đ Ad of the day
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đ Which of last yearâs black friday emails deserve another run
Ask which BFCM email performed best and most teams point to the one with the highest revenue. That campaign often gave away the deepest discount and lost the most subscribers doing it.
Score every campaign on what it actually left behind.
The formula
Net value per 1,000 sends = (revenue â discount cost â unsubscribe cost) Ă· sends Ă 1,000
Unsubscribe cost is unsubscribes multiplied by what one subscriber is worth. Divide last yearâs email revenue by your average list size. If you earned $600,000 from a 150,000-person list, each subscriber is worth $4 a year.
Discount cost is the total markdown buyers received on orders from that email, which your order data reports line by line.
A worked comparison
Both campaigns went to 100,000 people.
Campaign A: $42,000 revenue, 9,000indiscounts,600unsubscribes(2,400). Net value: $306 per 1,000.
Campaign B: $51,000 revenue, 18,000indiscounts,1,500unsubscribes(6,000). Net value: $270 per 1,000.
B looked like the winner in the dashboard. A left you with more.
Pulling these numbers by hand takes an afternoon. Omnisend connects with Claude or ChatGPT, so you can ask for last yearâs campaign results in the chat and work through the scoring there, and its BFCM AI playbook has ready-made prompts for this audit You can try the BFCM prompts.
Compare like with like
Black Friday morning sells itself. Score each email against others sent in the same slot, such as Friday mornings or Cyber Monday evenings, and not against a Tuesday warm-up.
Attributed revenue also includes buyers who would have purchased anyway. Use the scores to rank campaigns against each other.
The rerun rule
Top third: rerun with the same offer and timing.
Middle third: change one thing, usually the offer depth or subject line, and rerun.
Bottom third: retire it, unless it was the only email in its slot.
Any campaign with unsubscribes above 0.5% of sends: retire it regardless of score. That cutoff is my judgment.
Make next yearâs audit easier
On October 1, Shopify added notes to Shopify Analytics. Teams can now pin context, such as campaign launches and promotions, directly onto time-series reports.
Use it this season. Log each send, any offer change and any site slowdown as it happens. Next October, a revenue spike comes with its explanation attached.
Pull last yearâs five biggest BFCM sends, calculate net value per 1,000 and sort. The order will probably differ from the one in your head.
đ Google warns against fake authors and reveals how long SEO changes take
Google has updated its helpful content guidance to address deceptive author profiles, while new insights from Search Central Live reveal how long crawling, indexing and SEO recovery can take.
The Breakdown:
Fake Author Profiles Signal Low Quality - Google now warns against AI-generated headshots, invented names, and false credentials used to make content appear written by human experts. Such deception signals low-quality content to Googleâs automated systems.
Fake Expertise Can Hurt Content Trust - Googleâs quality rater guidelines already instruct reviewers to give deceptive author profiles the Lowest quality rating. The new guidance extends this warning directly to site owners, although author bylines themselves are not a ranking factor.
Crawling and Indexing Take Time - Google typically discovers new URLs in 20 hours, refreshes known pages in around 30 days, and processes sitemaps within 24 hours, according to a conference attendeeâs recap. These timelines are estimates, not guarantees.
SEO Recovery Can Take Months - Title updates typically take 1â2 days, canonical changes 1â3 weeks, and site migrations 1â3 months. Recovering from a core update can take 3â6 months, sometimes extending to a year.
Googleâs guidance puts greater emphasis on authentic authorship while providing clearer expectations for SEO changes. Publishers should verify author credentials and avoid misleading profiles, while SEO teams need to account for crawling delays and longer recovery periods when evaluating results.
đ Ad of the Day
What Works:
Contrarian Hook Stops - âDonât buy this serumâ creates an immediate pattern interrupt, using reverse psychology to earn attention before flipping into a clear 28-day skin outcome.
Outcome Feels Specific - âClear, stable skin in 28 daysâ gives shoppers a concrete timeframe, strengthening message-market fit while making the serumâs promise feel easier to evaluate.
Benefits Scan Fast - The three bottom callouts quickly communicate barrier repair, hydration and under-eye support, reducing cognitive load while reinforcing the serumâs multi-benefit positioning.
Open with a negative command, then immediately reveal the desirable outcome. Contrarian framing can increase thumb-stop ratio while making familiar product benefits feel less predictable.
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