Welcome to Inbox Roast, where bad marketing gets publicly shamed (with love).
Today’s issue: one brand’s Black Friday panic attack, a partner that actually helps, and a tool that might save your sanity.
In today’s inbox:
🎯 Why your Black Friday plan is secretly a fire drill
🍷 Toast to someone who actually gets retention
🧰 The tool that stops “Monday brain” before it starts
💌 A reader-submitted campaign that aged like milk
Let’s roast some strategy.
Black Friday Isn’t Dead, You’re Just Doing It Wrong
Every November, the same ritual begins. Marketers summon caffeine, light a discount candle, and yell “24 HOURS ONLY!!!” like the world’s ending.
Congrats. You’ve just trained your audience to:
Ignore you for 364 days
Expect 50% off as the new normal
Ghost you until next November
The “one-day frenzy” isn’t a plan, it’s marketing meth. Feels good for 24 hours. Leaves you twitching in January.
The Fix: Turn It Into a Season
Here’s how grown-up brands do it:
Warm-up early. 2–3 teaser sends before the chaos = inbox engagement insurance.
Layer your offers. VIP preview → general sale → leftovers cleanup.
Reward loyalty, not panic. Keep early access for your repeat buyers, not the random TikTok traffic.
End with grace. Thank-you campaign, not “Oops, extended again 😬.”
It’s not rocket science it’s restraint.
The brands who’ll win this BFCM are the ones who planned for dopamine withdrawal.
It’s a very expensive panic attack.
💡 Want the actual playbook to stretch your BFCM without torching your list?
👉 Grab the BFCM Season Builder Guide 🔥
🦸 PARTNER:
“Flowstate Agency” The Anti-Panic Team
While everyone’s arguing about subject lines, Flowstate quietly fixes the stuff that actually matters.
They build pre-holiday deliverability and retention systems for DTC brands that hate chaos.
No BS promises. No “guaranteed 40% lift.” Just grown-ups who understand how ESPs actually think.
👉 Check out Flowstate’s Case Studies
— Tell them Inbox Roast sent you; they’ll know what it means.
💌 READER EMAIL ROAST
“The ‘Personalized’ Email That Made Everyone Feel Like a Spreadsheet”
Subject: “Hey {{FirstName}}, big savings for loyal subscribers!”
We opened it. We shouldn’t have.
This brand sent an “exclusive” email… to their entire uncleaned list of 200,000 people, half of whom hadn’t opened an email since the last pandemic.
Broken merge tags everywhere
One-size-fits-all copy
No segmentation, no plan, no shame
The Roast: “Personalization” isn’t adding brackets. It’s understanding who the hell you’re talking to.
The Fix:
Start by segmenting your list by engagement, not vibes.
Your “exclusive offer” should actually feel exclusive.
💀 Want yours roasted next week?
👉 Submit Your Campaign (if you dare)
⚒️ TOOL FIX — “Tools That Don’t Suck”
🧠 Today: Notion Calendar
Because your marketing “plan” can’t live in 12 Google Sheets and one cursed Trello board.
The Roast: If your team’s workflow looks like a crime scene made of color-coded cells, stop pretending it’s “organized chaos.”
The Fix:
Notion Calendar syncs your entire campaign pipeline, emails, SMS, meetings, deliverables, into one timeline you can actually use.
It’s the difference between “Oh God, we forgot that send” and “Oh look, strategy.”
🍷 TOAST OF THE DAY
🥂 To: @EmailByLara
For her LinkedIn post explaining why unsubscribes are not bad news, they’re list hygiene.
Finally, someone who doesn’t panic when people leave the room.
👏 Respect. That’s retention with backbone.
🧯 THAT’S THE ROAST
If your BFCM strategy looks like a caffeine-fueled cry for hell, fix it now, not on Friday.
Next week: We’re dissecting “AI Email Assistants” that make your copy sound like a broken Roomba.
Until then, keep it spicy.
Vilmos Bela 🧯
Chief Roast Officer @ Inbox Roast