From peak traffic to engaged subscribers

Black Friday and the winter sales bring a surge of new visitors to your website. Most arrive for a discount code, not because they have a relationship with your brand. Yet. They are still worth keeping: with the right follow-up you can re-engage them months later, well into the off-season. That takes three things working together: a well-timed sign-up moment, a welcome that sets expectations, and a preference centre where people tell you more about themselves.

Why a traffic spike is a retention opportunity, not just a sales one

During the 2025 Black Friday, websites saw a 103% surge in visitors versus their regular daily averages (eCommerce Germany, 2025). Shoppers spend more too: in 2025, 28% of Dutch shoppers bought more during Black Friday than they otherwise would (DHL, 2025). Across Europe, that figure is around 33%.

That traffic is also a list-growth opportunity. A share of those extra visitors will hand over an email address in exchange for a deal. Opt-in rates tend to rise when there is a strong offer on the table (Shopify). On paper, the peak period fills your database faster than any other time of year.

However, most of those visitors came looking for a voucher code, not because they love your brand. A sign-up driven purely by a one-off discount is fragile. The moment the code is used, the reason to stay can disappear with it.

So retaining these visitors takes more than the right technical set-up, such as the right forms and the right campaigns. The real question comes first: once the peak has ended, is there something on offer that makes staying subscribed worthwhile? All steps below work best when the answer is yes.

It all starts on your website

Retention begins long before the first email. It begins with how, where, and why someone joins your list in the first place.

Grab attention with clear, branded sign-up forms and pop-ups

Decide where to place them. Put your pop-ups and forms where traffic and intent are both high, rather than on every page by default:

• Product pages you are actively advertising
• Category pages for ranges that are on sale
• Dedicated Black Friday or seasonal landing pages
• The checkout, where intent is at its peak

Give a real reason to join. ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ is not a reason. Offer something a shopper actually wants:

• An incentive, such as a sneak peek at the next collection, a complimentary gift, or credit towards the next order
• Social proof, such as the number of buyers using your products or services, which works especially well when you’re building a community

Include the right elements. The anatomy differs slightly by format:

• Sign-up pop-up: keep the fields to a minimum, often just an email address. Say plainly what the subscriber gets and how often, with one clear call to action that matches the page. Be transparent about what you will do with their data, and link the sign-up to the correct marketing permission in the background.

• Form: products like Spotler Mail+ offer several types of form you can use to run surveys, register event attendees, gather interest details, and sign up new subscribers. Make sure you use a subscription-type form, so new contacts arrive with the permission and subscription you intend, rather than as raw data you have no basis to email.

That last point matters more than it looks. A sign-up that is not tied to the right permission is an address you cannot legitimately use, however keen the shopper was in the moment.

Make the first moment count

Normally, a new subscriber is never more engaged than in the minutes after they join. But during a peak period they may have signed up alongside dozens of other brands in one session. So your first email has to earn its place quickly.

Send a welcome campaign

Don’t let a new sign-up sit in silence until your next newsletter. A welcome campaign, sent automatically the moment someone subscribes, does three jobs:

• Reminds them who you are and why they joined, while your brand is still fresh
• Delivers on the incentive you promised, whether that is a code, a gift, or early access
• Sets expectations for what comes next, so future emails feel expected rather than intrusive

For the mechanics of building this as an automated flow, see our guide to automated email sequences triggered by customer actions.

Let subscribers tell you how they want to hear from you

The welcome is also your best chance to turn a one-line sign-up into a richer profile. Rather than guessing, invite the new subscriber to tell you how they want the relationship to work. This is the job of a preference centre, and it rests on three distinct things:

• Permissions: what kind of communication they agree to receive, such as marketing emails, product updates, or a loyalty programme
• Preferences: how and how often they want to hear from you, such as email, SMS, or WhatsApp, and weekly or monthly
• Interests: which products or categories they actually care about, such as the jumper collection, the shoe range, or the sale alerts

Each of these does something different. Together, they are what lets you keep sending relevant emails once the peak is over.

Use a preference centre to get to know your audience

In Spotler Mail+, a preference centre is a profile form that lets contacts manage their own subscriptions. For each type of communication, they choose what they do and don’t want to receive, across channel, frequency, and topic. You can add these forms to landing pages created in Mail+.

Most teams use it for one thing only: unsubscribes. After a peak-season sale it can do much more. It is your chance to learn about the hurried buyers who signed up for a deal. You can turn a bare email address into a profile you will use for months. Built well, it is one of the most valuable retention tools you have.

When subscribers tell you what they care about, you stop broadcasting and start sending emails that are relevant. That brings direct, compounding benefits:

• You can use interests to send campaigns that convert better, because each one reaches people who asked for that subject
• You can ask for a little more information over time, rather than demanding everything at sign-up
• You give subscribers an alternative to unsubscribing: let them turn the volume down or narrow it to what matters

What a good preference centre should include

A complete preference centre covers all three elements above, plus a considered approach to opting down:

• Permissions: the specific consents the subscriber has given, each clearly described
• Preferences: channel and frequency choices
• Interests: the product ranges, categories, or topics they want to hear about
• Unsubscribe options tied to the right permissions: rather than a single all-or-nothing unsubscribe, let people step out of one stream while staying in another, with each option mapped to the correct permission in the background

What brands get back

The payoff is more than tidier data. It shows up in performance:

• Relevant content reaching engaged audiences. Interests let you match the message to the person, so more of what you send is worth opening.
• Lower unsubscribe rates. When people can adjust their settings instead of leaving, more of them stay.
• Higher deliverability. This is the part most teams underestimate. Mailbox providers decide whether your email lands in the inbox, the promotions tab, or spam. They weigh sender reputation, spam-complaint rates, and how recipients engage with what you send. Relevant email to people who asked for it earns opens and clicks and few complaints, which builds your reputation. Irrelevant email to a list padded out during a sale does the opposite. A good preference centre protects the very channel it runs on.

This matters most around a peak period, when volumes spike. A sudden surge of mail to a freshly inflated, poorly segmented list is exactly the pattern that pushes email into spam. For the full picture on how placement is decided and protected, see our guide to inbox placement.

Permissions are the engine underneath all of this. The forms, the welcome, the preference centre, the interest-driven campaigns: they all depend on permissions working correctly in the background. Permissions decide who you can email, about what, and on what legal basis. Get them right and the rest compounds. Get them wrong and even the best campaign cannot send.