Holiday Promo Planner
A holiday season plan from Black Friday to Boxing Day that fits your margin and your staff, with the offers, the dates, the emails and the inventory call made in October instead of the week of
The problem
Black Friday falls on November 27 this year, and most small retailers and service businesses will decide what to do about it on November 24. The result is a 20 percent off everything post, a margin you didn't mean to give away, a stockout on the one product people wanted, and staff finding out about the sale from a customer. The big chains plan this season in July. You don't need July. You need two hours in October and a plan that respects what you can afford, what you can ship, and who's working Boxing Day. This skill runs those two hours.
The tool
Once installed, this skill plans the season around your numbers rather than around the calendar's hype. It asks what sold last year and when, what your gross margin is by product or service, how much you can hold in stock or deliver in a week, and who's available between Black Friday and New Year's. Then it builds the offer set: a hero offer that can take a discount because the margin allows it, a bundle that raises the average order without cutting price, a gift-card push for the service business that can't sell more hours in December, and a January offer to keep the quiet month alive. For each, it tells you the break-even: how many extra units the discount has to sell before you're ahead.
The calendar comes next, in Canadian dates: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, the shipping cutoffs you'll have to announce, Boxing Day and the week after. Every date gets its email, its social post, its in-store sign and its staff note, drafted in your voice, with the Email Marketing Copilot carrying the sends. And it makes the inventory call in October: what to order now, what to let run out, where the stockout will hurt.
What's inside
- An offer set built on your margins: hero discount, bundle, gift card push, January offer, each with the break-even in units
- A season calendar with the Canadian dates, the shipping cutoffs and the quiet days that don't need an offer
- Draft emails, social posts and in-store signs for each date, in your voice
- A staff note for each promotion so the floor knows before the customers do
- An inventory and capacity check: what to order in October, where you'll run out, how many bookings you can take
- A post-season review template for the first week of January, so next year starts with data
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Answer the setup questions once: what you sell, last year's November and December by week if you have it, margins by category, stock and staffing limits.
- 4Review the offer set and the break-even numbers, and cut anything you can't afford or can't fulfil.
- 5Load the calendar into your email tool and your staff schedule, then run the January review when it's over.
Example
A two-person candle and home goods shop in Stratford has always done 25 percent off for Black Friday weekend and wondered why December felt thin. Setup shows the candles carry a 68 percent margin and the imported ceramics 31 percent. The plan separates them: a buy-two-get-one on candles (break-even, 1.4 extra units per three sold, which last year's data clears easily), full price on ceramics with free gift wrapping, a gift-card bonus for the quiet first week of December, and a Boxing Day offer limited to the two lines that didn't move. The owner orders 300 more candle jars in October, posts the shipping cutoff of December 17 on the site, and the staff note goes on the back door. January's review shows December up on the same foot traffic.
Pro tip
Decide the shipping cutoff and the last booking date first, and announce them early and often. A customer who missed the cutoff is angry at you, not at the courier. And protect at least one line from any discount: the thing people buy from you anyway doesn't need to be cheaper in the week they were already going to buy it.
Related tools
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