Black Friday is right around the corner. Like many of you, we are scrambling to get everything ready.

I wanted to share our internal strategy document for my product, a1d.ai.

Our North Star metric for this Black Friday is simple: Maximize Annual Subscriptions. Cash flow is king, and locking in annual users is our #1 priority.

To achieve this, we are splitting our efforts into two buckets: Public Traffic (Acquisition) and Private Traffic (Conversion/Retention).

Since many of you are running your own micro-SaaS or apps, I’ll start with the Public Traffic strategies because there is something here you can use right now.

Part 1: Acquisition – Creating Gravity 🌍

We don’t just want to beg for traffic; we want to create resources that attract it.

1. The “Aggregator” Strategy (SEO Play) Instead of just a landing page for our deal, we are building a navigation page that collects Black Friday deals from across the market.

• Inspiration: Look at how ElevenLabs collected SaaS coupons. It brings value to the user, not just a sales pitch.
• The Plan: We are building a dedicated “Black Friday Deals” page. It allows users to claim coupons for various tools.
• The Goal: This is a pure SEO play. By being a hub for deals, we capture traffic searching for general software discounts and funnel them to our main site, a1d.ai.

2. The GitHub Repository Strategy (Join us here!) We created a public GitHub repository allowing users/founders to submit their own deals.

• Why? GitHub has massive domain authority. A well-maintained “Awesome Black Friday Deals” repo ranks incredibly high on Google.
• Action for you: We’ve already set this up. If you have a Black Friday deal for your product, submit a PR to our repo here: 👉 Awesome Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals 2025

This serves as excellent backlink construction for us and provides a free promotion channel for you. Win-win.

Part 2: Retention – The Art of Segmentation 📧

Getting traffic is half the battle. Converting it is the other half. We are doing a deep dive into our existing user base to run highly targeted campaigns.

First, we segmented our users into 4 buckets:

1. Current Monthly Users: The goal is to upgrade them to Annual.
2. Churned Users: They subscribed once but canceled. We need to win them back.
3. Free/Registered Users: They signed up but never paid. They need a strong push.
4. Current Annual Users: (Don’t annoy them, or offer an extension deal).

The Tooling: Customer.io We are using Customer.io for this. I have to be honest—the learning curve isn’t exactly flat. However, for the level of granular data and automation we need, it’s been a game-changer.

The Workflow:

• Export user DB -> Tag users -> Import to Customer.io segments.
• A/B Testing: We are designing different email templates for each segment. We are testing subject lines and CTA placements to see what drives open rates.
• Automation: If a user clicks but doesn’t buy, they get a specific follow-up sequence.

Part 3: Backlinks & Distribution 📣

• Community: We will be engaging on Reddit, IndieHackers, and X (Twitter).
• Note: We haven’t started this phase yet. I will update this post or write a follow-up on how our “Launch Day” distribution went once we are in the trenches.

Part 4: On-Site Optimization 💻

You can bring the horse to water, but you have to make the water look good.

1. Homepage: We are adding a countdown timer on a1d.ai. It sounds cheesy, but urgency works.
2. Pricing Page: We are redesigning the pricing cards to make the math obvious. We want the user to see the specific discount percentage and the exact dollar amount saved immediately. Friction kills conversion.

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That’s the plan!

Don’t forget to drop your deal in the GitHub Repo so we can all get some cross-promotion going.

I’m curious—how are you handling your existing monthly users this Black Friday? Are you aggressively pushing them to annual, or leaving them alone?

Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇