How to make the most of your Q4 traffic

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of Q4 are like the Super Bowl for e-commerce. Brands will spend billions driving traffic to their sites over Q4. But here’s the thing…somewhere between 96–98% of those very expensive visitors will leave without buying a single thing. And for most businesses? That’s it. They’re gone for good.

The truth is, most site visitors don’t convert. They’ll see your ad, click through, have a quick look, then off they go. Once they’re out the door, you’ve lost them, unless you have a way to grab their details before they go.

That’s where smarter opt ins come in. If you can capture first party data, even from people who don’t buy, you turn a one time, wasted click into a long term sales opportunity.

The most effective brands have email pop-ups that convert at 10% or more. That means for every 100,000 visitors, they’re collecting at least 10,000 emails. Those aren’t just ‘sign-ups’, they’re super valuable business assets.

Why? Because once you’ve got someone’s email, you can keep the conversation going. You can send offers, reminders, and useful content, giving yourself more chances to win the sale. Even if they don’t buy during BFCM, they’re now in your world, and you can keep marketing to them until they do.

Your top priority from paid traffic should always be revenue and profit. But a very close second should be collecting as many emails as you can from the 90%+ of visitors who don’t buy right away. 

I really can’t stress enough how important this is for your business. The cumulative effect over years is HUGE!

Turning clicks into future customers

If you’re spending around £100 a day on ads over Q4, and that brings in roughly 700 visitors a day, you’re paying about £0.14 per visitor.

With a typical 2–3% conversion rate, that’s around 14–21 customers a day which means you’re spending roughly £4.75–£7.15 to acquire each customer during peak season. Not bad for the ones who buy.

But what about the other 679–686 people who visit and leave without purchasing? Over the course of Q4, that’s more than 62,000 potential customers walking away.

If you don’t have a way to bring them back, through email flows, retargeting ads, or irresistible offers, you’re leaving a huge amount of future revenue on the table.

That’s why opt-ins are so valuable. Even if someone doesn’t buy today, capturing their email means you can keep the conversation going. You can send them offers, product launches, and useful content that nudges them back when the timing is right.

The trick is making your offer irresistible. A plain ‘sign up to our newsletter’ just won’t cut it. Instead, think about what would make you hand over your details, maybe it’s a decent discount, a free gift, early access to a new product, or something downloadable and genuinely useful.

Every extra name you capture is another chance to turn a maybe into a yes, and during Q4, those extra chances can add up to a serious boost in revenue.

Your follow-up sequence - turning opt-ins into sales

Collecting emails is just the first step, the real magic happens when you follow up. If you’re not engaging people after they’ve signed up, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Think about it. Someone’s on your site, checking out a specific product, maybe a jumper in that exact colour they’ve been hunting for. They pop their details into your opt-in form, but then life gets in the way. They click away, get distracted, and forget all about it.

That’s where your follow up sequence steps in. By sending timely, relevant reminders, you can nudge them back before they lose interest completely. This doesn’t just apply to abandoned carts, even someone who was only browsing is worth chasing if you know what caught their eye.

The more personalised your emails, the better. If you can tailor your follow up to the product or category they were interested in, you’re far more likely to get them to return and buy. Many businesses see double or even triple the sales from these re-engagement campaigns compared to sending nothing at all, and in Q4, that can easily mean a lot of extra revenue.

Once you’ve got that email address, you can also bring them into your wider marketing mix, sending targeted campaigns alongside your usual newsletters, launches, and offers. And if they do add something to their basket later on? You can make your follow-ups even more precise, giving them that final push to check out.

A 5-step win-back sequence that works

When someone browses your site or adds something to their basket but leaves without buying, it’s rarely because they’ve decided they don’t want it. More often, they’ve been distracted, need time to think, or are waiting for the right nudge.

That’s where a structured follow-up comes in. One lonely reminder email isn’t enough, you need a short series that re-sparks interest, answers questions, and removes excuses until they’re ready to buy.

Here’s a sequence you can adapt for your own brand.

Email one “We saved this for you”
Send within a couple of hours max of their visit. Show the exact product they were looking at, highlight the key selling points, and make it quick and easy for them to click straight back to checkout.

Email two  “Here’s what other customers think”
Send the next day. Share your best reviews, customer photos, or ratings for the product they viewed. The goal here is to make them feel confident they’re making a smart choice.

Email three “Your treat, 10% off if you order today”
Two days later, offer a small, time sensitive discount to give them a reason to act now. Keep the message personal, and let them know the code is just for them. You can target this to specific customers i.e those who have opened the previous 2 emails for instance. And, it’s not a necessary, it all depends on your brand, margin etc.

Email four “Selling fast, don’t miss out”
If they still haven’t purchased, highlight scarcity. Tell them how many are left or mention if certain sizes/colours are running low. Urgency helps people move from ‘thinking about it’ to ‘doing it’.

Email five “Try it with no risk”
As a final push, focus on your return or exchange policy. Reassure them that if it’s not quite right, they can easily send it back or swap it. This removes the last barrier to buying.

As soon as they purchase, remove them from the sequence so they’re not getting irrelevant reminders.

By moving through gentle reminders, social proof, incentives, urgency, and reassurance, this type of sequence works on multiple buying triggers, and it can turn a big chunk of your ‘almost customers’ into paying ones, especially during Q4 when your traffic is at its highest.

Why you should start now

Q4 always creeps up faster than you think. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the festive rush might feel far off, but the brands that perform best during peak season are already laying the groundwork months in advance.

Why? Because the earlier you start building your email list and warming up your audience, the more people you’ll have ready to buy when the big sales hit. Waiting until October means starting from zero, while your competitors are sitting on months of collected data and a list of qualified prospects who already know their brand.

It’s also about momentum. In month one, you might collect 5,000 new contacts from site visitors. By month three, you’re re-engaging those original 5,000 while adding another 8,000. Fast-forward to month six and your list could be 35,000 strong. By month eleven, you could have well over 100,000 people who have shown interest in your products, all primed to hear from you during the busiest shopping weeks of the year.

And here’s the best part, once they’re on your list, they’re not just sitting there. They’re moving through automated sequences, seeing your offers, learning about your products, and becoming more likely to buy, not just in Q4, but year-round.

Starting early means you’re not scrambling to catch up when the season kicks in. Instead, you’ll be ready with a warm, engaged audience and a marketing engine that’s already running at full speed.

The retention hack no one talks about

We’ve talked a lot about capturing leads, and for good reason. You can’t convert what you don’t catch. But there’s a second half to the game that often gets ignored, keeping the customers you’ve already paid.

Too many businesses think, “If they buy once, they’ll be back.” Truth is, they probably won’t, at least not without a proper plan to bring them back.

Here’s the usual story, you spend months (and a big chunk of budget) getting people to buy. They place an order, and then you go silent. You don’t nurture them, you don’t check in, you don’t tempt them with something new. Then November rolls around and they’re hit with a generic “Happy Black Friday” email along with dozens of others in their inbox. And unsurprisingly, they ignore it.

Good retention is about making every past customer feel like they matter. It’s about recognising when they’ve come back to browse, tracking what they’re interested in, and sending them timely, personalised messages that make them feel seen. When you do that, the results can be game changing, more people return, more often, and they spend more when they do.

Imagine if your returning customers bought 50% more often than they do now, what would that mean for your revenue? In many cases, it’s the difference between a decent Q4 and a record breaking one.

Retention isn’t just an add on, it’s the key to making your Q4 traffic (and all the money you spent to get it) keep paying off long after the sale.

Track the wins that actually matter

Big numbers on a report can be tempting to celebrate, but they don’t always tell the truth. One of the easiest ways performance stats get inflated? Double counting.

It happens when multiple channels or tools claim the same sale. Maybe an ad gets the credit and an email campaign does too. The reality is, that customer only bought once. If you don’t separate the overlap, your results will look better than they really are, and that can lead to poor decisions about where to spend your budget.

The solution is straightforward, set clear rules for how you attribute sales. If more than one channel has influenced a customer, decide in advance which one takes priority. This way, you’re measuring incremental revenue, the sales you wouldn’t have made without that particular campaign.

Yes, the numbers might look smaller at first. But they’ll be accurate. And in Q4, when you’re spending heavily and moving fast, knowing exactly what’s driving real results will help you double down on what’s actually working and stop wasting time on what’s not.

AI and the future of personalisation

It’s no secret, AI is transforming how businesses communicate with their customers. We’re moving toward a world where technology can instantly recognise who’s visiting your site, what they’re interested in, and then send the perfect message at the perfect moment.

Think fully automated, multi-step sequences that know exactly which product to feature, which subject line will get opened, and which offer will seal the deal, all without you lifting a finger.

The smartest move? Start experimenting now. The earlier you adopt and refine these tools, the more data and experience you’ll have when they become even more powerful. By the time your competitors are just catching on, you’ll already be running finely tuned, high-converting campaigns on autopilot.

Full-funnel attribution. Closing the loop on your marketing

One of the most powerful shifts happening in marketing right now is the ability to see every step of the customer journey in one place. Not just who clicked an ad or opened an email, but how each touchpoint connects, from first visit to final purchase.

Full-funnel attribution brings all that data together. Imagine having one dashboard that shows your opt-ins, audience growth, email performance, ad metrics, and re-engagement results side by side. You can instantly see what’s driving conversions, what’s just adding noise, and where you’re losing people along the way.

The real benefit? You can make smarter decisions faster. Instead of guessing which campaigns are paying off, you can see exactly how each piece of your marketing is contributing to revenue. That means no wasted spend, no double counting, and a much clearer picture of where to focus your budget and effort.

When you connect every stage, from first touch to repeat purchase, you’re not just running isolated campaigns. You’re building a complete, trackable customer experience that grows in value over time.

Don’t wait

I get it, adding new strategies to your marketing mix can feel like extra work. But here’s the reality, while you’re weighing up whether to act, your competitors could already be months ahead, building their lists, refining their flows, and getting ready to hit Q4 at full speed.

The maths is simple. If you’re capturing 10% of visitors instead of 2%, you’re massively increasing your potential revenue for the next 12 months, not just during Black Friday or Christmas. Treat email capture as an afterthought, and you’re leaving both money and momentum on the table.

The brands that win in Q4 are the ones that start early, capture more of their traffic, and have systems in place to turn those leads into repeat buyers. The sooner you set that up, the sooner you start benefiting, and the harder it becomes for anyone else to catch up.

Yes, we’re already in Q4 but spend a day making sure you have your email watertight and it could really be a gain changer! I know what I’d be prioritising right now.