Black November 2025

How might we trade the one-day spike for a 30-day curve without losing revenue or eroding the perceived value of the offer?

Context

In 2025, Black Friday grew from a weekend into a whole month, and Alura had to rethink its approach.

In 2024 the campaign was packed into a single week, and Black Friday alone produced about 4,100 sales in 24 hours. By 2025, DNC, EBAC and Trybe were already running November-long discounts. Relying on last-minute urgency would have cost Alura the first three weeks of the month.

My role

I sat between the teams, turning business goals into a product experience that could be built. I was the central link between the commercial, SX and CX teams and the engineers building the public site and the learning platform: I gathered each side's constraints, settled the conflicts and produced unambiguous Figma flows for engineering.

Inbound — needs & signals

• Marketing: campaign story, offer structure, promo calendar and the Black November tone of voice.
• SX: onboarding friction, how well the plans are understood and what keeps a new student past day 7.
• CX: main cancellation reasons, refund patterns and 2024 payment-failure tickets.
• Growth & Data: 2023 cohort behaviour, the 2024 daily sales curve, price elasticity and the target plan mix.

Outbound — a shippable experience

• Web Engineering: plans page, checkout, hero, VIP capture and the Cyber Monday variant, delivered with Figma specs, tokens, edge states and responsive rules.
• Platform Engineering: post-purchase onboarding, the in-app plan selector, 24M/36M renewal surfaces and the REDE + Nupay integration UI.

What I shipped

• A single Figma source of truth with about 70 screens
• A plans-table component with 6 tiers and 3 promo states
• A QA checklist shared with Engineering, covering every breakpoint
• Weekly sync notes that turned CX and SX insights into actions

Responsibilities

• Listen & reconcile: ran weekly syncs with Marketing, SX, CX, Growth and Engineering, mapped conflicting requests (CX wanted clearer plan terms while Marketing wanted a louder offer) and decided which tension the design should resolve.
• Design & specify: turned the agreed brief into Figma flows, components and copy, covering hover, empty, loading, error, mobile and payment-failure states so engineers never had to guess.
• Hand off & defend: paired with Web and Platform Engineering during the build, reviewed PR screenshots, ran cross-device QA and pushed back whenever the build drifted from what the business teams had agreed.

The problem

Four tensions, all resolved within a single plans page.

• Spike vs. curve: Black Friday 2024 brought 4,100 sales in one day. Spreading the campaign over 30 days risked losing that urgency.
• Volume vs. ticket: deeper discounts on longer plans meant fewer transactions (−6.8%). It only paid off if the average ticket rose enough to lift revenue.
• Retention vs. acquisition: the 24-month plan had mostly served renewals (61% in 2024) and now also needed to attract first-time students.
• Choice vs. confidence: the new 36-month plan, Ultra Lab and 50% off on long plans added options. The table had to compare them without overwhelming buyers.

Research & discovery

We studied the 2023 cohort before designing the 2025 page: a cohort analysis of 2023 24-month buyers, a day-by-day map of 2024 sales and an audit of 9 competitors (Asimov, Coursera, DNC, EBAC, Preditiva, RocketSeat, Tera, Trybe and Udemy), cross-checked against macro Black Friday data.

What the data said

• 2023 cohort: long plans don't hurt repurchase. Of the 3,321 24-month plans sold in 2023, 88% had expired by December 2025; 22% (623 students) renewed in the first month and 32 upgraded to 36 months.
• 2024 market: concentrating sales was draining November. Daily sales sat around 300 until 24 November, then jumped to 4,100 on Black Friday, while competitors' month-long discounts left Alura exposed for three weeks.
• Behaviour: buyers compared prices all month. Brazilian e-commerce reached R$ 10.19 billion over the Black Friday weekend (+7.8%), more than 70% of consumers tracked prices through November, Pix hit 297 million transactions in 24 hours and credit declined because of the Selic rate.
• 2024 plan mix: the Annual plan was a single point of failure, with 67% of sales. The 24-month plan ran only during Black Week and took 16%, mostly renewals. The opportunity was to push 24M all month and rebalance the mix.

Longer plans don't cannibalise repurchase, they buy time to earn it.

Strategy & architecture

We rebuilt the campaign as a commitment funnel instead of a flash sale.

• Distribute the spike: 50% off for the whole month to raise the daily floor from about 300 (2024) to about 450–650, instead of staking everything on 29 November.
• Promote the 24-month plan: move it from a Black Week side offer to the headline plan, taking share from the Annual plan without reducing total revenue.
• Test the 36-month plan: a 7-day Black Friday window with 50% off and clear renewal perks, to gauge demand for very long commitments.
• Lower cancellations: transparent pricing, plan comparison and "what's included" content to cut 7-day cancellations from 7% (2024) towards under 5%.

Plan mix, November 2024 → 2025

The 24-month plan went from supporting act to lead, without cannibalising the Annual plan.

Process & iteration

Four months connecting Marketing, SX, CX, Web Engineering and Platform Engineering.

1. Aug–Sep · Listening tour & cohort analysis: interviewed Marketing, SX, CX and Growth, pulled the 2023 24M cohort (3,321 students), mapped 2024 daily sales and audited 9 competitors. The output was one shared problem brief.
2. Sep–Oct · Reconciliation & pricing co-design: mediated between Marketing (a louder offer), CX (clearer terms) and Finance (margin). Together we set 50% off on 24M all month, made 36M a 7-day test and kept a smaller discount on the Annual plan.
3. Oct · Figma design & specs: rebuilt the plans table with 24M as the recommended option, added the 36M tier and redesigned the comparison interaction, covering every state, including payment failure.
4. Oct–Nov 1 · Handoff, pairing & QA: paired daily with Web Engineering (site, checkout) and Platform Engineering (post-purchase onboarding) on the REDE and Nupay flows, which now carry 84% of payments. Ran cross-device QA and launched on 1 November.
5. Nov 1–Dec 1 · Live ops & translation loop: reported conversion, cancellations and plan mix daily to Marketing, SX and CX, and turned the findings into Cyber Monday creative changes after volume came in 50% below 2024.

Impact

Less volume. More value. Higher conviction.

What the numbers actually say

• 55% of new students started with a Programming or Data Science course: Alura's core offer is what attracts them.
• Of 632 cancellations, 166 students enrolled in a course and 76 finished one before leaving. They tested the product, not only the deal.
• Cyber Monday volume fell 50% (977 → 493), but the ticket rose 31%. Demand moved earlier in the month instead of disappearing.
• The Brazilian market grew in volume (+16.5%) while tickets fell (−12.8%). Alura did the opposite, trading volume for value.

Experience system

Calm interface. Loud intent. Seven surfaces across the ecosystem:

• VIP list: free sign-up to an exclusive group with early access to the best deals, bonuses and perks.
• Home: the homepage fully themed for the campaign.
• Renewal: a discounted re-enrolment page for current students.
• Influencer: a shareable page for partner influencers, giving their audiences a discount.
• Referral: every student gets a referral link and earns points for each completed enrolment, redeemable in the platform store.
• Platform: campaign customisation inside the Alura platform, including the renewal banner.
• Cyber Monday: a last-chance offer on the first Monday after Black Friday.

In moments of high commercial pressure, the designer's job is to protect the clarity of the experience, without ever losing sight of the business.

Reflections

• Distribution beats spikes, if you redesign the offer: the 30-day stretch only worked together with the new plan mix. Without the 24M push, the Black Friday spike would have been lost with nothing to replace it.
• Long-term plans don't kill repurchase: the 2023 cohort settled that worry, with 22% renewing in the first month after two years on 24M. Design can now lead with longer commitments.
• Clarity is a leading indicator: 7-day cancellations fell from 7% to 4% despite stronger offers, a sign that the plans page helped people choose, not just buy.
• The designer is the translation layer: most of the impact came from holding Marketing's intent, CX's reality and Engineering's constraints in one Figma file and resolving them before the sprints, rather than from any single visual decision.