Black Friday Tips And Tricks From An Email Marketing Expert
Black Friday Tips and Tricks from an Email Marketing Expert
Black Friday is the ultimate shopping experience for both consumers and brands, and it is just around the corner! As the anticipation builds, so does the pressure to make the most out of this annual event.
Email marketing has become an important tool for businesses aiming to stand out amidst the Black Friday frenzy. As an email marketing expert, I have witnessed firsthand the potential that well-designed email campaigns hold during this period.
In this blog post, I'll be sharing my tips and tricks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, honed from years of experience, to help you navigate the landscape of Black Friday marketing.
Things you need to do to prepare for Black Friday ahead of time
Here are some key email activities you need to start ahead of the big event.
1. Building your deliverability
This is to ensure you reach everyone's inbox in November. Loads of brands are going to be increasing their send frequency and volume over Black Friday, which means it’s more important than ever that you have a good sender reputation and you get delivered into the inbox! To do this, make sure you are sending personalised content that is really going to engage your subscriber, such as product recommendations based on browsing activity.
2. Drive anticipation and sign ups
Starting to hint to your audience that you’re going to be taking part in Black Friday and that they need to be subscribed to your emails to be the first to know about exclusive offers is a great way to drive anticipation and sign ups.
3. Build an email plan
Make sure you know what emails you are going to send when, and to who. Think about when you are going to start and end your promotion and who should hear about it first. For example -
Email 1 - pre-launch to VIPs only
Email 2 - launch to engaged segment
Email 3 - launch to full list
Email 4 - reminder email
Email 5 - offer ends soon
Email 6 - last chance (these are really effective emails!)
Email 7 - sweep up to those who didn’t purchase
4. Split testing
Now is a great time to test what offers and email designs work with your audience ahead of the big event. Look at what has worked in previous years but also consider testing to a smaller audience, for example:
Money off vs percentage off
Money off vs gift with purchase
Money off vs bundle offers
You could also split test email designs, for example, does an email with lots or little product get a higher click rate?
I know it's a lot, but doing as much of this groundwork as you can in the lead up to Black Friday will make the process run much more smoothly.
Different Ways to Drive Sales Over Black Friday
Black Friday means that lots of customers are looking for offers and discounts, particularly on higher price items. Whether you are a premium brand or not, there may be reasons why you don't want to discount over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
However, you can still find other ways to get involved and use this opportunity to drive more online sales. If you haven't decided what you're going to do yet, don't panic. It's not too late to get a marketing plan in action. The simplest approach is to take a look at what worked for you last year, and refresh it for the year ahead.
To discount or not to discount?
Whilst it’s likely that this year, more than ever, customers are holding out for Black Friday deals, it doesn’t mean you have to take part and discount in the traditional way.
As an email marketing expert, below I'll share alternative ways to engage your subscribers this Black Friday period, and tips on whether to discount or not.
Yes to discounting
Two of the most effective options are:
Money off, e.g. £20 off when you spend £75
Percentage off, e.g. 20% off
Make sure you keep the messaging and mechanism simple, ie ‘Get 20% off all Coats’ is easier to understand than ‘Buy a coat and a pair of gloves and get £5 off your next order over £50’
With both of these options, it’s important that you put plans in place to increase customer lifetime value after its initial discounted purchase, by cross / up selling them in the future.
No to discounting
If discounting isn’t right for your business, here are some alternative ways you can drive sales over Black Friday:
Gift with purchase
Charity donation incentive
Limited edition bundle
Exclusive product launch
Partnership / collaboration launch
How to Prepare Email Flows for Black Friday
As Black Friday draws ever closer, here is some important advice on what you need to do with your email flows (aka triggered or automated emails) before the big week hits. Either way, as an e-commerce business you are likely to be getting traffic peaks over the coming weeks in the lead up to Christmas.
Please note, these tips are relevant whether you are taking part in Black Friday or not!
Make sure your Email Flows are set up
It’s likely that you’re going to be getting higher volumes of traffic to your website than normal during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so make sure you have all your key email flows in place.
Key Flows:
Welcome Flow - to ensure you’re nurturing any new sign ups
Abandoned Cart and Abandoned Browse Flows - to ensure you’re maximising sales on your site by reminding shoppers to complete their purchase.
Post Purchase Flow - this is so important to to have set up during a promotional period, so you can drive repeat purchase from your new customers and build their lifetime value
Sign Up Forms
If you haven’t already started split testing different elements on your sign up forms, during Black Friday is a good time to start, so you can make the most of your increased traffic.
Here are some a/b split tests you can run:
With an image vs without
Pop up vs fly out
Different copy on the title and call to action (CTA) button
Sending automated emails out at different times
Those All-Important Ts & Cs
Don’t forget that if you have a welcome offer running all the time, it’s worth explicitly stating that this can’t be used during Black Friday if you have other promotions running on the site.
Update this on your pop-up, your welcome emails and any terms and conditions pages on your website to avoid customer disappointment and increased customer services emails.
How to Drive Sales After Black Friday with a Sweep Up Campaign
If you are taking part in any kind of Black Friday promotion, or if you are planning January sales, here's a great tip for getting some more revenue.
When the promotion has ended, create a segment of people who visited the site during that period, but didn't purchase. Send them a personalised offer code for the next 24 hours, because they missed out.
This kind of campaign is super targeted and relevant, which means it gets high engagement. Particularly as Black Friday is now such a noisy time in digital marketing, and your customers might have got distracted and not finished their shopping with you.
Do you want to make your email marketing campaign more targeted? Only send the email if somebody looked at a product page and didn't order.
This kind of segmentation is easy to do on a tool like Klaviyo, but if you get stuck, you can always reach out.
Driving sales after Black Friday with a Sweep Up Campaign
When your Black Friday promotion ends, create a segment in your email tool of anyone who visited your site during the promotion, but didn’t purchase
Send this segment an email the following morning along the lines of ‘It looks like you just missed out on the Black Friday offer. We’d hate for you to miss out, so here’s a code for X% off for the next 24 hours’
The code can match the discount you ran over Black Friday. You can create a personalised code so the email feels relevant to the customer and is therefor really engaging
What Should you do with the New Subscribers you got during Black Friday?
Hopefully you saw a peak in visitors and shoppers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you were also focussing on building your email database at this time, you should also have some fresh new subscribers on your database.
Whilst Black Friday is over, the value you can drive from these new contacts isn't, so see what you can do with your new audience to nurture them to shop with you again below.
First, Split them into Leads and Customers
Your leads are your new subscribers who haven’t shopped with you yet. Your aim with this segment is to get them to convert for the first time.
Convert your new leads by:
Retargeting them with Google and Facebook ads
Sending them campaigns with positive customer reviews in the emails
Sending them informative and inspirational content e.g. how to use your products
Sending them a special promotion
Your new customers did shop with you during Black Friday and you want to nurture them to shop again and connect with you in as many ways as possible.
Nurture your new customers by:
Sending them unique, informative campaigns to add value to their purchases and provide up sell opportunities
Ask them to leave reviews
Invite them to follow and tag you on social media
Retargeting them with Facebook, Instagram or Google ads
Invite them to join your loyalty program or subscription service
And before you panic, this does not have to be done before Christmas!! Save this blog post and come back to it in January.
If you’d like to know more about how to drive Black Friday sales and optimise your email marketing, please get in touch, I’d love to help!