The holiday season is fast approaching, and the year’s most anticipated shopping event is just around the corner. You guessed it – we’re talking about Black Friday.
You’ll be surprised how many businesses decide at the last minute what they’re going to do for Black Friday. This creates chaos for all teams involved – from marketing to delivery – and could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
As an email marketing agency, we start preparing our clients for Black Friday from September through November and would suggest everyone does so as well.
If you still don’t have a plan, though, don’t worry. You still have a few weeks to do everything necessary to make Black Friday and the entire holiday season work in your favor. This quick guide will help you decide what offers to give and what to do to maximize your profit from email marketing.
Read our 2023 guide for a more exhaustive list of things to do to prepare you for Black Friday.
1. Clean Your Email Lists
If you haven’t done so, you need to clean up your email lists at the start of November.
By segmenting active and inactive subscribers, you’ll maintain a healthy sender reputation and ensure your emails land in your customers’ inboxes, not their spam folders.
Identify and remove unengaged users, keeping only those with recent activity or interest in your content. As a rule of thumb, suppress everyone who hasn’t made a purchase, opened, or clicked any of your emails in the last 365+ days.
2. Auto-upgrade billing
Turn on auto-upgrade billing to continue sending campaigns even if you exceed your sending limit.
You’ll probably increase your sending volume during Black Friday and Christmas. You will surely exceed your limit if you send 2-3 campaigns daily, especially during the BFCM weekend.
With auto-upgrade on, you ensure all your campaigns will be sent as intended, and you won’t miss sending any time-sensitive content.
3. Black Friday Messaging
Effective Black Friday messaging isn’t just about loud sales language (although that may work depending on your niche). It is essential to make subscribers feel special and part of your brand with early access deals and tailored offers.
Begin building anticipation at least two weeks before Black Friday (ideally from the start of November) to avoid competition. Add scarcity tactics like “limited stock” and “exclusive discounts” to drive urgency.
Black Friday Messaging Tips:
- Create a Sense of Urgency: Use countdown timers or “while supplies last” language in your emails to encourage faster decisions.
- Make It Personal: Use dynamic content and segmentation to tailor messaging to each audience.
- Highlight Exclusivity: Ensure subscribers know they receive an exclusive offer available only to them because they are in your email lists.
- Change the Language of your Flows: Change the messaging in your Abandonment and Post Purchase flows to highlight your Black Friday offers.
- Keep it clean: Even though you’re trying to sell as much as possible, you must avoid spammy language, especially in your subject lines and preview text. This includes ALL CAPS, lots of emojis, and the excessive use of words like “free, only now, don’t miss”, etc.
4. Segmentation
Segmenting your audience is essential for effective Black Friday campaigns.
Start segmenting your customers by purchase history, browsing behavior, and level of engagement. Then, gradually increase the segments you send to during November with relevant content. From engaged 30 days to 60 days, 90 days, etc.
This will allow you to send the most relevant offers to each group and hit your master segment in full on Black Friday without going to the spam folder.
Here’s how you can make the most of segmentation:
- VIPs: Reward your most loyal customers with early access to sales or higher discounts.
- First-Time Buyers: Offer an exclusive first-purchase discount to push them to try your products.
- High-Intent Shoppers: Target users who have recently browsed your site or engaged with your emails in the past month. These are the users who are likely to convert during Black Friday.
- Window Shoppers: These customers are checking you out and need an incentive to buy. Send them an email with a limited-time offer – say, only in the next 6 hours, and see how they start shopping.
5. Offers to Consider for Black Friday
Most customers expect to find a bargain during Black Friday. They’ll spend their cash elsewhere if you’re not offering anything juicy.
Here are some effective Black Friday offers that have consistently driven results for our clients:
- Flat Discounts: Start with a 10% discount sitewide and build up from there to incentivize purchases.
- Product Bundles: Bundle products with a “Buy X, get Y” deal to increase your AOV.
- Discount Codes: Reward subscribers with an exclusive discount code, building upon the website’s general offer. An extra 15/20/25/30% off will create additional purchase motivation.
- Tiered Offers: For example, “Spend over $50 and get free shipping. Spend over $100 and receive a gift + free shipping.” This motivates customers to spend more to unlock higher rewards.
- Cashback Offers: A simple “Buy X and get $20 back” is effective, especially for higher-ticket items.
- VIP Early Access: Give your VIPs the feeling of exclusivity by offering them early access to sales or a higher discount than the general audience.
- Last Chance Offers: On Cyber Monday or the days following Black Friday, send a “last chance” offer to capture final sales from those who might have hesitated over the weekend.
6. Build an “Upgraded” Early Bird Flow
The Early Bird flow comes from the premise of sending campaigns to your customers and asking them to sign up for an early bird list so they’re the first to know about your Black Friday deals.
This tactic is great, but it can cannibalize your revenue if people don’t shop while waiting for the sale to start.
That’s why you can create an Early Bird flow, which gives them access to your Black Friday offer almost immediately after they sign up. Here’s how to do it:
- Create a landing page where people can sign up for your early bird list.
- Send campaigns to encourage people to sign up.
- Once they opt-in, they’ll go into your Early Bird flow.
- In the first email, you’ll thank them for signing up and tell them to keep an eye out on their inbox because your Black Friday sale might drop at any moment.
- Wait a day or two and email them your Black Friday deal.
- You can do this with discount codes or by sending them to a dedicated Black Friday page.
- With this tactic in place, you’ll do several things:
- Test your Black Friday offer – if people don’t buy, you might want to change it.
- Get ahead of your competition.
- Avoid customers not shopping in anticipation of the actual Black Friday.
- Increase your revenue.
7. Additional Campaign Strategies for BFCM Success
Here are some campaign messages to consider adding to your campaign calendar.
“Beat the Holiday Rush” – Early Bird Campaigns
The message of this campaign should emphasize that by shopping early, customers can secure gifts with peace of mind, knowing they won’t have to worry about availability later.
Implementation Tip: Start your campaign two or three days before your main Black Friday event, around mid-November. This way, you create a segment of pre-Black Friday buyers who feel privileged with exclusive access, warming them up to purchase more as Black Friday approaches. Alternatively, just give everyone on your lists this “early bird” access.
“Flying off the Shelves” – Highlighting Popular Products
As the campaign suggests, it’s time to emphasize urgency.
This campaign focuses on the popularity and limited availability of your best-selling products. Using messages like “Going fast!” or “Running out of stock,” you create urgency, prompting customers to buy quickly.
You’re effectively encouraging buyers not to miss out by emphasizing the high demand for popular items.
Implementation Tip: Send this message around the second phase of your Black Friday campaign.
Thanksgiving Founder’s Message
Send a more personal, plain-text message from your brand’s founder, expressing gratitude for customers’ support throughout the year.
This simple message can humanize the brand, strengthen relationships, and direct customers back to Black Friday deals. It also helps with deliverability issues since you’re sending a lot of HTML campaigns and this plain text email will be an easy open, as it will probably land in the primary tab of your customers’ inboxes.
Implementation Tip: Time this email for Thanksgiving, aligning with the day’s message of gratitude and support.
Make the most of this Black Friday
With thoughtful list management, well-timed flows, segmented messaging, and the right mix of offers, you can elevate your Black Friday email marketing and maximize your revenue this holiday season.
Remember, it’s all about creating value, making your audience feel special, and driving sales.
If you need some extra tips and tricks on what to do this Black Friday, schedule a call with us:
