How to Create a Strong Black Friday Email Campaign?

Ramp up you Holiday Sales by creating a strong Black Friday email campaign so that you make the most from interested customers.

Strong Black Friday Email Campaign

Photo by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash

 

Black Friday is one of the most significant sales opportunities of the year, and many customers try to find deals on their favorite products. If you’re not convinced, here are some data to help you realize why Black Friday should be marked on your calendar:

 

  • Consumers ages 18 to 44 want to purchase online 59% of the time.
  • During Black Friday, 34% of people open, and 9% click-through cart abandonment emails. 

 

Considering that the majority of customers will look for discounts online, investing in email marketing is the most effective tactic to help them find your company.

 

Today, we’ll go through the essential steps you must do if you don’t know how to start with your Black Friday email campaigns. 

 

Create email sequences for Black Friday

 

Consumers will begin looking for sales and discounts; thus, you must create a successful email sequence to target them at the right time and capitalize on their purchase intent.

Create three email campaigns to make things work: 

 

  • before Black Friday 
  • on Black Friday
  • Black Friday weekend 

 

When that happens, you’ll be able to craft more personalized messages for your audience, which will make your email campaigns more effective.

 

Pre-Black Friday

 

The time leading up to Black Friday can begin as early as mid-October. You might create teaser emails or early-bird discount vouchers to pique the interest of your audience and entice them to return for more.

 

Here is an excellent example from Rapha and their Black Friday email campaign. Giving potential customers access to a Black Friday preview sale will help them prepare for the actual Black Friday day sale. The email appears as follows:

 

From: Rapha

Subject: Black Friday – coming soon

Black Friday Day

 

Getting ahead of the competition on Black Friday is super challenging, and you need to create enticing email campaigns that have the potential to convert. 

 

To get ahead of the curve many email marketing services offer dedicated Black Friday email templates to customize according to your brand’s voice and colors. A pro tip here is to get some data from your analytics and find the best time to send your campaigns so that your readers engage with your emails.

 

From: Fender

Subject: Black Friday Sale Starts Now!

 

Black Friday Weekend

 

Black Friday shouldn’t be the end of the sale. You could create a post-Black Friday email marketing campaign that would target the weekend with discounts for your last-minute buyers. This strategy can increase your sales and give your business that extra boost.

 

Here’s an example by Carhartt 

Subject:Black Friday Weekend

Find the most popular products or services.

 

Black Friday is the ideal time to empty your inventory. However, it is crucial to discover the needs of your target audience before you start organizing your sales emails. 

 

To do that, you have multiple options that can make your life easier. Start by investing time in your analytics for popular products with positive feedback and reviews.

 

Suppose you don’t have an analytics tool; you can always send a survey via email and ask your email list any questions you may have. This can drastically improve your decision-making process and warm up your potential customers before the Black Friday campaign.

 

Give some love to your email design.

 

It’s now time to move on to designing your Black Friday email. You may create your design from scratch or utilize a pre-made Black Friday newsletter template.

 

No matter what you decide, always keep in mind the following Black Friday email design advice to fine-tune your emails:

 

  • Add visuals: Photos, videos, etc., play a huge role in portraying the best version of your products; thus, pay some attention to having high-quality visuals that grab readers’ attention.
  • Use specific colors: Black Friday campaigns are close related to colors like yellow and black, so stay close to that combination and maybe add one more hue that applies to your brand.
  • Simple design: Design a simple layout with concise information highlighting your strengths.
  • Typeface: Test different combinations to find the ideal balance, but stick to 2 fonts max to avoid cluttered designs. 

 

Having all these elements in mind will help you create a high-converting email campaign like GoPro.

Leverage timers and GIFs

 

Adding advanced elements to your Black Friday email campaigns is crucial to take your emails to the next level. The sense of urgency added by components like countdown timers, or GIFs, to make your email pop can create more engaging and unique campaigns. 

 

The first element you can use is timers. You can utilize this feature to give your email a sense of urgency. You can use it to boost your Black Friday day campaigns or plan a limited-time sale this way. 

 

Here is an example from Vodafone:

Pro tip: Consider including copy in your countdown timers to increase the fear of missing out (FOMO) and compel customers to act immediately. 

 

GIFs are another quick and easy way to add personality to your Black Friday shopping communications. 

 

Here is an example from Converse using a GIF to highlight their classics:

Create a high-converting subject line

The subject lines are probably the most crucial aspect of your Black Friday email advertising. Your potential customers will be intrigued and encouraged to open your campaign with a well-thought headline. 

 

Using emojis to bring attention to the message effectively differentiates your brand in your readers’ inboxes.

 

Apart from that, you can always follow the tried-and-true examples of “X% OFF Everything,” “Black Friday has arrived,” etc., if you want more traditional Black Friday email subject lines. 

 

If you find crafting email subject lines challenging, you can utilize an email testing tool.

 

For instance, Refine is a free subject line tester that offers helpful ideas and insightful analysis.

Use automation to set your campaigns on autopilot.

 

Crafting Black Friday emails can be a challenging process. To avoid that, you must leverage the power of email marketing automation to target your Black Friday customers with personalized messaging and offers catered to their needs.

 

These features are ideal for organizing sequences that will be sent to the appropriate person at the appropriate time. You will need an advanced email marketing automation provider that offers an automation builder, triggers, and ready-made templates.

 

Some of the most popular automation features include: 

 

  • Website engagement messages: Give special offers to customers who have visited particular pages and products on your website.
  • When customers purchase from your online store, you can target them with more Black Friday offers on complementary products. This is known as an upsell or cross-sell sequence. 
  • Reminders for a special offer: For increased sales, create an email series to remind your email subscribers about your special holiday deals.
  • Abandoned carts emails: Create a special cart abandonment sequence that targets your abandoners with Black Friday discounts and free shipping to recover your lost revenue.

 

Here is an example from Rudy’s Barbershop to get some inspiration:

 

Subject: Don’t let free shipping go to waste

Make data-driven decisions and track performance.

 

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to track your campaigns’ performance using your platform’s analytics tool. Bad data have many hidden costs that you should avoid when building an email campaign. You must monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine whether your email campaigns operate as anticipated, from your open rate to conversions.

 

Here are some of the most crucial email marketing KPIs you should consider when sending your next campaign:

 

  • Open Rate: Low email open rates could indicate that your subject lines aren’t converting well enough.
  • Click-through rate: Check your copy’s effectiveness and CTAs’ success with click-through rates. A high CTR indicates that your subscribers respond to your value proposition and CTA.
  • Bounces: Track your soft and hard bounces to understand why your campaigns aren’t reaching your target demographic. This metric is essential to understand whether you have potential email deliverability problems.
  • Unsubscribe rate: A high unsubscribe rate indicates that your campaigns are either ineffective or perceived as spam by your audience.

 

And this is where A/B Testing enters the picture, which enables you to test various components of the same campaign. For instance, if your open rates are poor, you can run an A/B test on your subject line to determine if the issue is with your copy. 

 

You can do that with every element of your email and test with a small segment of your email list to find the most successful elements that will synthesize your final email campaign.

The takeaway

Black Friday is an excellent opportunity for marketers and brands to showcase their skills and design effective email campaigns that convert.  

 

You can make the most of it by designing eye-catching email marketing campaigns that convince your audience to purchase from you. To do that, you need to pay attention to every detail in this article to craft a high-converting campaign.

 

A tool can be a great way to make this challenge easier. Keep an eye on affordable email marketing services to kick-start your email campaigns and run them on autopilot using advanced automation.

 

Until the next one, keep sending those Black Friday emails.

 

Alex works at Moosend as a content writer. He took a chance and moved from his professional architectural career to the field of digital marketing and hasn’t looked back. He enjoys traveling to new areas throughout the world in his spare time.