Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching—and in an ideal world, you’d have all your campaigns planned down to the smallest detail. But, as most in the fast-moving world of eCommerce marketing will admit, sometimes even the biggest sale of the year really creeps up on us!

If you’ve left your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing plans to the last minute—don’t panic—you’re reading the right blog post. We’ve put together ten last-minute marketing tips to help you boost your revenue during this busy sales period.

1) Send a countdown email

If you haven’t had time to plan out a series of teaser emails in the run up to Black Friday, a simple countdown email sent the day before will build anticipation.

Using a countdown timer in your email will add an eye-catching visual element. This will help grab the attention of your recipients and get them ready to engage with your offers.

Here’s a great example of a Black Friday countdown timer email in action, from Game:

Game Countdown Timer

 

2) Offer smart discounts

If you haven’t had time to plan out offers that will maximise revenue in advance of Black Friday, there are simple ways to be smart about last minute discounts.

Don’t go crazy with across the board discounts if these don’t make financial sense. Find items you have loads of in stock that you would be likely to discount heavily in January anyway, and offer those reductions now.

3) Send a special offer to top customers

If you only have time to focus in on one carefully crafted email, make sure it goes to your top customers.

Find the most engaged subscribers, or top purchasers, and send them an offer tailored specifically to them. Offering these potential brand advocates an exclusive deal is almost guaranteed to get them chomping at the bit—and telling their friends.

4) Simple and bold colour palette

Ideally, you’d have had time to create a mood board and have design review about the look and feel of your emails. But failing that, a last-minute design tip is to keep it simple.

Limiting your design to two or three colours and using bold, punchy messaging in a large font is a good way to create an eye-catching design. Engaging recipients visually increases your chances that they want to read on and click-through.

We love this example from Forever 21—the limited colour palette and large font make it crisp, clean, and impactful:

Forever 21 Black Friday Email

5) Punchy subject line

Subject lines are always important, but on a weekend when inboxes will be flooded with offers, they are more important than ever.

Be bold, be punchy, be brave—and you might grab your customer’s eye, pique their curiosity, and pull them away from opening a competitor’s email.

But, don’t forget that being brave doesn’t mean trying to be too clever. Subject lines should be easy to scan and digest at a glance.

6) Update people on items selling fast

Send email updates on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to let people know how many of your top-sellers are left in stock. This is a great way to play on the scarcity principle, and doesn’t take much advance planning.

If you can trigger someone’s fear of missing out, you can create a sense of urgency to buy now—boosting your sales.

7) Upsell

Upselling and cross-selling are both ways to increase someone’s order value, but if you only have time to implement one tactic, go with upselling.

Research suggests upselling performs up to 20 times better than cross-selling on product pages.

Even though people are looking to take advantage of reduced prices, they may well be buying gifts. So, give them a chance to buy something more impressive by showing them the dearer version of what they’re viewing and boost your revenue while you’re at it.

8) Last minute extended sale email

You might have missed out on planning and sending teaser emails in the run up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but you can make up for lost time by extending your sale.

Sending a last-minute extended sale email as Cyber Monday draws to a close is a great way to capture sales from those who are late to the party.

This email from Julep is a strong example of this tactic in action:

Julep extended sale to cyber tuesday

9) Exit intent popover offer

If your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers don’t quite hit the mark and people are about to abandon your site, tempt them to stay and purchase with an exit intent popover offer.

By making use of an unobtrusive popover, you can offer those about to abandon your site an additional discount to entice them to part with their pounds.

10) Basket abandonment offer

In a similar vein, you can ensure you convert as many browsers to purchasers as possible by sending basket abandonment emails.

By setting up a special Black Friday and Cyber Monday automated message that’s triggered when people abandon their basket, you can drive people back onsite to complete their purchases.

Takeaway

We hope this blog post has taken some of the stress out of your last-minute Black Friday and Cyber Monday preparations—and that our marketing tips help give your revenue a boost over the festive sales weekend.

Before your campaigns go live, be sure to pin down what success looks like, so you can report on your efforts. You can use your learnings to feed into your planning for next year and get ahead of the game for 2018’s biggest sales.

All the tactics we’ve explored are easy to implement with our behavioural marketing and personalisation tools.

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