Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching.  By now you should have mapped out your campaign objectives and segmented your database accordingly.  The next step is to ensure your Black Friday email campaigns are planned and structured appropriately, allowing you to stand out in the inbox and maximise sales revenue.

The most challenging aspect to Black Friday marketing is that it can be an unpredictable time time of year.  So it’s important to create a sound plan and understand how each element of your email marketing is going to hit the objectives you want to achieve.

In this blog we talk you through a multi-stage approach that will entice your email subscribers and sustain momentum to ensure your Black Friday is as profitable as possible.

Awareness

Awareness plays two roles. First off you want to ensure that the right people know about your Black Friday sales or your Christmas offerings.

Target the existing segments of your database to spread the news and ensure you’re on their radar at this time of the year. You might do this by simply featuring an advert at the bottom of your normal email campaigns a few weeks from your go live date.

Secondly, the awareness stage is the time to focus efforts on topping up your email database. This will broaden your opportunities to maximise your sales over this time. Ensure your email sign up forms are visible and enticing. Consider using well timed overlays to encourage signs ups before people leave your site. Think how you can leverage other channels to promote your newsletters and increase sign-ups other than your website.

Anticipation

Now is the time to create impactful messaging that will build excitement and intrigue your email subscribers. A lot of this comes down to the art of teasing and timing it right – provide just enough information to spike your subscribers’ curiosity.

Otherwise it’s going to appear out of the blue if you just storm in with all the details on everything you’re offering. This risks overwhelming or boring your subscribers. And remember, you need to be extra careful at this time of year, when the inbox is particularly noisy, not to waste the opportunities you have to capture your audience’s attention.

The key is to take incremental steps so you’re taking your readers’ emotions on a journeys—from curiosity to desire. And ensure you’re always telling your readers what’s in it for them.

Game did this very well during its Black Friday campaign which features a live countdown gif to build anticipation. Games builds intrigue by announcing that new deals will be going live every day in the lead up the main event.

 

Game Black Friday Email Campaign

 

Conversions

The Game example above offers the opportunity to sign up to its Black Friday email list.

The benefit to the subscriber is they’re the first to know about the offer, giving them a sense of exclusivity.

The benefit to the brand is they now have a highly engaged segment with a high buying intent who they can target immediately. They know this segment is likely to drive a lot of sales.

If you are well prepared and have launch dates for your product releases or offers, you can create nurture campaigns around these keys dates -—whether it’s Black Friday, the ramp up to Christmas or your January Sales. Set up a series of emails to drip feed key information on particular dates.

Behavioural targeted emails are a great strategy to use during this stage too.

While you build awareness and anticipation your subscribers will have been checking out your website. Now you can target them with offers or recommendations based on the products they’ve been looking at.

Sustaining momentum

This stage is all about the longevity of your campaigns. It will be dictated by a number of things including; the success of your Black Friday campaign to date, the nature of your business, and your strategic goals.

For example, it may be profitable for some brands to sustain momentum by extending their Black Friday sale. This might include Cyber Monday or even the entire week after Black Friday. LateLuxury did this by simply notifying subscribers that they were extending their sale for another 24 hours in the header of their email.

 

Lateluxury Black Friday Email Campaign

 

Discounting different categories over Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a great way to sustain momentum. For example, Forest Holidays offered a significant discount on for two different types of holiday—the first to appeal to those hunting for next year’s holiday and the second to target those tempted by a festive getaway.

 

Forest Holiday Black Friday Cyber Monday emails
For others brands, this discounting strategy might impact the results of their Christmas campaign and therefore their sales revenue over this time. So it makes sense for these brands to switch their focus to the promotion of their Christmas campaign, maintaining the ‘flash’ nature of their Black Friday campaign.

Takeaway

In this blog post we’ve spoken about approaching your Black Friday email marketing in four stages:

  • Awareness
  • Anticipation
  • Conversions
  • Sustaining momentum

This approach will help you focus on the details of each stage and how they feed into achieving the objectives you set out at the beginning of your planning phase.

Breaking down the stages will help you create relevant and engaging offers. It also encourages you to consider how much momentum your Black Friday campaign has before the focus needs to switch over to Christmas.

The key to success in marketing is planning. But that doesn’t mean you have to follow your plan rigidly. Having a plan still allows your to be reactive when necessary and respond to real-time results.

Want to learn more? Check out our guide below for all you need to know on creating a killer festive marketing strategy. From setting objectives all the way through to developing your post-Christmas strategy.

How to Create a Killer Festive Marketing Strategy. Get the guide.