How to turn Black Friday Shoppers into Loyal Customers For many brands, Black Friday is one of the most important dates of the year. So perhaps unsurprisingly, competition is fierce. Marketing budgets are high during this period, and efforts are put into Black Friday campaigns, emails, landing pages, social media posts, and paid advertising. But as well as being a fantastic source of revenue, Black Friday offers another very interesting benefit. Potential loyal customers. That’s because if your brand can wow with your Black Friday campaigns, you have the opportunity to grab the attention of brand new customers who hadn’t considered you before. This in turn opens the door for more communications, engagement, and purchases. We have created this guide to help you make the very most of the Black Friday opportunity. To help you entice new customers, and to win them over long term. Better Black Friday campaigns start here. Getting Black Friday right The first step in turning a Black Friday shopper into a loyal customer is getting your Black Friday marketing spot on. This could potentially be the first engagement a consumer has with your brand, so by following our steps below, you can impress them right from the start. Timing Just like Christmas, Black Friday is getting earlier each year. In 2020, many brands turned Black Friday into a week-long sale. Starting their promotions and ramp-up at the beginning of November. To remain competitive, brands need to ensure they are at the front of consumers’ minds for the Black Friday sales. That means building an entire promotional campaign around Black Friday. Including pre-launch promotions, early sales, and lots of reminders via email, social media, and on website. Subject line With endless brands battling it out in the inbox come Black Friday, the subject line has arguably never been so important. In fact, 47% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. So come Black Friday pull out all the stops when it comes to your subject lines. Get your team together and brainstorm how you can get creative and catch the recipient’s eye to encourage them to open. Some tried and tested ways of creating an irresistible subject line are: Emojis (sparingly) Humour Unusual words First name personalisation Asking a genuinely engaging question Following our best practice guide to ensure your subject line doesn’t land you in the SPAM folder Below are some of the Black Friday subject lines which caught our eye, from Beer 52, Pour Moi, and Wayfair Design At a basic level, the goal of any Black Friday campaign design is to ensure the recipient purchases an item in the sale. Whether you are promoting your Black Friday deal through email or website, similar design principles still remain. Ensure your design isn’t cluttered. You have one goal which is to click through to the sale and purchase, so focus everything around this. The copy should be clear and concise. There’s no need to write out your terms and conditions in an email or on a landing page. Instead, entice consumers into your sale as quickly and efficiently as possible. And most importantly your CTA (call to action) should be simple, offer a command, and stand out from the rest of the design. Urgency Marketers will often use urgency in their campaigns to speed the buying process up. That’s because, without the pressure of time, consumers will often spend longer deliberating over their decision, researching their purchases, and considering competitors. By creating a sense of urgency, potential purchasers will be more likely to make a snap decision before missing out. A great way to add urgency is with the use of a countdown timer. Not only are they eye-catching on a landing page or in an email, but they can also update in real-time whenever a landing page is refreshed or an email is opened. Keeping the consumer up to date on the exact amount of time left in the sale. Marketers can use urgency in more product-specific promotions too. By utilising dynamic content blocks, brands can showcase how many items of a product are left in the sale. Encouraging the consumer to make a purchase before the product is sold out. Social proof Ratings, reviews, and testimonials are key to building trust with consumers. In fact, 89% of customers won’t take action until they read reviews. And what better way to reassure potential consumers by showcasing other happy, satisfied customers? And social proof can come in many forms. Star ratings, reviews, and testimonials. But also UGC (user-generated content) showcasing your happy customers showing off your products on social media. This is especially effective when using social media influencers. Not only is the latter great for offering reassurance, but also encourages FOMO (fear of missing out) when potential consumers see some of their favourite influencers, or other shoppers just like themselves, loving your product. How to build customer loyalty with email marketing Now you’ve bagged yourself a whole new set of first-time customers with your Black Friday promotions, you won’t want to let them go. Follow our steps to turning these purchasers into loyal, long-term customers. Welcome emails After making a Black Friday purchase, the welcome email is one of the first communications a new customer will have with your brand. And it is sent to them at the point when they are most engaged. So make sure you get your welcome email right by creating a beautifully branded template, using inviting language, and providing key information such as customer support or social media channels. If you’re feeling generous, you could also include a discount code to encourage a purchase. You can even split welcome campaigns into multiple emails, so you can cover each important area more thoroughly. Segmentation If your Black Friday shopper is a brand new customer, chances are you won’t have lots of data on them yet, such as pages browsed, products regularly purchased. That’s OK, because you can use the basic information you do have to segment your communications to offer basic personalisation. For instance, if the shopper purchased ‘Back to school’ clothing during Black Friday, chances are they are a parent and will be interested in children’s goods. Or, if the shopper purchased makeup, you know that they will likely be interested in other makeup ranges. If you have access to demographic data, you can also segment based on age, gender, and location. And make judgements on the types of products they may be interested in. All whilst collecting more data on them to further personalise their experience. Personalisation Personalisation is the marketer’s secret weapon. Whether it be via email or on landing pages, personalisation is key to turning a casual shopper into a loyal customer. It makes them feel acknowledged by the brand. And ensures a far smoother purchasing journey. Using first names in email and, where possible, landing pages is a great first step. But there are lots of other opportunities for making the most of personalisation. If your brand has access to purchasing and behavioural data, you can combine this with dynamic content blocks to showcase shoppers the items which they are most likely to be interested in. This could be in the form of recommended products, cross-sell opportunities or add-on purchases. Brands can even use location data to target their shoppers more effectively. By practising geo-targeting and utilising dynamic content blocks, brands can personalise emails and landing pages based on where in the world the consumer is. This could include language, currency, products based on national holidays, or weather-appropriate clothing. Or even more simply, brands can use the location data to recommend stores, events, and sales that are closest to the shopper. Community After the initial excitement of bagging a Black Friday bargain wears off, consumers are looking for more from brands. Today, consumers want more than a good price and fast delivery. They want to enjoy the experience they have with a brand and feel part of something bigger. Community is key to achieving this. So if you have a strong social following, influencers who love your brand, or glowing reviews, then show them off via email and on your website. You can even use dynamic content blocks to automatically populate your emails and landing pages with our latest social posts, mentions, and UGC (user-generated content) to help engage your shoppers in real-time. Image Source – Made.com Retargeting Of course, once a Black Friday customer has bagged a bargain, they may not be open to engaging with you immediately. In these instances, you can try a retargeting campaign with the aim of piquing their interest once again. This campaign should remind the customer of your brand, address any potential blockers that are stopping them from purchasing with you, and encourage them to visit your website or store again. Include social channels in case they’d rather engage through Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. If possible, incorporate the latest products which they may be interested in. And include a discount code to give them that final nudge to come back to you. But of course, if this fails then you can ask them what you did wrong. Offer a feedback form to capture any insight they may have. Or include a preference centre so they can choose to limit the amount or type of emails they receive from you. Or unsubscribe altogether. Remember, unsubscribes aren’t necessarily a bad thing. While the goal is to turn Black Friday shoppers into loyal customers, it is better to have a smaller and more engaged email list than a huge email list, full of disengaged contacts. Are you a brand looking to win over your Black Friday customers? Then there’s no time to waste. Black Friday is just around the corner. And to make the most of this opportunity you need to be planning your campaigns now. If you need help and support in making this the best Black Friday for your brand, then get in touch with our friendly team of experts.