Ready for Black Friday? 5 Tips for your Black Friday Email Marketing Strategy

The holiday season is fast approaching and the latest retail craze is just around the corner; Black Friday 2021. 26th November will mark the beginning of the frenzy where shoppers are expected to spend over last years 188.2 billion. This is the perfect opportunity to use your email marketing to drive your ROI, but to do that you need to plan ahead and formulate a carefully planned a strategy.

Optimise this opportunity by implementing a strategic approach to your Black Friday campaign with our tips;

1. Think about the numbers; it’s more than just 1 email

You should view Black Friday as one of your key campaigns of the year. This should be marked out on your marketing calendar well in advance and you should think of it in the same way as your other email marketing campaigns; it should be a carefully planned series of communications to capture the attention it deserves.

2. Don’t forget about what the customer wants

Use the data you have available to personalise and tailor your communications – this’ll help you to grab the attention of your recipient and stand out in their crowded inbox. In return, it’ll benefit your sender reputation and significantly reduce the risk of your emails falling into the spam folder.

Look at past performance of emails that you’ve sent to your customers to determine the best time of day to send your campaigns, per segment, by asking yourself the following questions:

• What time of the day does my website generate the best conversion rate?
• What time drives the best results for my email campaigns?

This’ll help you determine the best opportunity window to send to your recipients without any guesswork, maximising your results. You also want to be sure you send the right email to the right person and use segmentation.

Related: Be sure to check out these BlackFriday saas deals save on marketing and business software.

3. Always optimise for multiple devices

A whopping 71% of marketing emails were opened using mobile devices. If your email isn’t optimised for mobile and a recipient opens your Black Friday email and it’s difficult to read, you’ve ruined your chances!

As well as optimising for mobile, two crucial areas to test are your subject and super subject lines, the judgement areas of your email. Think of this as your shop window. This will determine whether the recipient decides to read, based on this sneak preview information. Make sure your subject line content is personalised, based on previous buying behaviour and most importantly, relevant.

Our retail customer Jacques Vert achieved an incredible 5000% ROI from their email marketing, using a deeply personalised online and offline experience for their customers. This allowed them to spend more time segmenting customer data to drive further targeted, relevant and personalised communications.

4. Build up to the event and drive desired action

Build anticipation and excitement with your subscribers. Drive urgency by making call-to-actions stand out and playing on time sensitive offers. Think about using other tools such as countdown timers that will update when opened to really drive that all important click to your website. But be sure to use them carefully and strategically and not in every email campaign to maintain impact.

5. Put it on repeat

Cut through the inbox noise from other competitors by re-sending to any non-openers or personalising re-sends to openers with an offer due to expire to create a sense of urgency. Avoid confusing recipients by reviewing your full email series (including ALL automated communications) to ensure that your emails do not conflict with one another during this time.

Remember remember!

Use other digital marketing channels to retarget your email subscribers such as social media. When your subscriber logs into Facebook, display an ad that matches your email and website content to promote maximum visibility with consistency. Other channels such as SMS can be beneficial to keep your Black Friday offer top of mind. SMS has a read rate of 98%, and messages are opened within 3 seconds of receiving, which makes them incredibly effective for time-sensitive offers. Read this complete TextMagic review to find out if it’s the right SMS marketing tool for you.