Black Friday is an event that originated in the United States. It’s a day of promotions that follows Thanksgiving and is highly appreciated by consumers, who take advantage of it to prepare their Christmas shopping while benefiting from attractive prices. In recent years, with the rise of online shopping, Black Friday has gradually expanded across the globe, in Europe, where it has become an increasingly profitable opportunity for e-commerce businesses.
Held on the fourth Friday of November, Black Friday often spills over into the days before and extends through the following Monday, known as Cyber Monday, a day of promotions dedicated exclusively to online sales. This period of deep discounts can span an entire week, which is why some refer to it as “Black Week.”
The Black Friday calendar
What makes running a promotional campaign like Black Friday challenging is standing out from the competition. Various strategies can be implemented to optimize inbox placement as well as open and click rates. These are like stepping stones that need to be addressed one by one in order to simplify the purchasing process as much as possible.
- Start early: Send teasers several weeks before Black Friday to build anticipation.
- Send reminders: Reminders the day before and on Black Friday itself can encourage impulse purchases.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are periods of heightened marketing activity. As a result, it may be more difficult to stand out from your competitors, and your open rates could be lower compared to your usual communications.
Email deliverability becomes more challenging at the end of the year due to the sharp increase in sending volumes. Email providers may throttle delivery speeds to protect their infrastructure. Probance has strengthened its infrastructure to ensure a higher sending throughput, helping reduce the impact on your campaigns.
During these special days, we recommend avoiding mass sends to your entire contact base during peak times when recipients already receive many emails, such as on the morning of Black Friday. Instead, focus on your most engaged segments. Schedule your sends in advance and avoid targeting addresses that have been inactive for too long.
Our deliverability team will monitor the quality of your sending performance throughout this entire period.
Your offers and promotions
Black Friday is one of the most anticipated times of the year for consumers, and offering attractive deals and promotions is essential to attract and convert customers. Here are some effective offer and promotion ideas to maximize your sales during this period:
1. Direct Discounts
- High percentage discounts: Offer significant discounts, for example 50% or more, on a selection of popular products.
- Tiered discounts: Provide discounts that increase based on the amount spent (for example, 10% off for €50 spent, 20% off for €100 spent, etc.).
2. Limited-Time Offers
- Flash sales: Host flash sales lasting a few hours to create a sense of urgency.
- Hourly countdowns: Offer new deals every hour to encourage customers to return regularly to your site.
3. Exclusive offers for subscribers
- Early access: Give your newsletter subscribers early access to offers so they can benefit before everyone else.
- Exclusive deals: Offer promotions exclusively for your subscribers or loyal members.
4. Bundles and Packs
- Product bundles: Create discounted product packs. For example, a skincare set with a 30% discount.
- BOGO offers (Buy One, Get One): Give a free product with the purchase of another. For example, buy one, get one free.
5. Gifts and Benefits
- Free gifts: Offer a free gift with any purchase over a certain amount.
- Free shipping: Provide free shipping for all orders placed during Black Friday.
- Gift cards: Give free gift cards for purchases exceeding a certain amount.
6. Loyalty Discounts
- Double loyalty points: Double the loyalty points for every purchase made during Black Friday.
- VIP discounts: Offer additional discounts to members of your loyalty program.
7. Last-Minute Promotions
- Last-minute offers: Provide additional deals at the end of Black Friday to capture late shoppers.
- Cyber Monday: Extend some offers through Cyber Monday or introduce new special discounts for the day.
8. Discounts on New Arrivals
- Product launches: Take advantage of Black Friday to launch new products with a special introductory offer.
- Discounted pre-orders: Offer a discount on pre-orders for new products that will be available after Black Friday.
Subject lines for your Black Friday campaign
It’s very likely that your contact’s inbox looks like this during Black Friday:
The goal is to stand out from other retailers by using a short, personalized subject line along with a preheader that aligns with the content of the email.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are events with a surge in marketing activity. As a result, it may be more difficult to stand out from your competitors, and your open rates could be lower compared to your usual campaigns.
Create relevant and engaging subject lines: Use personalized, clear, and compelling email subjects that don’t trigger spam filters.
Prefer personalized subject lines, including your contact’s first name, or even their favorite brand, for example. You can also add an emoji to help your subject stand out even more from your competitors’. However, make sure it fits your brand’s universe and isn’t too common, as this could harm your credibility. Instead, choose a symbol (star, flower, arrow, sun, envelope, hand, etc.) that resonates with your subject line and place it at the end, so that on small devices, it’s the emoji that gets cut off, not your subject line.
In any case, make sure to keep the subject line short, around 5 to 6 words, so that it remains readable regardless of the type of email client or device your contact is using.
Finally, don’t hesitate to use a preheader, this is the text that appears right after your subject line when there is space to display it. As its name suggests, a preheader is a short text placed before the main body of your email, in the header. It allows you to add a sentence that will show next to your subject line in the inbox. If you don’t include one, the email client will by default use the first sentence of your email, which is often something like “If this message does not display correctly, click here” (see the image below).
There’s definitely a better way to make your contacts want to open your email. The main purpose of the preheader is to summarize the content of your email or to give meaning to your subject line. Here, why not include “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” if it makes sense?
With our template editor, you have a preheader block that you can easily fill by simply clicking on it. We’ve made it invisible inside the email (yes, once the email is opened, the eye should mainly focus on your call to action, no need to reread the preheader). This is handy for those who don’t want to dive directly into the HTML version.
Look at the email received above:
- A short subject line
- Personalization using the first name, favorite brand, or even promotion if your catalog varies in that regard
- An emoji at the end of the subject line
- A preheader that includes a sense of urgency
Personalize your Black Friday campaign
You’ve often heard it said: the key to a successful campaign is segmenting your database to send the most relevant message based on a specific target profile. This advice is useful, of course, but only when using a basic tool to send your emails. By using a Marketing Automation solution, you can skip this tedious task. You no longer have to sort your recipient list on one side and your products on the other, the solution automatically determines the products and information to send to each contact.
See the example below with a template from our library.
Probance allows you to personalize your communications by including information from your customers’ profiles, such as their last name, first name, or birthday, in the messages you send them.
You have the option to use these personalization fields, which are tags linked to these profile details. These tags can be integrated into your templates and subject lines, and they will automatically be replaced with each recipient’s specific data in the emails. This way, you can address each contact by their last name, first name, or include their registration or birthday date, and more.
To learn more:
Read our tutorial on Personalizing Your Emails with Your Recipients’ Information.
Watch the replay of the webinar Personalize Effortlessly.
Create an email that adapts to all devices
Always ensure your email displays correctly on all devices, because although you design your template on a computer, nearly half of your contacts will open it on mobile. Our solution, for example, offers a multi-format preview mode, which is useful for seeing how your email will look on a tablet or smartphone.
Templates built with Fast Builder are responsive by default, with each block configured to adjust to the device it’s viewed on. Several options are available in our editor to help you control and optimize how your templates render on mobile.
Run a Black Friday campaign across multiple channels
A Marketing Automation solution also allows you to run campaigns across different types of channels, not just email. This can be useful for two reasons: to leverage the data calculated by your solution for more effective campaigns on other channels, and to reach potential customers through channels other than email, some may be more attentive to SMS or their social media, for example.
At Probance, you can send your campaigns via SMS, as well as automatically export your product catalog, trending and popular products, and defined customer profiles for your Facebook campaigns.
Maintain your other Marketing Automation email scenarios for Black Friday
You have now built your special Black Friday campaign, which consists of one or more newsletters. But don’t forget that when using a Marketing Automation solution, you benefit from automated scenarios that support your marketing strategy. At Probance, we have three perfect email scenarios to reinforce your marketing efforts during Black Friday:
- Visit Reminder: Automatically sends your contacts the products they viewed in your catalog.
- Abandoned Cart Reminder: Reminds your contacts of the products left abandoned in their cart.
- Cross-sell Scenario: Sends complementary products after a purchase to encourage additional orders.
Schedule your sends strategically
Send your emails at the right time to achieve the best open and click rates. Consider the time of day, your recipients’ time zones, and the overall volume of your campaigns to avoid overwhelming their inboxes.
The custom send time option allows you to schedule newsletters or automate campaign scenario sends at each recipient’s optimal time, while also setting a default send time for new members or those whose optimal time hasn’t yet been identified.
This feature lets you reach your customers at the most suitable moment, ensuring better open rates for your sends.
Provide exceptional customer service
Anticipate an increase in request volume during Black Friday and ensure your customer service team is ready to respond quickly and efficiently to customer inquiries.
Track your results
Monitor key performance indicators such as open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Analyze the results to understand what worked well and what could be improved for future campaigns.
Your special Black Friday campaign will have helped capture your contacts’ attention and generate opens and clicks. The visits you generate will allow you to better understand your contacts’ interests and automatically follow up with them.
Feel free to reach out to your Probance consultant or account manager if you would like support in implementing this approach.