This year has certainly gone fast, the summer heat has long faded, nights are drawing in and the smell of bonfires are in the air, which can only mean one thing…

Yes, it’s officially time to start worrying about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Black Friday is the biggest sales event of the year, it used to be infamous for crazy crowds and queues, but since the pandemic, there’s been a surge in online sales seeing consumers in a frenzied bid to find their favourite items at lower prices.

With Black Friday just around the corner there’s never been a better time than now to get your business (and Mailchimp) ready, so you can avoid those last minute panics.

If your goal is to kill it this coming Black Friday, it goes without saying that you need to supercharge your email marketing efforts, and with that in mind here are 9.5 ways that every Mailchimper should be aware of to ensure their Black Friday efforts succeed.

Tip #1: Develop a cunning plan

During this hectic period, your customers are likely to get mountains of offers, so it’s important that you set clear goals and build a winning strategy that targets your core audience before you start..

Divide the holiday into four mailing periods: pre-Black Friday, Black Friday day, post-Black Friday (Black Friday weekend) and Cyber Monday.

This will help you determine what messages you need to create for your audience and when.

When planning your emails ask yourself these questions:

• What are your goals and objectives?
• What did you do last year that really worked or even didn’t work so well?
• What did your competitors do?
• What does your target audience want?
• How can you target your customer to send them the right promotion at the right time?

Tip #2: Get ahead of the crowd

During the peak holiday season your top priority is to have a list of engaged subscribers who will be excited to hear from you.

Encourage social media followers, website visitors, phone callers, and in person shoppers to subscribe to your email list and find out about the offers before anyone else – the earlier you start this the better.

You could use a Black Friday subscription popup on your website where the goal is to collect emails from new visitors interested in your Black Friday deals or set up a promotional landing page. Entice new signups even more by offering them an additional discount, free shipping, or a gift, depending on your budget:

Keeping your audiences clean is an important part of your email marketing and something you should be regularly doing. If you haven’t already done it, now is a great time to do a thorough clean and segmentation of your email list. Have a look at our blog post on cleaning your list for tips to do this.

Segment your subscribers

Look at your subscribers (and your available subscriber data) to create relevant segments. For instance, you could segment users by gender, location, or past purchases to deliver hyper-relevant promotional emails. Or segment your list by frequent buyers, infrequent/holiday shoppers, and non-purchase subscribers.

Tip #3 – Get clever with your emails

There’s nothing stopping you from building your emails now and having them all prescheduled… that way you can focus on other stuff during BF,knowing the emails are doing their job for you….

Transactional

Transactional emails are generally triggered based on the user’s interaction. Be ready to align transactional emails according to the event, take a look at some transactional email examples below.

Account opening: Welcome customers to your business with a special offer.
Order: Send a purchase confirmation and thank your customer with a private extension on a current sale, maximise your sales with recommended products.
Abandoned Cart Emails: 67% of online shopping carts are abandoned before a customer completes a purchase (Source: MailChimp). Automatically trigger an abandoned cart email to re-engage them. Encourage your customer to complete the sale with an added incentive such as a discount or limited-time sale.

Promotional

Unlike transactional emails, promotional emails are used to drive awareness, encourage engagement, or make a sale. These emails require a clear call-to-action to convince customers to take the next step and convert.

Specific Event emails: Utilise teaser emails, countdown emails, preview emails as well as emails promoting your offers. Follow up after the event by sending a quick thank-you email, a customer survey, or a feedback request.
Retargeting: Consider re-targeting customers who have previously purchased during Black Friday – as they’re likely to convert again, as well as those who engage during your campaign by offering tailored product recommendations.
Automated : Automate your emails with the creation of welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, product recommendations, and retargeting emails, set this up now, so you don’t have to worry about this during the busy shopping season ahead.

Using the right mix of transactional and promotional emails will not only keep your customers engaged and informed but also keep your brand top of mind.

Tip #4 – Perk up purchases with a promotional landing page

 A promotional landing page is a standalone page on your site where your customers can find your discount deal and take advantage of it. Your landing page should be entirely focused on your Black Friday offer leading the consumer directly to purchase without any distractions.

Display as many photos of your products as possible and emphasise the deal and the savings the whole way down the page.
Use your landing page in conjunction with other campaigns, share it on social media, tag contacts on signup and segment your audience based on landing page activity.

Creating a landing page in Mailchimp

• Click Create.
• Click Landing Page.
• Type a name for your landing page. This name is for your reference, and isn’t visible to visitors.
• Click the Select An Audience drop-down, then select an audience.
• Click Begin.
• You can then pick a template, where you’ll be taken to MailChimp’s builder, here you can edit the page design and add various elements such as images, headlines, text, form fields, etc.

Tip #5 – Dedicate your time to your email design

 For these emails, it’s good to still focus on your brand identity but switch it up a little, keep it simple, stylish and easy to read with a clear message and call-to-action button,

The colour combination of black, white and one or two colours to accentuate works well.

Apart from the colours, you also want to pay attention to the layout itself. Make your offer the centre of attention and as close to the top of the email as possible, pick high-quality images of your products that can really let your offer stand out.

Considering the Black Friday sales rush, consumers will have plenty of deals and websites to check out. With this in mind it’s worth making the copy easy to scan, you can make your copy super scannable with the use of bullet points, underlines and bold fonts.
The aim here is to have copy which is clear, concise, and valuable.

Outline your offer, from its terms to its end date, in the email body. Write product descriptions that summarise the best features of the product (or services) in just a few key points or short paragraphs.

Tip #6 – Supercharge your Subject Lines

 The first rule of Black Friday email marketing is to have a unique subject line that’ll boost your open rates and, ultimately, your click-throughs.

Be original, tell your subscribers what they’re saving on, and the benefits of ordering from you.

With the rise in mobile shopping it’s worth keeping subject lines concise and punchy
Go one step further with personalised subject lines and email content to entice the customer even more!

Incorporate power words that accurately describe your deal in your subject line, Optimise your subject line to add to the sense of emergency with phrases like “won’t last” and “ends at midnight.

Utilise pre-header text to offer more incentives to open emails
Insert action-oriented language
Always perform A/B testing of your email subject lines.

Tip #7 – Motivate them with deadlines

 Show when items are low in stock, this will let customers know that items they’re interested in are going quickly, so they have no option but to act fast if they want the product. Add this to your browse abandonment and cart abandonment automations.

With so many options available, customers are likely to shop around first for the best offers, so share promotion deadlines.

For example “Our 20% off promotion ends on Tuesday,”

By stating this, you’re telling customers the exact timeline they have to make a purchase whilst giving the customer time to browse and think about what they want.

Use a countdown timer

Use a countdown timer in your Social Media, your pop-up, landing page and emails, This can also help create a sense of urgency whilst playing on your customers’ FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Mailchimp will let you add advanced elements, such as countdown timers which renders the actual time remaining on your countdown at the moment the user opens their email (not when you sent it).

Just remember that some email programes don’t love countdown timers so make sure you’ve got other information in the email to promote the deadline.

Tip #8 – Get savvy with social media

 Connecting all your marketing channels is one of the most effective ways to drive sales during this season so use a combination of both emails and social media to promote your offer.

Start by creating a content calendar, and schedule your social media posts and emails. This is something you can be doing now.

Simultaneously build engagement with your social media campaign by inserting social media blocks and sharing your promotional campaigns within Mailchimp.

Promote your sales through social media posts targeted to the people most likely to take advantage of your deals. Create a social post on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to drive traffic to your page without ever leaving your Mailchimp account. Or, copy your landing page URLs to share it on social networks.

Schedule your social media posts to correspond with promotional emails

You can also use Mailchimp to schedule organic social posts and then measure engagement to identify where those ads perform best.

Tip #9- Don’t forget your Data

 Ensure you analyse your data to prepare for and give you a headstart for next year. What promotions had a better response from customers? what products or services were purchased the most? and what days during your campaign had the most sales.

Which Marketing tactics weren’t as successful? What improvements can you make to your email and social media marketing for better conversion results?

Tip #9.5 – Don’t Panic

It’s easy to get lost in the panic of Black Friday and throw as much as you can against the wall and hope it will stick.

With a bit of planning and prep, the actual Black Friday activity should just … happen… leaving you decide what you want to buy for yourself!

Final thoughts

It goes without saying that Black Friday is one of the busiest times of the year for every business. With a solid email marketing campaign, and well planned emails, you have the opportunity to reach the right people with the right offers at the right time.

So get ahead of your competitors and start planning today.

Hopefully, these tips and ideas can help inspire your Black Friday email marketing campaign and allow you to boost your seasonal sales like a pro.

Before you know it Black Friday will be long gone and it’ll be time to start thinking about planning your Christmas marketing and email campaigns…
But let’s save that for another day…

Book my Medical Now

Challenge Us!

If you want someone to help you with your Mailchimp account, whether it’s setting it up, reviving it or just keeping it ticking over, don’t be shy.

Let’s chat!

← Previous Post: Part 2: Your step by step guide to segmentation success

Liz Seymour

Cheesy as it sounds, Liz is the biz when it comes to Marketing. She’s worked in Marketing for around 20 years when she went to uni and studied Multimedia Technology…That’s where her love affair for all things Marketing began.  Since then she has worked for household names such as Wickes, The Rank Group, Nuffield Health, Snappy Snaps and Marriot. Not to mention a great variety of B2B and B2c businesses and agencies.

Here at Chimp Answers she deals with all things Marketing focusing on the Content and Copywriting side of things such as Blog posts, Emails and landing pages. Liz is Certified in Direct-Response Copywriting, Google Digital Marketing Fundamentals,Hubspot Inbound Marketing,Hubspot Social Media and of course, Mailchimp Foundations.

Submit a Comment

Logged in as Liz Seymour. Log out? Required fields are marked *

Submit Comment

ay tips guaranteed to boost your seasonal sales like a pro

9.5 ways for every Mailchimper to prepare for Black Friday and make it a success.