As we approach the Q4 period, it’s never too early to begin preparing in your Black Friday and Cyber Monday email marketing strategy. Once Black Friday week hits, our inboxes are crammed with a hurricane of brands fighting for attention, each with the ‘biggest’ and the ‘best’ offers you won’t get anywhere else.
To set your brand aside from the competition, it’s crucial to plan ahead. Over 60% of brands send out multiple emails over the course of the Black Friday/ Cyber Monday weekend, and it’s an ideal time to up your brand awareness ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
If you’re undecided where to begin with Q4 planning or need some last-minute suggestions to boost your strategy, we’ve outlined some top email marketing strategies to include into your plans!
1. Send Pre-Black Friday Emails
Sending pre-Black Friday emails is great for keeping your brand on the forefront of individuals’s minds ahead of the large day. Not only will a pre-Black Friday email let your audience find out about your upcoming event, but it should also be sure that your audience is commonly checking in in your brand throughout the Q4 period.
Additionally, sending pre-Black Friday emails is useful for A/B testing. Sending out different formats of emails with minor tweaks, equivalent to the CTAs or subject lines, can allow you to determine what your audience is more likely to interact with so you’ll be able to then tailor your Black Friday strategy accordingly.
2. Run a Lead Gen
It might look like a given, but ahead of Black Friday, it’s useful to provide your email list a much-needed boost. An easy but effective solution to do that is to run a lead-generation promoting campaign. For example, offering your audience the prospect to win a prize in return for submitting details, equivalent to their email address, is a fast and straightforward solution to increase your list size. Similarly, refreshing your pop-up on-site with an irresistible offer will even contribute to gaining latest profiles.
3. Offer Something Unexpected
Email marketers only have 3 seconds to capture the eye of their readers, which isn’t surprising on account of the quantity of emails the typical person will receive every day. If an email isn’t driving you to click on it, it swiftly gets forgotten about and lost inside their inbox. Over Black Friday, to avoid this happening, ensure you’re offering something unexpected, whether that’s a mystery discount or a present with each purchase!
One of the worst things you’ll be able to do over Black Friday is to overcomplicate your promotions. If you’re offering multiple promotions and codes, things can get a bit too hectic. To make it so simple as possible, consider running an ordinary “as much as” percentage amount. If you must include a code, it helps to have this auto-applied at checkout to avoid customers dropping off in the event that they input it incorrectly. In the design of your email, ensure the promotion is clearly highlighted inside the design so it could’t be missed, and likewise referenced within the body copy and subject lines too!
5. Create An Effective Design
Creating an efficient design is one thing, but how do you recognize what works? To improve your email campaigns, consider running an A/B test to pinpoint which elements of your design are improving the CTR and that are hindering it.
Highlighting metrics equivalent to color, font size, and CTAs can immediately impact whether people will click through or discard! If a consumer clicks in your email, you’ll have, on average, 11 seconds to maintain their attention, so ensuring your design stands out for the wave of other Black Friday content is essential! Keep the design of your email reflective of your branding but with stand-out elements specifically for the shopping season.
6. Make Use Of CTAs
CTAs (call-to-action) are one of the crucial underrated parts of any email campaign, especially over the Black Friday period. They’re one in every of the driving forces behind making your email recipients turn into passive readers to customers. One key solution to make your CTAs stand out is to utilize brilliant and daring colors that can attract and hold attention. Additionally, it’s essential to think concerning the placement of your CTAs to extend your click-through rate, ensure the copy used is obvious and concise (between two and five words) and use actionable language.
7. Focus On Subject Lines
Subject lines are make or break for each email campaign. Over Black Friday, consumers’ inboxes are cluttered with emails, so it’s essential to face out. It’s estimated that on Black Friday, 116.5 million emails from brands were sent out (greater than some other day), and Black Friday sees the very best variety of emails opened and clicked. To prevent your emails from being lost within the void, having a cracking subject line to face out from competitors is all the pieces.
The secret to an important subject line is to maintain it short and snappy. On average, subject lines with 50 characters or less are inclined to get a median of 12% higher open rates and 75% higher click-through rates. Including emojis inside subject lines has been seen to extend click-through-rates by as much as 28%!
Additionally, it helps to make use of language that can really pique your audience’s interest, avoid any overused cliches and keep them as attention-grabbing as possible.
8. Prep for Cyber Monday
To plan an efficient Black Friday, it’s crucial to arrange for Cyber events too. With Cyber following straight after, it’s easy to ignore it or not prioritise it as much as Black Friday, nonetheless, it’s still a particularly profitable day! To benefit from it, create dedicated campaigns and tailor your online sales messaging in order that it focuses on driving urgency.
9. Incorporate SMS into Your Strategy
Sometimes the importance of SMS might be missed because numerous brands assume that text messages won’t slot in with their brand. However, it’s a no brainer for reaching much more customers. On average, 82% of individuals engage with marketing content on their smartphones, so it’s something to definitely explore, especially over the busy shopping period.
To gain SMS sign-ups, you’ll be able to effectively tie your SMS campaign in together with your lead generation and ask for purchasers to fill out their phone number in addition to their email address. That way, they’ll be opted into your send list. It may also be used to send reminders when sales have launched or when offers are coming to an in depth.
Despite having only 160 characters to work with, SMS campaigns are longer than beneficial email subject lines, so it could be just as, if not more practical than email marketing campaigns.
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