Another one in the bag! BFCM has come and gone, and I am proud to say that this year we once again crushed it. 1,000+ unique email templates were created and sent to over 115 million recipients. To achieve this without mistakes and without burning your Team out takes both processes, and preparation.
Every year I tell my Team: BFCM isn’t won on the big weekend, it’s won in the months leading up to it.
Which is why, at Hustler Marketing BFCM starts the first week of August. We take a company-wide two week “Call Free Hustle” at the end of July, which means reduced hours and a break from Zoom. Come August, we’re ready to tackle the busy season with fresh minds and renewed enthusiasm for the months ahead!
Here’s what the ideal lead up to BFCM looks like for us:
August: Progress Without Pressure
August is about crafting BFCM strategies for our clients. Looking at results and trends from last year, checking the change in audience behavior, analyzing every data point we can find. Our Account Managers are busy drafting customized and store personalized strategies, that include timing, angles, number of emails/SMSs, segmentation, design styles, possible offers (even though these usually change a few times before the big day😊). It’s critical to get going this early, for several reasons:
- It pushes clients to start thinking about BFCM early instead of scrambling in October.
- It gives everyone enough time to adjust or completely change the strategy if needed.
- It leaves space to digest, refine, and stress-test the offer before locking it in.
- It gives clarity on supporting assets like landing pages or other things that need to get done.
But most importantly, it gets the ball rolling.
Starting early creates a smooth domino effect. An early strategy means an early to-do list, which means assets are briefed and produced on time. That gives you plenty of room for revisions, early approvals, and final template building. With multiple rounds of checking, any errors are caught well before launch, and the result is “simple”: 1000+ emails flawlessly sent to 115 million recipients.
September: From Strategy to Structure
Once the preliminary strategy is done in August, we discuss it with our clients and agree on the number of additional emails we need to send to achieve the desired outcome. Usually, this happens in September. At this stage we would love to move on to briefings, but one key element is missing, the actual killer offer. In fact, this year the biggest grain of sand in our well-oiled machine was the delay/change in offers.
We are as flexible around this as we can be, but in an ideal world, we have deadlines for certain steps during the BFCM preparation, and we stick to them. Like Strategy approved, number of emails confirmed, all briefings are done. It’s important to stick to these so the copywriters, designers, and the template specialists have enough time to do their jobs. Without deadlines in place, November would be absolutely overwhelming for the creative Team.
October: Check, Check, and Check Again
We aim to get all BFCM briefs done before mid-October and spread out the completion dates over the next 30 days. This way, our creative Team is busy but not swamped. We want all templates to be done 2-3 weeks before the sending date to give us enough time to get feedback, do revisions and have time for a few rounds of QA. 3-4 rounds of QA to be exact.
And here we arrived at the single most important rule of “How to have a fire free BFCM”. 3 different people checking all links, banners, discount codes, copy, and everything that’s on the template. After each stage of development, the creators check his/her own work, that’s obvious. But during a busy period like BFCM it’s easy to make mistakes. Which is why we do 3 rounds of comprehensive checks on every single template. These are carried out by the Account Manager, their supervisor, as well as the template specialist. This is the key to how we not only survived, but aced the last 4 BFCM seasons.
November: Nothing Left to Chance
Because we really care about quality, our Account Managers atHustler Marketing make use of a “Campaign check list.”This is a simple Google form which is filled out with each campaign scheduled. It has questions about segmentation, settings, subject line checking and so on. It’s not long, but it’s enough to catch the remainder of the mistakes right before sending. Oh yeah and one more important detail: we ALWAYS schedule our campaigns one or more days before Black Friday. The email solution providers can get overwhelmed and become unavailable. If your campaigns are not scheduled, you won’t be able to send them. This has happened before, but thankfully not to us! (Because we preschedule ;)
Well, as I said, that’s the theory. Now, back to reality.
Clients have a million things to do before BFCM, email & SMS are just a small fraction of their worries. This means our deadlines become super fluid. If the strategy cannot be signed off in time, it causes a domino effect of everything else being delayed. Not to mention, when a client changes their mind about the offer or strategy at the beginning of November after everything has already been briefed…
We plan for these changes and the additional workload in advance. Because we have strong systems and processes in place, and because many of our clients adhere to agreed deadlines, we have the capacity to absorb last-minute revisions, edits, or even complete reworks.
BFCM is the high season for digital marketing agencies. The workload will increase and it will be intense whatever you do. The closer we get to BFCM the more tired the Team is, and that’s inevitable, that’s just part of the job. However, if you prepare in advance, set deadlines, try to get your clients to stick to those deadlines, and do your best to give enough time for all different parts of the creative process, it’s manageable. With careful planning and preparation, we’ve succeeded for several years in a row, and all without making any mistakes!
