If you’re reading this, you already know the deal: Black Friday 2024 is just around the corner, and it’s time to get ready.
So we won’t bore you with “top Black Friday statistics”. Instead, we’re going to help you to take a hard look at your Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) email marketing strategy to find potential flaws that could end up costing you in retention revenue.
Black Friday 2024 is going to be the biggest one ever. And it’s not our first rodeo. It’s more like our fifth as an agency, and for some of our experts, that number is embarrassingly high…but so is the revenue we’ve helped our clients to achieve. For BFCM 2023, that figure topped $12.5 million. If there’s one thing we know how to do right, it’s BFCM.
So we’ve come up with a list of misconceptions about this once-in-a-year opportunity. Under each one, you’ll find some practical steps you can ask your marketing team to take to course-correct.
Black Friday Email Myth #1: Send Big, or Go Home
Black Friday is stressful. For everyone.
And you don’t have to be squaring up with your neighbor for a TV to feel it. As marketers, we all get that feeling around late August…
So it’s understandable that many email marketing managers want to throw all caution to the wind and blast their list.
This may generate a spike in sales. But it’s like a sugar high: it will wear off. When it does, you may be in a worse position, because your deliverability will tank. You may also burn relationships with VIPs: they’ll know if you add them to a generic blast, and they will not like it.
You need to take risks, but they have to be calculated. Every move you make needs to preserve your email deliverability. So you need to be tactical about this (keep reading for details in myth #3).
Black Friday Email Myth #2: People Don’t Want to Hear About Black Friday Until October (at the earliest)
Like all myths, this one contains more than a grain of truth. Nobody loves opening LinkedIn in September to see clickbaity posts about some influencer’s “Black Friday blueprint that earned $20 million”.
Now for the Nuance
Here comes the “but”. You don’t need to be in-your-face to start warming up your subscribers. And in fact, if you don’t warm them up, big-ticket discounts may not be enough to motivate them.
This is why re-engagement is absolutely critical for BFCM success, and it has to start way before the sale itself. We always encourage the Account Managers in our team at Hustler Marketing to start in September, and definitely prioritize it through October. There are of course exceptions: if re-engagement is cost your deliverability too much, you may need to do this differently.
Get that re-engagement flow in ship shape, and start rekindling cold profiles, whatever you have to do. If your re-engagement segment is big (yay!), break it into smaller ones to protect deliverability and avoid hurting your main KPIs while you increase send volumes.
Also: Focus on Acquisition
September is also the time to start aggressively building your list through paid ads – especially UGC. Subscribers who come in through that door are great, because UGC raises credibility and increases the likelihood of conversio like almost nothing else can.
Black Friday Email Myth #3: Size is All That Matters
Yes, your offer needs to be good.
No, it’s not all about the percentage.
Discerning buyers know that this probably isn’t really their only chance to save. They also want value for money – and they’re savvy about what those deals look like. Many are skeptical about how much they’re actually saving.
If you’re thinking “70% OFF” first, and “what do customers want?” second, you will lose out to a more strategic competitor who’s offering a smart bundle, or some other deal that really does stand out.
You don’t need to rely exclusively on huge discounts if you’re getting people excited well in advance.
Warm-up Tips & Strategies
Here are some of our Account Managers’ favorites:
- Early bird lists (with genuinely good offers to reward your VIPs)
- Mystery gift every week in october
- A gift card with in-store credit (we call this the “Willy Wonka”)
Pro Tip: Once the sale starts, exclude recent buyers. If you don’t, you might see a spike in returns as people return their recent purchases to get the discount.
You’re welcome.
Black Friday Email Myth #4: Design is All That Matters – People Aren’t Reading Your Emails, So Don’t Sweat the Copy
How often have you heard things like this in the past week?
- People have short attention spans.
- They want their Black Friday email offers to get to the point.
- A CTA must be visible at all times, in every scroll.
They’re all true. But like all generalizations, they don’t always hold up. Sometimes the things people actually do pay attention to aren’t the flashy or bite-sized things, but the stuff that speaks directly to them.
Enter: World Class Copywriters (we have a bunch of them)
That’s why you have great copywriters writing your emails (or if you don’t, you need to talk to us about ours – seriously). We’ve seen simple, but well written and personalized plain text emails skyrocket sales in this period – and at other surprising times of the year.
Plain text emails do 3 things at once:
- Give readers a break from sale fatigue.
- Tell your subscribers that you know who they are – and you care.
- Set you apart from your competitors, who are probably too scared to try this.
My advice: keep these fun, even sassy. If you’re doing the “letter from the CEO”, get the CEO (whether that’s you or your boss) to actually read.
People have a spidey sense for authenticity – and they’re craving it in their inbox.
Related Myth: Black Friday Email Design is all Black and Red
It’s almost always a mistake to drown your brand’s own visual language in “sale” colors.
You need to strike a balance between pushing the sale with a strong palette, and preserving what makes your brand unique.
If you’re not sure what I mean, this gorgeously on-brand email sums it up:
Myth #5: Cyber Monday is Black Friday’s Forgotten Stepchild
Last year, Cyber Monday hit record-breaking sales, pulling in over $12 billion in online purchases. That makes it the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history.
Unlike Black Friday, which often goes with a physical store presence or hybrid approaches, Cyber Monday is all about digital. If you’re an ecommerce brand, that gives you an open field to compete with top-tier retailers – and WIN.
And it’s not just for tech brands either: check out our Cyber Monday email design guide to learn more about how non-cyber brands can actually make this day all about them.
The Black Friday 2024 Hustle Starts Now
I hope you’ve found these myths useful. There’s a lot more I could say about the biggest event in the eCommerce calendar, but I’ve kept you long enough (thanks for reading).
At Hustler Marketing, we really want to help you to make the most of your Black Friday 2024. But what we want even more is to be in the trenches with you, working alongside your team to explode your email revenue.
