Prepping for Black Friday: Email Campaigns
Before we dive into the actual timings of the emails to cover Black Friday, the weekend and then Cyber Monday, we need to understand how many emails and how many days we’re going to send on.
The top two key dates are understandably the Friday and Monday, but it’s important to not overlook the weekend too. We recommend sending emails at the following points:
Whilst this may seem like overkill, handled in the right way and to the right audience, this is the key to success.
The two Black Friday emails are to announce the sale and remind people that it ‘ends tonight’. The Saturday email is to extend the offer until Sunday, with Sunday acting as the reminder that the ‘offer really does end tonight!’ Cyber Monday should be treated as a new promotion with a new offer. You don’t want to bore your readers, you also don’t want them to be frustrated with a heavier promotion on the product they bought a couple of days ago.
Email Strategy
Now we know how many emails we’re going to send we can look deeper into the timings of each one.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no perfect time during this period. The key is to get ahead of the curve; try to beat the other companies to getting your message delivered. It’s a fine balance between being too early (and people being asleep and not reading your email) and being too late, where your email may soft-bounce due to the huge increase in companies sending emails. For sends early in the morning, getting your email delivered first isn’t necessarily a good thing, as while you’re waiting for the reader to wake up, your email is getting pushed further and further down their inbox.
Each year the sends are getting earlier and earlier, which means the optimum time is constantly changing. Happily we have plotted out these sends for you:
Black Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Cyber Monday
So what do these results actually mean? When should you send your emails? Well, we’ve simplified that bit for you too.
Ensure each resend is to non-converters to avoid irritation to your subscribers. Cyber Monday should be to your entire database again.
Update your email marketing for iOS 15
Here are the some of our quick tips to manage the disruption caused by iOS 15.
- Adopt a Clicks vs Delivered metric
- Maximise Click potential
- Use exclusive offers.
- Use Urchin Tracking Module Links.
- Get stuck? Get in touch!
This email marketing strategy will be slightly different this year as iOS 15 has just been released. Therefore, while the historical data is still available, monitoring the success of your campaign will be more challenging than previous years. However, one great way to create a successful KPI for your campaign is to use Clicks vs Delivered as a metric. This will ensure that while the open rate may be skewed especially for your iOS users, the clicks will still be measured.
Now, as you will be measuring clicks from this campaign, make sure that your content is giving users a reason to click and engage with your emails. This will ensure that you are maximising your clicks potential. So, add special discount codes, relevant products based on your segmentation and timed exclusives that are only available via your emails.
Finally, as you’ll be measuring the clicks, how do you make sure that the data can be effectively managed in your analytics, especially if you use Google Analytics (which you should) to measure your website’s performance. Use Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) links to separate your campaign’s name, channel and medium. This will help you to see who arrived at your site through the email campaign, which element of the campaign brought them to the site and how many conversions were made through the email campaign.
If you need bespoke and tailored advice before you start your email campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, give us a call or use the contact form below to get in touch with us.
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