How to create Black Friday Shopping Email Marketing that attracts attention

A million consumers shopped online and at the same time there was a huge drop in in-person Black Friday shopping and even though many stores have reopened, shoppers are much more comfortable now with shopping online.

This is both good and bad news, right? people are willing to shop online, but at the same time the competition will be fierce, so if you are in the commerce you better prepare early because your competitors will. 

When we're talking about shoppers' email inboxes, better believe that every single subject line will have a discount in it, the ads on Facebook will also be crazy and will compete for people's attention by trying to offer the best possible deal, you need to stand out among all of that craziness. 

As you plan your holiday deals, keep in mind the overall brand that you're building and the community that you're building around it. I'll never stop repeating that retention or returning customers make or break your business, you need to educate your audience throughout the year and get them to fall in love with your brand and show them why your brand is different from others. 

When you do that you can actually get away with offering smaller discounts during the holidays and making more profits than your competitors, the first thing we'll do is we will outline the different segments that we should be thinking about, some of those segments probably deserve a better deal and they all need slightly different messaging and frequency of touch points. Let's pick an offer strategy to help you do that.

VIP customers

You'll have to define this based on your business but usually it's people who either spend x number of dollars with you or shop three to five or more times with you. All other customers these are people who've bought from you at least once but they don't yet qualify to join the VIP customer segment.

SMS list

we treat the SMS list that we manage for our partners as extra personal channels, so we'll give them early access to deals and perhaps even a better deal. The other two segments are engaged email subscribers and unengaged email subscribers, you might be offering the same deal to them but if you personalize your messaging, your subject lines, and the frequency of how often you communicate with them, you will see better results. 

Engaged subscribers care more about your brand

You can lean more into the brand values, the benefits, the community, and you can also email them more often during this season. They'll actually welcome that because they're interested in what you have to say, with unengaged subscribers you'll have to lean more into deals and savings, you should definitely email your unengaged subscribers during this time, but not as often as your engaged segment. 

Drip makes this type of segmentation super easy

They also have pre-built segments so you can save time and focus on what you do best, connecting with your shoppers and making your product shine, so, on to the fun stuff I'll be showing 8 ideas

1. Tier discounts

This is one of my favorite strategies because I've seen it work time and time again. Here's a simple example "buy two products, get twenty percent off/ Buy three products or more, get twenty-five percent off" You can have three tiers too, going up to 30% discount but of course you would have to pick discounts that make financial sense for your business. 

With this strategy, you're gamifying the process for shoppers but also incentivizing a bigger cart and you know what, the higher AOV is helping you with profits in the moment but it might also build for a higher chance of that customer coming back because the more products they try this time, more likely they are to find that perfect product they love and come back in the future.

2. bundles

Another great way to increase AOV during the holidays is to create pre-built bundles and offer discounts on those pre-built bundles. Help you be more profitable and also ease fulfillment so that you can be more efficient with shipping, something that holiday shoppers definitely appreciate. 

3. More loyalty and more rewards points

If you have a loyalty and rewards program, a great way to show love to your rewards members is to give them an extra point or extra points in addition to discounts. 

The example from Loeffler, they give 250 extra points for purchase on this day. If you go with a strategy like this make sure that you send an email to your general audience a few weeks prior with a sneak peek and encourage them to join rewards. Tell them, "Hey, now is the perfect time to join because in two weeks we'll have the sale and the rewards members will get 250 more points in addition to the discount." And you can promote that on social media as well. 

When people see a tangible reward like that, you'll likely have a spike in the number of loyalty program members that you have, and this is a great example of how you think long term during Black Friday, since loyalty members have higher retention rates.

4. Freebie item or gift with purchase 

Do you have leftover stock? If so, use it towards your Black Friday promotions instead of offering a discount. Here's a great example from Daven. 

A really cool thing that they're doing is, rather than gifting every customer the same way, daven offers a different discount based on how much you spend. The company also makes the discount more attractive by attaching a dollar value to them, this is a brilliant tactic to increase the average order value during Black Friday. 

If it makes sense with your brand mission, especially if you're sustainable or sell luxury items, a great strategy would be to partner with a charity and show customers that their purchase is making a difference, not just profit like everyone else.

By creating a Black Friday fund, FatFace redefines this greedy shopping madness as a day of good deeds. In this email the company explains that they donate their Black Friday profits, they subtly invite you to shop on their site all for a good cause.

5 Launch a new limited-edition products 

Okay, it might be a little too late for this strategy for this holiday season, but you might like it for next year. When you release a limited edition product, your most loyal customers will want to purchase it first and Black friday is the perfect time to release this, because they will come to the site to purchase that item and also add other stuff to cart. 

Since it's Black Friday it can even become a tradition that your customers expect, so every year you build up more hype around what product you'll be releasing.

6 Give out gift card

Instead of offering discounts, you may choose to offer gift cards as a gift with every purchase, for example, spend fifty dollars and get a ten dollar gift card, or spend two hundred dollars and get a twenty dollar gift card. 

This way, the shopper's getting a gift for themselves as well as someone else or they might keep that gift for the next time they shop. This not only makes your shopper feel special but if they give that gift card to a friend, you're actually increasing your customer base.

7 Make your sell memorable 

Now, no matter what deal you choose to run, you want to make sure that your sale is memorable. Remember that your subscribers' inboxes will be full of deals, so you need to find a way to stand out. 

It's not easy for consumers either, they have to navigate through different stores, make comparisons, and create shopping lists so that they can buy their favorite items before they sell out and snag the best deals. It's helpful to get inside your shopper's shoes, because that helps you come up with creative solutions.

Here's an email they sent a couple of weeks before Black Friday with the headline "We'll remind you so you don't have to remind you."

In addition to writing down the sales beginning date and time, they give you the option to add the event to your calendar by clicking the "Add to Calendar" button, when you download the calendar event file and actually add it to your calendar, you don't have to think twice. 

8 Give a surprise

Another idea for making your sale memorable add a surprise or a mystery to your sale, Look at this subject line: "click and see." Oh, curiosity and this is what the email actually looks like

They send you a unique mystery coupon, and to reveal the amount you have to click through the email, add some products to your cart, and then move to checkout to see your surprise gift. 

This is a clever way to make your Black Friday offers more interesting, plus it will increase your email opens, it will increase your email clicks, and encourage more subscribers to move to checkout and remember that you can actually combine some offers, just don't make it too confusing for your shoppers. 

Treat your VIPs in a special way and don't forget to touch base with unengaged subscribers. Black Friday is the perfect time to contact them, that drip is your best partner in segmenting your audience and making email marketing easy.