5 Tips To Help Your Brand Prepare For Black Friday - Cyber Monday 2023
Updated: 4 days ago
The Olympics of e-commerce has begun. We’re less than 15 days away from Halloween, about a month short from the biggest weekend of the year: Black Friday Cyber Monday, and a blink away from Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
Your customers are more active and willing to spend now than they’ve been all year, and this is the best time to double down on your sales and grow your email list further. As a retention marketing agency my team and I start thinking about Black Friday strategies as early as Q2. Here are 5 BFCM tips and strategies I gathered from my top team members to help you ace your retention game this holiday season.
1. Give your customers the option to opt out of sales emails
Asking your customers to opt out of holiday emails may sound completely contradictory to doubling down on sales, but there’s a good reason behind it.
“It's a good practice to send an email to the entire list before we start the BFCM emails asking them if they would like to opt-out from the emails we'll be sending during BFCM. This does not unsubscribe them from the list but instead they just update their preferences. We can then exclude these people while sending the BFCM emails. This helps reduce spam complaint rate.”
This advice comes from Kushan Joshi, who heads our team of account managers here at Budai Meiia. Kushan has been with us since 4 years and has worked on countless BFCM campaigns helping several of our clients achieve 6-7 figure sales during Black Friday.
2. Diversify your messaging across all the different marketing channels you use
Omnichannel marketing is great, but there’s a right way to go about it. Here’s what our in-house SMS marketing expert Valentina has to share about approaching SMS and email marketing during the holiday season:
“A crucial consideration is to diversify the messages you convey through these marketing channels.
Avoid repeating the same content and offers in both email and SMS. Instead, create unique messaging specifically for your SMS marketing subscribers to make them feel like valued members of an exclusive text marketing group, club, or community.
Your SMS subscribers anticipate receiving exclusive offers and deals that you do not share with all of your email subscribers. You must effectively communicate the value of being an SMS subscriber to them, or else, they are likely to opt out.
Offer your SMS subscribers more significant discounts compared to what you extend to email subscribers, if possible. This will unquestionably demonstrate the value of being an SMS subscriber.”
3. Make sure your subject lines stand out during Black Friday
Everyone talks about crafting ‘unique’ subject lines that stand out during Black Friday but that’s too vague. Here are five clear and specific subject line formulas from Jon, our first ever copywriter to help you craft better subject lines:
Take a different tactic, something like “Don’t open this until Black Friday!” That’s sure to get opens.
Be clear about major discounts e.g. “Up to 80% OFF (no, that’s not a typo)”
Use a very specific time limit to make it look like time is running out. e.g. “Only 7 hours and 22 minutes left…”
Use intrigue e.g. “This is even better than Black Friday…” or “Think VERY carefully before opening this”
Use FOMO e.g. “Our best deals are already going fast!”
4. Reach out to your email subscribers to join your SMS list
Holiday season can be a busy time to get in touch with your customers but did you know that SMS has an average open rate of 90%, and an average click rate of 20-25%? With such amazing numbers on its side you just can’t afford to miss out SMS marketing this holiday season.
Here’s a strategy from our SMS marketing expert Valentina to help you increase your SMS list:
“Before the onset of BFCM, it is of utmost importance to expand your SMS subscriber list. How can you achieve this? Apart from employing a dedicated opt-in tool for collecting phone numbers and featuring an SMS disclaimer on the checkout page, one often underestimated but effective method is converting your email subscribers into SMS subscribers.
To do this, craft either a text or HTML email to inform your email subscribers about the advantages of joining as SMS subscribers, particularly during BFCM. Let them know that they will gain access to VIP BFCM sales ahead of others, along with exclusive offers reserved solely for SMS subscribers. It’s crucial to instill in them a sense of FOMO, the fear of missing out, as this tactic proves highly effective.
As BFCM draws near, remember to fulfill the promises you’ve made by delivering your BFCM deals to them before anyone else.”
5. Find creative ways to keep your shoppers engaged during an extended sale
Deciding to run a Black November sale instead of just focusing on Black Friday? That’s great as it helps you beat the Black Friday frenzy, and gives your customers more time to shop.
But if you are planning to extend your sale, make sure you find a way to keep it interesting because three weeks can be a long time to keep your customers' attention with the same simple offer.
Here’s a creative offer one of our current client has tried in the past and it worked really well for them (they tried it themselves and we did not implement it for them):
“Start the BFCM offers from the first week of November and have different offers every week:
First Week: Free product on purchase of more than $X
Second Week: A different free product on purchase of more than $X
Third Week: Creating discounted bundles with their best sellers
Fourth Week: Having a percentage discount sitewide”
This way they are always in the inbox of their subscribers throughout the month with exciting new offers.
Black Friday is the busiest sale season of the year, but if done right it can also be the most lucrative time of the year for your business. Interested in going through some more BFCM strategies to help inspire your own ideas for this year? Explore our case studies section and find tried and tested strategies that have helped us quadruple our client’s store revenue in just 30 days, and more.