Marketing Strategies for Black Friday: Top Email Messaging Ideas and Templates

What to Know Befor Planning Black Friday Marketing Strategies
Black Friday Email Content to Include
Every Other Friday Marketing Strategies
Other Black Friday Marketing Ideas
Email Templates for Black Friday

What to Know Before Planning Black Friday Marketing Strategies

If you've ever gone shopping on Black Friday, then you know how frantic customers can get. Whether they are shopping online or in a store, It's important to keep up with the marketing for the holiday season since offers and brands will be competitive.

You'll need to be prepared if you want a few solid Black Friday marketing strategies. One of these strategies is email marketing. And if done right, it can be one of the smarter ways to let potential customers know of your Black Friday sales.

What do you need to know before planning to roll out your Black Friday email? Let's go over some of the obvious and less obvious things to make and plan for.

Have Your Sales Already in Mind

Whether you make a list or have your sale prices for certain items or services in place online, you will also need to account for what product sale to advertise at which time and which days. Will you simply direct people to your site for the first Black Friday email or will you give recipients more information about a small set of sales?

It's always a good idea to direct leads to your website and not be too mysterious with your sales. Shoppers can go to social media or other outlets to see information about a Black Friday sale, but they often want to see particular set of items or ads of the products and services that will be going on sale.

Overall, the more enticing your offers are, the more likely a member of the shopping crowd will add them to their cart.

Know What You Want to Advertise

Similarly to knowing what will be on sale is know what items you will want to advertise where. Will you leave only electronic items for certain social media ads? Or will you immediately release your Black Friday ads on mobile apps.

Every option has it's ups and downs and risks of advertising your ads too late. Shoppers may already have made a list of other deals advertised, which means more competition.

Luckily, holiday shopping is different for every customer as they are all searching for a different combination of products. You just have to make sure your company can boost sales from your page or social media efforts as well.

Know What Your Customers Want

Do research on customers to find out what they buy on Black Friday from your industry. Sell craft supplies? Do customers often buy Christmas or Hanukkah decorations or do they buy craft sets for kids? You could put both types of products up for sale if it is relevant.

Some brands will have a strategy to sell a certain type of product to ensure they get rid of something they have too much of in stock. This could be one of a few good Black Friday marketing strategies, but Black Friday customers want what they want year-round, but they want it for a much better deal.

One other thing: remarketing. This is not exactly retargeting your audience, but when you realize who your audience really is, you can remarket for them exactly. For example, you may find out that you have a lot of teenagers following your holiday posts on social channels. You can market for them to ensure they know about the offers that pertain to them.

You may even be able to view what demographic has mostly added products to their online cart before check out. And you can view how well other brands of your industry have done for particular demographics. If they've done well, you can assimilate their campaigns. Don't worry. This is not a privacy issue, it's marketing!

Learn from the Past

If you've participated in Black Friday deals in the past, what did you do well or poorly at? Were your Black Friday sales up from previous years? Whatever marketing strategies you accomplished in the past that did well, continue with those.

Haven't been in the black on Black Friday? Make a plan to schedule an email campaign for each week leading up to the Black Friday weekend. Or think of putting items for sale up on shopify or join shopify plus to optimize your brand marketing strategy.

Online marketing can time, even years, before you see a good return on investment. Luckily, email marketing doesn't take a lot of time to set up and doesn't often cost a lot of money.

Black Friday Email Content to Include

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Once you have a list of leads who've given their consent to receive email marketing from your company, you can start thinking about the best layouts and content to include for your Black Friday event.

This is also important to keep in mind when choosing a software. You can view online which platforms users like as well. If you're interested in doing more marketing on top of or instead of messaging, consider adding one or all of our apps to your cart.

Gifs

You're welcome to research what other businesses do for their email marketing strategies. And you'll sometimes find a campaign that includes gifs. Gifs catch attention better than an image.

The bonus of using gifs is that you can show a short demonstration of using a particular product to entice shoppers to buy it. Also, you could use gifs to show changing prices and flash deals.

Show Value

The value you can show in your email marketing for Black Friday can be the personalization you offer to shoppers. Whether you found them on a social channel or not, you can make your email campaign seem tailored to each individual contact.

You can say words like "Picked Just for You" or have two separate emails with mystery coupon codes to unlock. Each recipient could unlock a different discount code for your entire website during Black Friday weekend, for example.

Time, Days, and Other Details

Think about what details you want to include about your Black Friday sales and when you want to give this information to email recipients. Plan out what products, perhaps, you would want to advertise and on which days of the week or month leading up to Black Friday (or the Wednesday or Thursday, which is Thanksgiving, before).

While you're planning out the details, you can think about what deals you'd want to put in ads and email campaigns for Cyber Monday as well. Never forget this marketing is different than any regular Friday marketing.

Showing Off Your Products and Offers

Show the offers that will be on sale for Black Friday, Black Friday weekend, and Cyber Monday. Showing images and sale prices of the exact products or services is a great strategy since shoppers generally want to cut to the chase and see what they can buy. This is vital for any Black Friday marketing.

This is an important strategy for ads as well as social media performance. Check to see which popular items are competing for you sale in your industry. For example is everyone advertising vacuums? You can bet shoppers are putting a vacuum in their cart, therefore, this is one of the items you will want to ensure get on ads, social media, and email campaigns.

Every Other Friday Marketing Strategies

Create Hype by sending emails to announce deals coming soon. Yes, customers like to see what is for sale and love to see unique Black Friday marketing ideas, so why not let them know what is coming? Remember online shoppers may look forward to these Black Friday days all year long, so, throw 'em a bone!

Have shoppers mark on their calendars what deal is starting when. When the time comes, send shopping alerts every other week to potential customers who want to know when the sales will start so they can start their online shopping early. You can even send messages counting down to the particular deals, which is another marketing strategy.

Another thing: get social. As part of your Black Friday marketing, you can advertise deals every other week on your social media channels to connect with customers who are not part of your contacts nor a user of your products or services.

Gain holiday customers by getting them to trust your brand over other brands. Black Friday ads that pop up aren't appropriate for this, but you sure can boost commerce by marketing for the shopping crowd weeks before Black Friday. Compare your company to other brands days before announcing your Black Friday holiday deals, whether in-store or on your site, and you can gain loyalty and a following for when Black Friday days do roll around.

Other Black Friday Marketing Ideas

You can use parts of your email campaigns for Black Friday in almost any other ads or social media announcements.

Think about Black Friday banners on sites, mobile apps, and your own website and how it looks similar to your email campaigns. This way, leads will associate your deals with a particular brand versus other brands competing in the same industry.

What's great about this is that your brand and ad design can be added to the campaigns you send out. It's like a 2-for-1 marketing strategy that works when you're short on time yet still want to share your offers.

Think outside the box as well and make exclusivity to shoppers. For example, you can invite individuals to an event on your website. Or you can entice customers to become members of your website party to get exclusive deals before the Black Friday sale actually begins.

Walmart has a program for shoppers who want to be part of Walmart plus. These members have the opportunity to participate in Black Friday deals weeks before the event.

All of these ideas are things you can check examples for online. This is also a great way to see the marketing strategy of other brands. When you view the offers other brands have made in the past, the better you can ensure your business can boost Black Friday performance as well.

Email Templates for Black Friday

There are two types of email templates to look for when looking for Black Friday email campaign ideas. Let's go over these templates that have been successfully used by businesses in the past to boost up their Black Friday sales and online traffic flowing steadily to their site.

Emails Specifically for Black Friday Deals

We've mentioned this before, but advertise your products with product images. This means you'll want that product information and image to stand out. You will want an email design that can work for both social media and mobile app ads.

You can include online deals as well as in-store deals. But it never hurts to include your site address for extra Black Friday information. And if you have a special Black Friday page on your site or banner, even better! This will make your brand stand apart from the crowd if folks shopping for Black Friday sales associate your brand over other businesses.

This type of email message also allows you to add mysterious coupons that differ for each contact they can unlock on top of your regular Black Friday sales.

Emails Announcing When Black Friday Sales Will Be Shown

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These emails are like a pre-advertisement for Black Friday that only give a small amount of information about upcoming sales, such as:

-Give one product sneak peak deal at a certain time, such as every Wednesday. Giving customers something extra to look forward to is a great way to create hype while also giving specific details most holiday customers want.

-Give times the sale is going to occur. Perhaps you have different items on sale or item sales online only at a certain time. You can send email campaigns to gain hype about recurring shopping events before and even after Black Friday.

-Give information on how consumers can get in on the Black Friday deals. Give details about your site or holiday hours for in-store customers. Don't forget to give details about any special mobile app deals. For example, you can give customers the opportunity to save an extra %10 through your app versus shopping on the web.

What Tools to Look for in Templates for Black Friday

You may have used one or more email marketing software, and web hosting is important to your site as well as your email campaigns. So, when looking for a software, you will surely have email template choices. But what should you make sure you have in the templates available?

-The platform should have easy drag and drop capabilities. If you want image blocks next to or beneath a text block, drag and drop capabilities make designing an email layout a fast process.

-Templates should allow a user to customize everything. Shopping for a platform that has templates you only somewhat like? Make sure you can adjust these templates to change everything, even the background, to match your brand and messages.

-Templates should have the ability to upload your own images and gifs. It doesn't matter if you have a png or jpeg version of images to advertise your sales, your templates should be able to let the user upload and change the size of any image you want.

-Template should give the user the ability to attach multiple CTA buttons or other types of interaction links and buttons. If customers like your offers, they are going to want to go to your online site immediately to check out a certain product. And if you have time-sensitive sales, customers will want to beat other customers in getting on your page to buy a particular product.

Email Black Friday Strategies for Cyber Monday

Black Friday campaigns can be similar to Cyber Monday or even the weekend after Black Friday. These marketing and brand strategies may not seem too different from Black Friday ones, but the online difference can make or break your brand if it isn't relevant after the sales for Black Friday. Differences from your everyday, regular Friday marketing ideas can be:

Make Sure Your Cyber Monday Times, Days, and Sales are Relevant

You wouldn't want to accidentally put Black Friday holiday sales advertised in an email for Cyber Monday.

And you will want to change up your Black Friday page on your site, if you have one, to a page dedicated to Cyber Monday for the days the sales are occurring. You can always take the page off your site once the Cyber Monday holiday sales are finished.

Give a Sneak Peak Right Before Black Friday Deals End

Customers shopping for particular products or services may not find what they are looking for during Black Friday, which means customers will be shopping for Cyber Monday deals during the weekend of Black Friday. Yes, even when Black Friday deals are going on.

Your everyday, regular Friday marketing still cannot be a strategy when thinking of Cyber Monday. Timing is everything with customers for Cyber Monday as well. Think of sending messages that resonate with customers who may have missed out on a deal. You can relay messages like "Online shopping not work out on Black Friday? Our brand has everything our customers want on Cyber Monday."

You can even make Cyber Monday feel like a better Black Friday. Keep in mind that Cyber Monday is largely for online shopping, which means you can do more on social channels and shopify to gain those holiday customers.

What's Next

Plan for black. If you want to be in the black for Black Friday, these Black Friday or even regular Friday marketing strategies will improve your email efforts and gain more customers.

Growing businesses may not have a following of customers like Amazon or other retailers, but the earlier you reach potential customers through email, or even through social media and other platforms, the better your chances are of them going to your page over other brands.

This time of the holiday season can be stressful but also exciting. TruVISIBILITY is here to help your digital marketing needs in any way we can, whether you need mobile SMS messaging or a landing page on your site as part of your strategy. You can even link your social media pages to your account to update your social following on any updates your business has.

Black Friday is a time of commerce, which is why we encourage to check out our other Black Friday articles below. Just remember that Black Friday marketing (and marketing in general) can be fun. So, have pride in your brand and go have a great Black Friday!