10 Black Friday email marketing ideas to boost ecommerce sales

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A Black Friday email strategy can transform retail’s biggest shopping day into your most profitable revenue event of the year. 

Your customers are ready to buy on Black Friday — they’re just waiting for the right offer. Your email strategy will capitalize on this with a combination of discount and scarcity tactics. 

To put this into action, you should segment your audience, build a Black Friday promotional sequence from teasers to last-chance reminders, and set up time-sensitive automations for cart recovery and price-drop alerts.

Join us below to discover the best sales-boosting Black Friday email marketing ideas.

Why having a Black Friday email strategy is crucial

Having an email marketing strategy this Black Friday will maximize your sales potential through targeted and personalized messages. 

The alternative is to send promotional blasts to capture sales — an approach that ticks a box but doesn’t offer anywhere near the reach of a well-planned strategy. 

For instance, your strategy could include:

• Segmenting between deal hunters, last-minute gifters, and impulse buyers
• Morning emails followed by evening “still available” reminders to capture different shopping windows
• Early access rewards for VIPs to prevent them from getting lost in the Black Friday rush
• Category-specific promotions spread across November to prevent discount fatigue
• Extended cyber week sequences to keep momentum after Black Friday peaks
• Strategic pre-holiday shipping deadline reminders to drive purchase urgency

These approaches go beyond promotional blasts to deliver more sales for your store on Black Friday, and they are just the tip of the iceberg.

10 Black Friday email marketing ideas to boost sales

Follow these email marketing ideas to maximize your sales this Black Friday:

1. Tease your Black Friday sale early
2. Offer exclusive VIP access
3. Provide early-bird discounts
4. Use scarcity techniques (e.g., “Only 5 Left!”)
5. Launch cart abandonment automation
6. Highlight free shipping and gift options
7. Add a countdown timer
8. Integrate SMS for multi-channel impact
9. Include a last-minute reminder email
10. Extend your deals past Cyber Monday

1. Tease your Black Friday sale early

Teaser emails are fantastic for building excitement for your Black Friday sale, priming your subscribers for offers, and helping you stand out from last-minute competitors. 

For instance, you could:

• Send a “Save the Date” preview email to create FOMO (fear of missing out)
• Release one product category teaser per week to help customers plan purchases
• Tease exclusive VIP shopping hours as a loyalty reward
• Add countdown timers to your emails to compel visitors to monitor your sales

Oat milk chocolate brand Happi uses email teasers in the weeks leading up to Black Friday to prime its subscribers and build anticipation. The email below has the subject line “Black Friday is coming…” to describe its intent upfront:

Happi’s email design captures attention with yellow and black branding and a simple “Shop Happi” CTA. You can use similar subject lines and eye-catching visuals to deliver season-appropriate teasers to your subscribers.

2. Offer exclusive VIP access

VIP email campaigns with password-protected access can increase average order value and build a list of highly motivated, loyal customers.

When your VIP customers receive privileged early access to your Black Friday deals, they will feel valued and more inclined to purchase.

Staggering Black Friday access also lets you strategically manage inventory levels while gathering valuable sales data before the main rush begins.

Smartwatch brand Withings uses VIP access in its Black Friday email strategy to capture early sales, offering up to 60% off in this email example:

Segmenting your subscribers and building VIP access emails is easy with Omnisend’s customer lifecycle segmentation tools. These identify and map your VIP customers, allowing you to automate emails and personalized rewards for your most valuable shoppers.

3. Provide early-bird discounts

Early-bird discounts give your shoppers the satisfaction of securing the best deals before inventory sells out while eliminating the fear of missing out during the Black Friday rush.

Launching your Black Friday early-bird email campaign by early November is best to attract shoppers planning holiday purchases. 

Start with your deepest discounts in early November, then gradually reduce the savings as Black Friday approaches to reward early shoppers.

Your VIPs deserve the deepest discounts as a reward for their loyalty. Exclusive, time-sensitive access can make your regular subscribers feel like VIP shoppers. 

Social athletics company TWOTWO uses early-bird discounts to promote significant sitewide sales leading up to Black Friday:

TWOTWO’s email uses the subject line “Early Bird Black Friday sale is LIVE! ?️,” combining urgency (“LIVE!”) with the advantage of early access (“Early Bird”) to encourage open rates. 

4. Use scarcity techniques (e.g., “Only 5 Left!”)

When it comes to email engagement, a sense of urgency is a powerful tool to employ. This is the very nature of why limited-time offers often work so well.

For example, flash sales create a sense of urgency that drives conversions in a short amount of time.

To achieve this, you can introduce a countdown timer. You can also showcase some kind of scarcity, such as showing the level of stock remaining for products or crafting a special subject line for your flash sales campaign.

This way, your customers understand that there’s a limit to the deals you’re offering.

5. Launch cart abandonment automation

Cart abandonment workflow is often considered the most effective marketing automation. Thanks to this, it’s a must-have for every ecommerce merchant.

This is why they’re essential as part of a drip campaign — especially during holiday sales. Over 75% of carts will be abandoned, and auto-reminders can help you recover at least some of them.

Consider setting up a workflow optimized for the holiday season. This means that the workflow should contain more messages than usual, and they are sent with shorter gaps between them.

You should also opt to use SMS with your holiday promotions.

6. Highlight free shipping and gift options

Free shipping thresholds and gift bundles in your Black Friday emails are powerful shopping incentives that can drive larger cart totals by encouraging the purchase of multiple products together at a perceived discount.

Positioning these perks prominently in your subject lines and calls to action, with clear messaging about shipping minimums or bundle savings, helps your offers cut through the competitive holiday noise.

Clothing retailer Everlane uses these best practices to create Black Friday promotional emails that stand out. The email below uses the subject line “Free Shipping For Your Style Refresh” to highlight free shipping as a core benefit:

You can also promote free shipping on your website with Omnisend’s free shipping popup. Combining incentive emails with popups covers multiple touchpoints, creating a consistent message that keeps shipping perks top of mind for shoppers.

7. Add a countdown timer

Putting countdown timers in your emails transforms vague “limited-time” offers into concrete deadlines that shoppers can see ticking away.

Seeing those seconds ticking away makes your subscribers likelier to click your CTAs, which will send more traffic to your website and help increase sales. 

The more visually compelling your countdown timers, the better. E Ink tablet brand reMarkable has the right idea with this Black Friday email:

reMarkable pairs a clear “$50 off” subject line with a prominent countdown timer beneath its “Black Friday is ending” headline to drive urgency.

You could use the same tactic (time-sensitive Black Friday offers with strategic countdown elements) to move subscribers from browsing to buying before deals expire.

Omnisend’s drag-and-drop HTML timer blocks let you quickly embed countdown visuals into emails without complex coding knowledge.

8. Integrate SMS for multi-channel impact

Integrating SMS marketing into your Black Friday email strategy lets you use trigger-based workflows that capture micro-moments, like text messages for cart abandonment and emails for detailed product recommendations and loyalty nurturing.

For instance, you could send discount emails, track visitors’ shopping sessions, and send automated deals if they abandon the checkout. 

Those automations are crucial, as automated text messages performed significantly better than campaign messages in 2023, with a 9.4% click rate and 0.28% conversion rate.

Omnisend streamlines SMS marketing by integrating it directly with email campaigns and automated workflows. It includes pre-built templates, list-building tools, and automated triggers to drive customer engagement and sales.

A multi-channel approach with Omnisend’s SMS features will expand your marketing reach and help improve your customer experience. 

9. Include a last-minute reminder email

Last-minute reminder emails are your final chance to capture sales from unreached and previously uninterested subscribers. 

Timing your email strategically, just hours before the Black Friday sale or discount ends, is crucial to capturing sales. The best times of day to send an email are 2 PM, 5 PM, and 8 PM — so try to end your sales close to these. 

Slip-on shoe retailer Kizik uses last-minute emails to boost sales toward the end of Black Friday. The example below uses the last-minute subject line “LAST CHANCE for Black Friday” to trigger FOMO and encourage customers to complete their purchases:

You can develop similarly effective subject lines with Omnisend’s free subject line generator and test your results with our free subject line tester. 

10. Extend your deals past Cyber Monday

Lastly, it’s a good idea for you to extend your deals just a little after Cyber Monday.

Remember though, it’s not necessary to go too crazy and extend it all the way to Christmas — you can simply opt to extend it for one or two days.

This kind of post-holiday sale can also work wonders in tandem with our last tip — offering it to your most loyal customers. This can include new customers you’ve made during your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.

You can opt to extend your sale in one of two ways:

• Either have the sale apply to your entire site for longer
• Or send special, time-sensitive, one-time discount codes essentially offering the same discounts that the sale did

Here, the marketing of your extension is important. After all, you still want to maintain the scarcity and exclusivity of your promotions.

You can send an SMS that gives your customer one more day to finish their shopping. Or you can try to send an email like Julep:

• Its subject line is straightforward and eye-catching — EXTENDED! 50%. Off. Everything
• The sale is extended only for 48 hours, maintaining that sense of urgency
• Those customers who missed your sales for one reason or another can still buy from you at your special prices

This also means that it’s easier for your emails to get noticed. Most of the mad-dash, last-minute emails are sent on Cyber Monday. By Tuesday morning, everything should be quieter in their inboxes — this means you’ll be noticed more.

Wrap up

The right mix of timing, targeting, and compelling offers in your Black Friday email strategy will turn ready-to-buy shoppers into satisfied customers.

Segmenting your audience is crucial to delivering personalized Black Friday offers that resonate with different customers.

Use automation tools strategically to handle cart recovery, shipping reminders, and last-minute promotions without overwhelming subscribers.

Test your email sequences before Black Friday for smooth delivery and optimize messaging to increase open rates and click-throughs.

Finally, consider using SMS alongside email marketing to cover more touchpoints and provide a cohesive customer experience.