With so many businesses shouting over each other to let their sales be known, your Black Friday marketing campaign has never been so important. Black Friday is a huge opportunity to not just sell products but also attract new customers who could buy from your brand again and again.
Thankfully, we’ve curated 10 ideas and strategies that will help your business to stand out from the rest. From building up an email list to launching an early sale, we’ll guide you through the steps you need to take with some great examples of how it’s done.
Read on to find out how you can maximize your profits this Black Friday with the best marketing strategies, plus some preparation tips to start you off on the right foot.
Let Omnisend take the hassle out of Black Friday marketing with automated emails
Black Friday preparation tips to shape your strategy
With Black Friday holding as much importance as it does for businesses, preparation for the big day is critical. After all, you want as many people to be excited about your sale as possible, as it will help you maximize your profits.
It will also prevent you from experiencing any issues with stock levels, shipping costs/times, or customer confusion. Here are some tips to consider when you start your preparations:
Start teasing deals early to increase excitement and anticipation
Update your FAQ page to include Black Friday-specific questions
Plan your inventory based on last year’s sales to avoid having too little or too much stock
Build your email list to ensure more people are aware of your impending deals
If you’re more of a visual learner, check out this video we’ve prepared for you instead:
Building a responsive email list is an effective marketing tool at any time of year, but even more so when you have special offers upcoming. It allows you to directly reach customers, new and existing, to nurture relationships and drive sales.
Here are some key points to take away:
Start early: Don’t leave your email push to the last minute. Building up anticipation around two weeks before Black Friday will help you collect a wider pool of people interested in the sale.
Give incentives: People receive dozens of emails per day. Offering them incentives is an effective way of convincing them to subscribe to your email list.
Disable active newsletter popups: In preparation for marketing Black Friday, disable your existing newsletter signup alerts. Replace them with Black Friday popups to avoid having two active campaigns.
Collect email addresses and phone numbers: Collect the email addresses and phone numbers of new subscribers. This will open up another marketing channel. Advanced popups are a great way to get more information.
Use multi-step popups to collect both email addresses and phone numbers at once. Multi-step popups are interactive and have two or more windows, allowing you to collect more valuable data about your customers.
Use multiple marketing channels to build anticipation
If you want to maximize your subscribership, use multiple marketing channels to alert subscribers of your upcoming sale. Using both SMS and emails to reach out to your customers is sensible as both channels have their positives and negatives.
Black Friday emails are ideal for visual content and detailed information about your products or special offers. However, the average person receives over 120 emails a day, meaning some of your emails could get lost in the crowd. On the other hand, SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, which is far more restrictive than emails — but they’re great for short, urgent reminders.
Here’s how you should schedule your emails and SMS messages in the run-up to a sale:
Email
SMS
Two weeks before
Send an email hinting about a potential upcoming sale, along with a countdown timer set to the day it goes live.
Send a message alerting those on your phone list about a huge upcoming sale.
One week before
Send a message offering exclusive discounts to email list subscribers, as well as an exclusive link to sign up for early access.
Send a message to the subscriber asking if they would like early access to the sale (“Reply YES to get the code.”)
One day before
Send a message one day before the sale goes live, revealing two or three exciting discounts. Add a final countdown timer to let readers know how close the sale is.
Send a notification stating when early access and the main sale starts.
Integrate your marketing channels to create a unified experience for customers across the board. This will create a consistent brand experience, making the customer feel comfortable when redirected from an ad to your brand’s main webpage.
Smoothness breeds satisfaction, which, in turn, breeds brand loyalty. If a customer has a positive experience throughout the buyer journey, they are more likely to return to you in the future.
Have a pre-Black Friday sale
With Black Friday becoming the most important date in ecommerce, brands are purposely jumping the gun to avoid being lost in a sea of sales. Pre-Black Friday sales are becoming popular among companies large and small.
These sales usually take place between mid to late October, with some retailers offering sales even earlier. A good example of a pre-Black Friday sale is Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, which take place on October 8 and 9.
Here are some tips to help you launch a pre-Black Friday sale:
Build your email list: To achieve success from your Black Friday pre-sale, people are going to have to be aware of it. Start building and segmenting your email list as early as two months before the launch date.
Tease deals early: Build up anticipation for the sale by teasing customers about a few deals. Encourage them to add products to their wishlists.
Make shipping costs clear: Customers are more likely to want to partake in your sale if shipping is free, as it creates a further sense of good value.If it’s not possible to make shipping free, communicate the fees clearly before the sale starts.
Simplify the checkout process: Having a simplified checkout process will improve the user experience. That can lead to increased conversions over time.
Include inventory updates: Let your customers know stock levels for certain products, especially if stock is getting low. This will create urgency, prompting people to not want to miss out on the product.
Check out this example from WP Standard of how a pre-Black Friday sale has been promoted using emails:
To attract more interested customers to your Black Friday sales list, A/B test your subject lines, design, and content at least a few weeks before the pre-sale. By doing so, you’ll increase the chance that your emails will generate more engagement. A/B tests will provide you with useful data that can help you further your understanding of what your customers want.
Use an automated multi-email sequence during the main sale
If you want to maximize engagement throughout your Black Friday campaign, it helps to prepare some automated emails to send out to your subscribers. These emails should then be scheduled to run alongside your sale at certain stages of the process.
Email 1 — Start of sale: Announce that the sale has begun and show off the top five deals
Email 2 — Midday (six hours in): Highlight items that have nearly sold out and share more deals
Email 3 — Two hours before the end: Include a final countdown and share the best remaining deals
Email 4 — Optional: Announce a one-hour extension for VIP customers in case they missed out on the sale
If you’re new to email automation but want to get the best out of your Black Friday emails, check out this in-depth tutorial:
If you’re in need of an email marketing app that includes automation features, look no further than Omnisend. Omnisend allows you to automate all of the Black Friday email campaigns listed above, allowing you to send out more emails, even if you’re a one-person team.
Supercharge your next BFCM campaign with Omnisend’s seasonal forms and pre-built email and SMS workflows
“Omnisend is a great email marketing and SMS option for small or ecommerce businesses who are looking to convert their followers to their email list and drive sales. You can target your audience, create discount codes, and use automation in their easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder. There are also plenty of pre-set email templates you can use and customize for your business which makes getting started very easy.”
Engagement for your Black Friday campaign can be bolstered by risk-free games such as wheel spins, offering monetary prizes if you land on certain segments. The appeal of major discounts and monetary prizes make Wheel of Fortune popups hard for customers to ignore.
Here’s how to make a Wheel of Fortune campaign appeal to your customers:
Add multiple prizes, from discounts to gift cards
Include enticing visuals and brand colors
Keep the wheel spinning to increase drama
Include a jackpot prize which is more valuable than the rest of the prizes on offer
BOGO (buy one, get one) sales are a classic marketing technique that are widely used because they appeal to the psychology of the customers. There are many types of BOGO sales, with the most well-known being “buy one, get one free.” However, this is just one of the many types of BOGO sales you can use for your Black Friday campaign.
Here are some other options:
Buy two, get one free: This is an effective direction to go down if you’re looking to increase your order value, more so than buy one, get one free
Buy one, get one half price: This is best for improving your profit margins, as it’s still psychologically appealing and doesn’t require you to give away a product for free
Buy one, get a free sample: This is a great way of introducing customers, especially repeat customers, to different products in your store
Buy one, get a free product from another category: When utilizing this type of sale, pair low-margin products with high-margin products for best results
Buy one, get X% off the second item: This is a preferential option for better profit margins
Here’s an example of how watch company Jack Mason used a BOGO sale to its advantage during a pre-Black Friday campaign:
Integrating a quiz into your Black Friday campaign isn’t just great for adding interactivity to your content. It also has practical use — something your customers will likely thank you for at the end of their shopping experience.
Quizzes can help customers choose the best products for them without having to visit individual pages and read a ton of product descriptions.
When creating a quiz for your campaign, bear these points in mind:
Keep questions short: Your quiz questions should be short and to the point, otherwise you risk losing the interest of the participant
Use a dedicated quiz app: Thankfully, there are apps that you can integrate into online stores for creating smooth, professional quizzes
Add product photos: Quizzes present a perfect chance to show off pictures of your products, in both still form and in action
Above is an example of how tech accessories company Ekster used a quiz to gain more customer information.
Tip: Add your product quizzes to emails to help improve engagement.
Omnisend users integrate popular Shopify apps like Shop Quiz, Presidio: Quiz Kit, or Quizify to embed quizzes directly into emails to make them interactive and drive more visitors to their stores.
Create urgency with a sticky bar
Make sure your Black Friday campaign is impossible to ignore by integrating it into a sticky bar on your website. Sticky bars are horizontal bars that can be found at the top or bottom of a website, staying visible even when the user scrolls up or down. They help make marketing messages available without being a burden on the user experience.
Sticky bars are versatile and can play host to multiple different features, including:
Countdowns: You can add countdown timers that show how long until a sale starts/ends. This will help create a sense of urgency, pushing customers to make a purchase before they lose the discount.
Announcements: It’s easy for announcements to go under the radar, which is why putting them in the sticky bar isn’t such a bad idea. Just ensure the announcement is short and doesn’t take up too much space on the customer’s screen.
Copyable discount codes: Having a discount code on screen at all times can help you convert sales. The fact that it’s copyable and easy to insert at checkout will further add to the customer’s temptation to use it.
Email signup forms: If you’re looking to grow your email list, you can add a signup form to a sticky bar. Add a short line explaining why customers should be signing up and what they’ll then have access to.
Dusk has a great example of a sticky bar with a countdown clock attached to it. This bar will remain on screen at all times, alerting the customer of exactly how long they have to make the most of the sale.
Offer extra loyalty program bonuses
During the Black Friday period, encourage your customers to join your loyalty program, offering them additional bonuses for every purchase they make. For example, you could hand out five times more bonus points when they make a purchase over Black Friday.
Promoting loyalty programs is another way of converting new customers, as they will be tempted to join the program to unlock a better deal. Loyalty programs are a strong alternative to handing out large discounts and an effective way to protect your profits.
Here’s how coffee company ILLY is using this tactic in its emails:
With any sale, you’ll be attracting customers who are particularly conscious about how much money they’re about to spend. That’s why it’s important to let visitors know just how good a deal they will be getting when shopping on your site.
Here’s how:
Add “best price guarantee” badges to every page in your store
Create product bundles that are difficult to directly compare
Show real-time inventory levels to create urgency
Add countdown timers to prices that you have matched
Bundle popular items with complementary products to create higher perceived value.
Standard BF price elsewhere: Phone case — $20
Your bundle: Phone case + pop socket + screen protector — $25
Summary
Creating a successful Black Friday marketing campaign shouldn’t come down to chance. With the right preparation and a strong strategy, you can maximize your profits, setting your business up nicely for the rest of the year.
So, don’t feel as though you’re spinning plates in the lead-up to this year’s Black Friday. Set your stall out early, build up a receptive email list, pack your site with great deals, and you’re sure to be on to a winner.
Aiste is a Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend. When she's not searching for the perfect synonym or refining her latest copy, you can find her curled up with her cat, binge-watching yet another TV series.
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