Black Friday: Creating a Successful Marketing Campaign

At the end of November, almost the whole world will be captured by a shopping fever triggered by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Many people start preparing for these shopping events in advance, choosing gifts for loved ones and useful things for themselves. And statistics prove it – only 22% of purchases during this period are impulsive.

That’s why marketers should also prepare the campaign in advance so that potential buyers have time to create a well-thought-out wish list. This article will walk you through the steps to creating a successful Black Friday marketing strategy.

Get Ready for The Biggest Sale of the Year Step-by-Step

In order for your marketing processes to be clearly structured before the start of Black Friday, the company must go through several stages.

1. Set a Desirable and Achievable Business Goal

First, determine the business goals you want and can achieve during the sale. Below are some of the most common businesses set for Black Friday:

• presentation of a new product or group of products;
• improving target audience awareness of the product range;
• increasing brand awareness;
• strengthening customer loyalty;
• acquiring new customers;
• obtaining the desired income from the sale of all products;
• increasing sales of specific products.

The goal or several goals that your team sets will determine the marketing campaign, in particular, the content and calls to action in direct channels. For example, Apple encourages customers with a gift card for a later purchase when they buy an eligible product from Apple range.

The list of goals above is not complete because much depends on the specifics of a particular business. However, you can use it as a basis when forming your own goal.

2. Communicate to Your Customers in an Omnichannel Way

Omnichannel marketing communication matters for modern customers — 86% believe their favorite brand should provide a consistent user experience regardless of channel. Each channel is a source of customer behavioral data that allows you to create a customer portrait and understand their needs and desires. Based on this data, you can create a unique product offering that will best suit the interests of a particular person.

However, customer data siloed between different channels makes it difficult to create a holistic picture for understanding the client. Omnichannel customer data platforms like Yespo, in turn, help to unify data flows from different channels in a single system. The platform automatically collects, processes, and unifies client data and allows for its effective use for online and offline marketing campaigns. With the help of it, marketers can make more informed decisions, and consumers can receive personalized experiences across all touchpoints with the company.

3. Work on the Campaign Content and Design

Black Friday is one of the most prominent events in commerce. That’s why the campaign you create for Black Friday should be properly differentiated from your day-after-day campaigns. Almost all eCommerce projects will actively communicate with their audience during a sale, so you need to stand out from your competitors. Content and design are the main components to attract customers’ attention to your offers. Let's look at what you should focus on.

Test your email subject lines

The subject line is the first thing your subscriber sees when receiving a new email. During Black Friday, it should be especially creative, capturing, and attention-grabbing. In our recent article, we have shared 100 email subject line ideas for Black Friday you are welcome to use for inspiration.

According to a survey, 30% of email marketers report a significant improvement in email effectiveness due to the subject line personalization. 20% of respondents also got better results after adding emojis to the subject line. So, test your email with several subject lines to see which message resonates best with your audience.

In the case of mobile push, web push, and App Inbox, the title plays a similar role. To grab users’ attention, it is usually highlighted in bold. Additionally, make your title more attractive with emoji.

Be creative with the design

Most often, eCommerce brands choose black shadows for Black Friday marketing visual design. As an example, take a look at a widget created in black, red, and white by Dnipro-M, a household goods reseller and Yespo customer. In addition to using a classic Black Friday color scheme, the company encourages its customers to take advantage of free delivery.

In our recent article, we have shared eleven ideas for Black Friday widgets that you can use at different stages of your marketing campaign. What’s more, in Yespo Omnichannel CDP, you can easily create a fully customizable widget that will perfectly fit your website style and design.

The main advantage of widgets is that you do not need users' consent to display them. With this tool, you can deliver the message even to unauthorized users, and a marketer can configure widgets to be displayed to all site visitors or to a specific segment to achieve desired business goals.

Sometimes, companies use a more varied color scheme in their Black Friday emails to attract subscribers' attention, as in the email from the Buffy brand.

If you still prefer the black color, pay special attention to the display of your message on different channels, operating systems and with a Dark Mode activated. For example, a web push in Windows visually consists of two parts: the upper with an image and the lower block with text and CTAs. The text itself is located on a dark background, so if you add a dark-colored emoji, it will be almost invisible. SHEIN’s web push visually demonstrates this error. Emoji was supposed to focus the user's attention on the message title but was lost on the dark background of a web push.

Emojis also help to visually structure a long message text. For example, thanks to them, a list of promotional offers in a mobile push from the EVA store looks clearer.

When creating mobile push notifications and Viber messages, keep the colors of emoji in mind as well. Make sure they are still visible when a dark mode is activated. Pay attention to the way Citrus, one of the leading electronic appliance brands in Ukraine, use emoji in their Viber message. Yellow, orange, and white colors of emoji ensure they are clearly visible on the dark background and perfectly resonate with the brand style.

In the case of SMS communication, you should switch the focus from the design to the text since you have to fit the message into a minimal amount of characters. So, notify the subscriber of the most important things: the date of the beginning and end of the sale, the size of the discount, the promotional code, give a link to the landing page, etc.

With SMS, you can send longer messages, however, this channel is expensive, so use it wisely.

Ensure adaptability

Mobile commerce has been on the special rise for several years already since most modern shoppers have long preferred mobile devices for shopping. During the current high season, which began on October 1, almost 48% of eCommerce revenue comes from purchases made from mobile devices. These statistics are still updated daily, so numbers may change. Nevertheless, make sure that on the eve of Black Friday, the mobile version of your online store works flawlessly.

Adaptability is also important for email newsletters, which should be created taking into account the screen size of smartphones and tablet PCs. If you prepare promotional emails in the Yespo omnichannel CDP editor, they are adaptive by default. A marketer only needs to create a web version of the letter and then adjust its mobile version: for example, remove unnecessary text and reduce the number of images, etc.

Determine the campaign start date

Most customers begin to actively monitor prices for desired products several weeks before Black Friday. At this time, you should start a campaign to warm up their interest. For example, MustHave, a Ukrainian concept clothing store, uses a countdown widget to make its customers anticipate the biggest shopping event of the year.

Black Friday is a good reason to get customer contact information. Use widgets on the highest traffic pages to gather a base of website visitors interested in joining the sale.

You can also create a separate landing page for Black Friday with a subscription form. For example, Govee offers new subscribers early access to Black Friday deals and an extra $5 off their first order.

So, a Black Friday marketing campaign could look like this:

1. On the eve of the sale, send a notification about the start of the promotion or an alert with a countdown timer.
2. In the midst of Black Friday, remind your subscribers about the transience of time and offer them personalized product recommendations or the best sellers of the promotion.
3. At the next step, warn about the approaching end of Black Friday.
4. You can close the campaign with a message that Cyber Monday is about to begin, so the subscriber has another chance to buy great items at a discounted price.

For example, here is how Foxtrot, one of the leading electronic appliances brands and Yespo customers, designed their Black Friday email newsletter series.

In our recent article, we have also explained and visually illustrated seven effective Black Friday marketing campaigns you are welcome to leverage this year.

In Conclusion

Preparing for Black Friday requires marketers to work hard. You have to determine business goals and create interesting content with attractive design and encouraging calls to action to convert your customers. You should also determine the best dates to launch your campaign and use all the opportunities of omnichannel communication with your customers.

These steps will help increase the success of your email campaigns during the holiday season. What’s more, your campaigns can be especially effective thanks to direct marketing automation. It will reduce the time spent on routine processes (collecting contacts, segmentation, launching triggers, etc.) and will also allow you to personalize communication and avoid mistakes. The best solution for managing all direct marketing processes is Yespo omnichannel CDP. Book a demo to learn about possible growth points for your business, which you will be able to meet using our platform.

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