This year’s gloriously intense buying and selling party and your chance to create hype around your business is approaching – Black Friday, November 29th!
Getting your marketing strategies in place for Black Friday and Christmas shopping in good time is perhaps more important than ever today – given the sharp rise in inflation.
You don’t want to be left empty-handed too close to Black Friday and Christmas shopping where you create a marketing strategy on the spot in sheer panic. It usually never results in a good campaign, and you probably won’t reach the sales you had hoped to achieve.
If you haven’t got it all figured out yet – don’t worry – the best time to create, fine-tune and schedule your Black Friday campaign is now!
To help you along, below is a list of tips on how you can go about optimizing your marketing strategies across your digital channels. So that you can seamlessly double-check or further optimize your marketing strategies and be confident that your campaign is bulletproof before the whole thing kicks off.
11 Black Friday marketing strategies & ideas for all businesses
1. Plan your Black Friday marketing strategy ahead
Make sure to plan ahead of the game when you’re creating your marketing strategies for the upcoming campaign. Customers start planning and seeking information about products earlier than you might think. That’s why you should also communicate well in advance, via your website, newsletter, and social media, about the offers and activities you will have during Black Friday and later the Christmas sales.
That way, your recipients and visitors know what offers are coming and where to shop on 25 November.
Also, make sure to plan your sales. Pick out which products you will have offers on and when they will start. This way, you’ll be in control of what happens during your upcoming promotion.
Don’t forget to make sure you can manage an increase in sales during Black Friday and Christmas shopping. You certainly don’t want to be standing there running out of products in stock that you’re also promoting at the same time. You will then waste unnecessary expenditure in your marketing but most importantly, you risk making your customers unhappy where they lose their trust in you and your brand.
With increased sales, your business will also get more inquiries. Be prepared to strengthen your customer service during Black Friday and Christmas shopping so that your customers can get help if questions or concerns arise to take them further in their buying journey. Good customer service is more important than most people think, as it helps to increase sales.
2. Collaborate with other companies
Consider whether other companies are relevant to collaborate with where there is an opportunity to offer something together. In this way, it will help you strengthen each other’s brands and your competitive position. Suddenly, together you can challenge larger brands in your industry.
For example, if you work in interior design, you could contact a real estate agent. Your offer could include a consultation before viewing the future home.
3. Select your Black Friday offers with care
Unless you have an unlimited budget, you won’t be able to showcase all of your products on every existing digital platform. The competition will be fierce if you want to target everything and everyone. You will be fighting for space with all brands with similar products across your industry – let’s be honest, that’s neither a profitable nor sustainable strategy.
Instead, try to narrow down your offerings to what is a realistic set of products for you to handle and which you feel has the highest potential for the most profitability. For example, these could be products you know have sold very well historically or products trending strongly at the moment.
Once you know what offers to have during Black Friday and Christmas shopping, it will be much easier to design your content for your digital channels and target your content to your audiences.
4. Focus and provide value to your target audiences
Analyze your target audience and get to know your customers with a pair of fresh eyes.
- What products/services do they like right now?
- What needs do they have?
- What would add to their enjoyment instead of creating annoyance in their digital channels with content they don’t find of value or newsletters they don’t open?
Based on this status check, it becomes clearer which specific offers you should focus on and how to communicate your particular offers ahead of Black Friday & Christmas shopping.
What’s in it for them? The value, the value, the value!
One example is Gröna Lund, a theme park in Sweden whose Black Friday offer focused on the customer’s enjoyment – what do they want you to think about when you read their offer on a dull day in November?
The feeling of a summer evening of course!
The joy of being able to treat yourself and your loved ones to ride as many carousels as you want on a summer evening – so, what are they offering?
A free ticket if you buy for more than 450 SEK – a solid value for the recipient that is also top of mind for everyone on a blustery November day!
5. Create curiosity for your email marketing and newsletters
Let’s face it, you’re far from being alone in competing for customers’ attention with your email marketing and newsletters. That’s why the first impression, the subject line of your email sendings, is crucial – give a hint and be clear about the value already in the headline.
It may be a great choice to include the word Black Friday, but how can you make it stand out?
Could you highlight a specific enticing offer, or a percentage, make the headline personal, or create a sense of now or never with words like now, countdown, last chance, and final push?
Using emojis in the headline can help reinforce the sentiment and make the reader choose to read your particular email!
Example headlines:
- Remember us on Black Friday!
- Mark your calendar – get ready for the Black Friday sales!
- Avoid Black Friday chaos – shop now!
- Black Friday! Get 30% off EVERYTHING!
- Unique Black Friday offer now!
- Black Friday: get ready, get set, and save!
- Black Friday starts NOW!
Explore how to create email newsletters with Get a Newsletter to increase your sales and reach out with your messages.
6. Email marketing and newsletter content
Clarity of content is always the best strategy for a newsletter to engage your readers. What exactly are you saying? No stress, but you only have a few seconds to grab your reader’s attention while they scroll through the inbox for Black Friday deals. So stick to a stripped-down, clear structure with clear call-to-actions.
Where do you want the reader to click? Make sure there’s a visible call-to-action no matter where in the email the reader is – at the top, middle, and bottom (depending on how long your newsletter is).
7. Email newsletter layout & design
A newsletter with a clear layout and structure will help your recipients understand the content better and will make it easier for them to know where to put their focus, increasing your conversion rate.
With a good email design in your newsletter, you can create a feeling in your recipients that can help them be more willing to buy and increase the conversion rate further.
Use your branding in your design to create recognition and reinforce your brand awareness.
Isn’t designing a newsletter from scratch your thing? Then spend your valuable time where you can add the most value and use our responsive email newsletter templates.
Our newsletters are designed to make it as easy as possible for you to create great-looking and responsive newsletters for Black Friday and beyond. You can customize the colors, fonts, and images to make your offer stand out and signal your brand.
Email newsletter templates
Get started with sending email newsletters to easily reach your subscribers and customers.
8. Create and strengthen customer relationships through your website
An example of how you can create and strengthen customer relationships is by using signup forms on your website, where you can then send them a gift card or offer when they sign up. This way, you can get more subscribers to build stronger relationships together.
To get more subscribers before Black Friday on November 25, you can communicate on your social media platforms and website, that your subscribers will receive exclusive offers.
Are you using Get a Newsletter and want to start collecting subscribers? Click here to see how to add a signup form to your website.
Examples of offers to send to your subscribers
Make your subscribers feel special by sending them an exclusive offer only available to them.
Examples of types of offers you can send are:
- Buy for X dollar and get X% discount
- Buy X, pay for X
- Buy X and get X for free
- Get X% off your entire purchase
- Buy for X and get a secret gift with your purchase
9. Digital advertising before and during Black Friday
Using digital advertising before and during Black Friday can be very profitable if you find the right platform to advertise on for your target audience.
For example, you can advertise towards direct sales of your products or services and on social media posts to build anticipation/give a teaser of what will happen in your store during Black Friday.
Be creative and try to find what works best for you as every situation is different for everyone.
A few platforms you can look at for digital advertising are Google, Facebook (Meta), and Instagram. You also shouldn’t underestimate TikTok for your advertising as they have hit the scene with extreme force in the last year, where more and more global brands choose to advertise.
10. Make sure your strategies are functional and run correctly
Remember to test all of your flows in the channels you have chosen to use for your upcoming campaign. You don’t want to be in the position where you discover a problem in the middle of Black Friday and miss out on sales and other conversion goals – just because you had forgotten or ignored to check your strategy and its flows one more time.
Email Marketing & Newsletters – Preview your mailings for responsiveness in web and mobile-friendly modes (remember, most people read their email on mobile).
Add your email addresses to a list, send and click on all product, website, and social media links, checking that you end up on the correct landing page for each link. If you want to take it a step further, try reading your mailings in several different email programs to see how they will look to various recipients.
Website – Make sure your entire website, the home page, product pages, and checkout are responsive and mobile-friendly. There are more searches from mobiles than computers these days, so it’s crucial, especially when it comes to e-commerce, that your website works across all devices.
You should also make sure that it’s easy to make a purchase on your website by going through and testing the buying journey yourself. Make sure it’s as simple as possible and easy to understand. You may discover other problems you may not have known existed that you can fix.
Also, don’t forget to check that the pricing is correct for the products you have chosen to offer during Black Friday (product pages and in the checkout).
11. Analyze the results of your Black Friday marketing campaign
To understand how your campaign is performing, you can use analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, which give you in-depth information about your website, email marketing, and advertising.
Of course, you should use analytics on an ongoing basis throughout the year, not just during your campaign, to learn more about your target audiences. You’ll also find information about your visitors’ behavior, where traffic to your site comes from, and which ads perform best and are most profitable, among other things.
If you are using Get a Newsletter to send newsletters, you’ll find a detailed report on how your mailings are performing. You’ll find information on open and click rates, bounces, link clicks, and unsubscribes, among other things.
With all the data you track through Get a newsletter and external analytic tools, you can see what you need to improve to get even better results on an ongoing basis and for next year’s Black Friday.
Example of a series of emails before and during Black Friday
Put yourself in a better position before and during Black Friday by sending newsletters to your subscribers and customers in a series of emails revolving around Black Friday.
Down below is an example of a series of emails you can use as a starting point and adapt to suit you and your brand.
Mail 1: Create curiosity and interest
Purpose of the email: the cause a person doesn’t shop is they already have everything they need – so it’s a good idea to plant a seed explaining why they need your services or products before you send out your offers.
Who wouldn’t want some ideas on what to buy for Christmas? Or perhaps a reminder to review whether they need to buy perfume, shampoo, or similar items they use every day?
What day to send the email: 2024-11-15 (About two weeks before Black Friday)
Sample subject line:
- Everything you need to buy your Christmas gifts
- Have you started shopping for Christmas gifts?
- Have you inventoried your bathroom cabinet?
Mail 2: Give a teaser about your offers
Purpose of the email: remind your recipients to think about whether there is anything they need or whether they have finished writing their list of Christmas gifts. Also, give a teaser about what offers you will have.
What day to send the email: 2024-11-24 (Sunday before Black Friday)
Sample subject line:
- Do you know what you’re buying for Christmas?
- Have you started shopping for Christmas gifts?
- Have you inventoried your bathroom cabinet?
- X tips on what to buy for him/her/grandfather/grandmother
Mail 3: Previewing your offers
Purpose of the mail: make the person feel special by telling them that thanks to being on your list, they will know about your offers in advance. Describe when it starts and what the person needs to do to receive the offers.
If you can and want to, you can also give the person priority access to your offers.
What day to send the email: 2024-11-25 (Monday before Black Friday)
Sample subject line:
- X Black Friday deals
- Just for you ##firstname##: a sneak peek at Black Friday deals.
- X hours left until…
- This year’s Black Friday offer is…
- Are you ready for Black Friday?
Mail 4: Tell your audience your Black Friday offers are live
The purpose of the email: is to get the person to visit your page and shop.
What day to send the mail: the day the offer starts.
Example subject line:
The important thing about this subject line is that they see the offer.
- Knock, knock, who’s there? – Free Shipping
- You get 30% off everything
- Today only: X% off everything.
- First come, first served – while stocks last
- Be one of the first 10 to shop – get a goodie bag
Mail 5: Send a reminder for your audience to not miss out on your offers
Purpose of the email: not all your subscribers will open your email the first time they see it
Therefore, it might be a good idea to send an email a second time to those who have not yet shopped or opened your email.
Example of subject line:
- Last chance: 30% off everything
- x hours left before you no longer get x% off
3 Black Friday newsletter ideas
Brands For Kids
My Perfect Day
Camilla Thulin
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