Ahhhh, November.
Autumn, Thanksgiving, Football, Sweaters, Belgian Beer...and Black Friday.
This year, the average American household is expected to spend nearly $1500 each this holiday season with an estimated spend of $90.14 billion on Black Friday/Cyber Monday) deals alone.
People are ready to spend and they're looking for offers. And most of your competitors are also ready with Black Friday offers before November even begins.
And therein, lies the problem...to stand out and get your piece of the finite Black Friday pie, you need to be prepared early with a proven Black Friday strategy.
In the article, I'm going to share my own Black Friday Email Strategy and lay out ALL the steps you'll need to use it yourself.
I will show you 1) HOW to structure your offers, and 2) WHEN to launch your promotion for the best response and the most sales.
Let's take a more detailed look at the Black Friday spending stats:
2018's online holiday shopping increased 23.6% year over year (with online shopping growing 19.1%).
(Data Source: Adobe Analytics)
These spending trends don't go unnoticed by your competitors.
Major retailers are doubling down on online sales, and giant companies (ahem, Amazon) are running campaigns like "30 Days of Black Friday Deals."
They’re doing this to catch the widest net of revenue, and obviously, this creates a problem for small business owners during this time...
Those are just a few of the challenges businesses like yours face during the holiday.
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To understand how to approach Black Friday, you have to consider the finite and diminishing size of the consumer's wallet during the holiday season.
Take Mike and Paula. Most likely, they have a budget for the holiday season (or, if they don’t have a budget, they have a credit card limit!). Regardless of whether they've saved or haven't planned at all, they have a finite amount of resources to spend during this time.
It becomes a race by all to get Mike and Paula to spend those resources with their business before they've spent those resources somewhere else.
Everyone is trying to get the largest share of Mike and Paula's wallet.
So what to do? You have to get ahead of this...
And I'm going to show you how.
If you don't want the hassle of trying to build a Black Friday Strategy yourself, don't stress!
Hire my full-service agency and our team of professionals will do everything for you, including:
If you love the idea of having pros build, manage, and execute your Black Friday Promotion for you, then simply schedule your free consult today by clicking here and let's get you set up for wild holiday success!
The first email you send out will ask your customers what they’d like to see deals on.
Why? This helps you engage your list.
You can’t just shove sales on your audience and expect things to just happen. You need to set up your sales in an effective way, and engaging them is one of the best ways to do it.
In this email, you will repeat your request to answer your previous question. If you have fancy automation and software this will be easy, since you'll be able to see who has answered it and who hasn't.
Tip: If you don't have automation like that, it's totally okay if you say something to the tune of: “I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this, but I want to ask you one more time so we can work together to create the sale that you want."
At this point, you're excited to share some of the details about the sale with your audience, but you don’t want to give it all away.
You’ll want to leave out some key details to intrigue them and pique their curiosity, also while letting them know there’s some scarcity -- aka, this isn't going to last forever!
Tip: For those business owners who have frequent sales, it’s critical to say: “I give you my word, these sale offers are NOT going to be available again for the whole year.”
This helps overcome those people who are conditioned to wait for the sale and have no brand loyalty. The kicker is, you MUST stick to your word for this to work!
This email should continue to build hype, curiosity, and momentum. They should be engaging the readers more and more so that they’re really excited when the sale launches.
This means you'll want to reveal some of the products included, share actual savings (numbers are better than percentages) for some of the offers, and continue to emphasize limited quantity and timing.
Unveil useful information, such as:
The point of this email is to make all the shopping details of the sale as easy as to find out as possible, so your potential customers don't have to figure it out themselves. You're removing obstacles to purchase.
Notice the timing is getting more aggressive with the emails.
That’s because we’re getting closer and closer to the sale AND your audience is probably receiving information from your competitors, too.
This, as its name subjects, is short and sweet.
You want to think about the reader's mindset at this time --they're busy, they're stressed, they're getting a lot of different emails.
Keep it short so they read it and remember:
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Alrighty, you made it to the first day of the sale, which is where this strategy really shines.
Are you ready?
I want you to launch the sale...
Remember the "largest share of the wallet" idea?
You're competing for a finite share of resources. If you launch your Black Friday Sale before Thanksgiving, your offer will hit people before the MILLIONS of other Black Friday promotions, and you'll have a greater chance of success that they will buy.
In the email, you'll want to tell them that the sale is live and give them an obvious link to click.
Mention products and savings in dollars and then give them another obvious link to click. Make it easy!
Okay, now it's Thanksgiving. One of the fastest-growing "shopping holidays, with more than $3.7 billion being spent last year.
You'll want to remind your readers that you have great items for sale, but first -- wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.
After mentioning that once they've enjoyed time with family and friends, they may want to do a little shopping...and what do you know, here are some deals for you to check out.
That personal touch can go a long way.
It's now Black Friday and we're already 3 days into our sale, which means we're 3 days ahead of our competitors.
Huzzah!
This Black Friday email should announce a few more special offers. This will freshen up the sale and keep it interesting, enticing those who haven't purchased yet to take a look.
"Small Business Saturday" is meant to highlight small, typically local, brick-and-mortar businesses.
It's also one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
So what I like to do here with our Black Friday Email Strategy, is build in some Frequently Asked Questions that address the ideal customer's "no."
What I mean by that, is that you get inside their head and come up with questions that address their concerns, doubts, or hesitations to buy, and then answer that question.
The trick to ensure these emails have a serious impact is to write the FAQs with a slight sales slant (and always link to your landing pages/sales pages/website if possible!).
This is the last day of the Black Friday sale, so you'll want to push scarcity in this email, e.g. only a few hours left, last time you'll see this sale, once-in-a-lifetime offer, etc.
Keep it short and of course, have an obvious button or link they can click to shop.
Yup, you know it -- this Black Friday Email Strategy wouldn't be complete without a Cyber Monday promotion to finish strong and address that GIANT share of the holiday shopper's wallet!
And you can get the entire Black Friday email strategy now just by signing in below and I'll send you the step-by-step guide (plus bonus tips) and a training video for this entire Black Friday sale. It's 100% free and will give you everything you need to pull off a successful Black Friday Holiday Sale.
Enter your details below to have your free guide and step-by-step video emailed to you instantly.
If you're a business owner in need of a full-service team to create, implement, and execute copy, design, and email automation for you please schedule a free strategic consult to get your proven Black Friday Email Strategy rolling.
And if you need a strategic partner who can help you grow your business with marketing designed for scale, please schedule a free strategic consult with one of our Client Success Managers and we'll uncover your opportunities for growth and success.
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