Black Friday Email Marketing: How do you plan your eCommerce Campaign? [Checklist]

Black Friday has become more than just a shopping event for customers and businesses alike. Not running eCommerce email marketing campaigns on Black Friday is like having a powerful car in your arsenal, but deciding to leave it in the garage when it’s the most important race. Then, you wonder why your customers are having fun on the way to the offers put out by the competition and happily arrive at their destination.  

So why wouldn’t you be in the spotlight, with smart, customer benefit-oriented and carefully planned Black Friday newsletters?

This year, we reveal how to run memorable Black Friday email campaigns that go straight to the heart of your subscribers. 

Black Friday Email Marketing instead of Ads

Black Friday is the perfect time for you to get the aces out of your sleeve and devote valuable time to your email marketing strategy. Why? Because during this period, performance marketing campaigns in eCommerce (Google Ads, Facebook Ads) become fierce and the cost per click increases between 10% and 45%, regardless of industry (GPeC, 2022). 

This is exactly why you need to make the most of the event, segment your subscriber lists and focus your ecommerce strategy more on email marketing. With automation and well-designed campaigns, email remains the most cost-competitive communication channel.

We’ll explore Black Friday in eCommerce from several perspectives, with a focus on preparing key campaign components and developing your email marketing strategy.

What will you find in this article?

1. Latest consumer data (Black Friday 2022)
2. Email marketing strategy for Black Friday in eCommerce
3. Checklist: Things to prepare before Black Friday

Recent data about Black Friday in eCommerce

For starters, we thought a range of market data would give you important insights into consumer behaviour at this time of year.

GPeC (Black Friday, 2022) provides interesting data from the previous Black Friday, which nuanced consumer behaviours worth considering for planning this year’s campaigns.

• Payment by card accounted for a significant percentage (63.2% of orders), which means that people increasingly prefer to use this payment method. 
  
  So make sure you don’t have any problems processing payments!
• Mobile orders were at the highest level, with over 81.9% of the total.
  
  Make sure your website runs smoothly on all types of devices.
• Cluj-Napoca took first place in the top of the list of cities by average order value per customer, followed by Bucharest, Iași and Constanța.
  
  You could consider segmented email campaigns based on these top locations or others that apply to your store.
• The majority of online purchases were made by women, 54.1%, while men accounted for 45.9%.
  We’re sure you already knew that women shop more than men 
• The majority of orders were placed at easybox (51.8% of total orders) and there was a focus on stores delivering same-day parcels to the locker.
  
  Offer fast delivery options and make sure you are logistically prepared. What’s more, make sure you have a reliable deliverer.
• Among the special products ordered were 2,035 nights’ accommodation, 9 cars and 35.2 tonnes of pork.
  
  With good marketing, you can sell anything on the internet!
• Brands invested less in Google Ads than last year, relying more on organic (SEO, email)
  
  Perfect time to focus more on email marketing.
• According to NETOPIA Payments, an average of 80 transactions per minute were processed last year on Black Friday, with the peak of transactions occurring at 2:15 pm. 
  
  Plan including the times you want to send emails.

Next, we will go through some important steps on how to approach email marketing strategy during this period.

Preparing before Black Friday

Before you actually start working on your Black Friday campaigns, we recommend that you consider a few crucial steps that often go unnoticed, but which are the primary elements of an email marketing campaign.

Planning and setting objectives

In eCommerce, metrics are very important.

Start by setting clear goals. 

We’re sure you don’t just want to increase website traffic.

We’re sure you’re not setting out to build customer loyalty right now.

On the other hand, we’re sure you’d like to gather more subscribers, but more importantly, to see your current ones start interacting with your brand and products, so that you can generate satisfactory results from your email marketing campaigns.

So don’t forget to define your Black Friday goals and monitor each campaign for results.

Start gradually and prepare your subscribers

How about doing a little warm-up with subscribers before showing them the final offers? You can start preparing a few segments to make sure you deliver the right campaigns to the right subscribers.

Send teaser emails

Short, intriguing messages sent in the days/weeks before Black Friday. These give more context to subscribers’ expectations, generating excitement and curiosity.

Let’s take some examples with an eCommerce store of women’s accessories

3 weeks before the event 

Early promotional email that gives a teaser of what’s to come, with the main goal of getting subscribers excited that your store is preparing special Black Friday campaigns. 

One week before the event

Email to reveal Black Friday offers and promotions. 

Recently, I saw an interesting idea where an online store was urging subscribers to start adding products to their shopping cart to catch limited stock offers when the campaign launched. 

Black Friday campaign launch moment 

Email to inform subscribers that the Black Friday campaign has started. 

Before the campaign ends

Think of a Black Friday eCommerce newsletter with a very practical approach – FOMO (Fear of missing out) and try to create a sense of urgency, of missed opportunity.

Also focus on the visuals of your emails and make sure you include eye-catching elements that increase the call to action, such as buttons that stand out, colours that accentuate certain elements in the visuals.

Choose specially prepared Black Friday templates from NewsMAN’s list of easily editable and responsive email templates.

If you’re running out of ideas, here are 10 more Black Friday email ideas to help you define your campaign calendar.

Remember one very important thing!

Today’s consumers expect personalised communication from online shops that directly addresses their needs and preferences. 

List segmentation involves dividing subscribers into smaller, more targeted groups based on common characteristics such as:

• purchase history
• demographics
• level of engagement

Example Black Friday Campaign Online Shop

Let’s say we have an online store selling jewelry and other accessories for women.

We want to segment our subscriber list to reach those customers who are truly passionate about jewelry, especially fancy necklaces. To achieve this, we can use the advanced segmentation features in our platform.

• Purchase HistoryWe identify early signs of interest in jewellery through a history of relevant purchases. This could include previous purchases of jewellery or similar products.
• Demographic DataWe segment by demographics, focusing on women aged 25-35, knowing from previous data that this is our usual target group for extravagant jewellery.
• Level of Involvement
  We assess the level of engagement of subscribers in our emails. Those who have shown interest in our jewellery-related offers or interacted with our extravagant jewellery emails in the past will receive personalised Black Friday messages.

Segment your audience carefully and avoid sending excessive mass emails to the same subscribers. Use the advanced segmentation features in the NewsMAN platform to define your lists the way you want. This will allow you to personalise your email campaigns and make them more relevant to your audience.

Checklist: items to prepare before Black Friday

We end with a shortlist of the most important elements to include in your Black Friday email marketing strategy.

1. Set goals

Black Friday is about deals and sales. Set sales targets, but more importantly, make sure you’re tracking key performance indicators.

By integrating with Google Analytics, NewsMAN allows you to record data such as: products or product categories viewed, products added to/removed from the cart, their details and more.

Set up Google Analytics 4 integration with NewsMAN and watch the reports.

2. Segment subscriber lists 

Subscriber list segmentation is the key factor in ecommerce and email marketing. 

Start segmenting by demographics, behaviours, interests, interactions.

The more you segment your data, the better and more relevant your communication with subscribers will be. Sending personalized email campaigns to each group of subscribers will translate into better open rate, click-through rate, CTR and better ROI.

Find out more about subscriber segmentation.

3. Prepare offers and campaigns

Prepare your Black Friday offers and campaigns in advance. Make sure you have defined a flow for each segment, but more importantly, test early to make sure your automations are working properly.

4. Set automated emails for specific actions

Make sure automated emails after specific actions work perfectly (e.g. cart abandonment, product view, paid order).

Ideally, you should also include an attractive pop-up on the website that displays when the visitor wants to leave the page. 

Create an automation flow from NewsMAN, using the exit intent pop-up, exemplified in the automation flow below.

Don’t forget to enable NewsMAN Remarketing from the platform. With this functionality, you can segment subscribers based on pages, product categories and products viewed or purchased.

5. Ensures product inventory

With such a setup, all you have to do is make sure your stocks are ready. If you plan to offer unmissable deals in Black Friday campaigns, be prepared in terms of inventory.

6. Prepare dedicated Black Friday landing pages

Create a special experience for your subscribers and make sure they get into the frenzy of the moment. Create landing pages dedicated to the offers you’ve communicated and make sure you’re using content that converts, with lots of customer benefits…

Don’t forget to set tracking codes for data collection and further action.

7. Use the “mobile first” concept

Make sure the website works correctly for all devices. Knowing that most users use smartphones when shopping online, make sure your store includes all the criteria for mobile functionality.

8. Keep shoppers updated on order status via email or sms

You can create a confirmation email for subscribers who have made a purchase at the same time you prepare the parcel and hand it to the courier. This will further enhance the quality of your service.

9. Use email marketing for “after-sales” campaigns

Since you have personalized offers, good experiences in interacting with the site’s pages, but most of all, quality service in terms of packaging and parcel delivery, why not ask for a review or offer a discount on your next purchases?

Think about a post-order email and try to build loyalty with subscribers who buy from the store directly using NewsMAN automation. 

Prepare your Black Friday Email Campaign!

Set clear goals for your Black Friday eComerce campaign and use the features in the NewsMAN platform to create custom newsletters and automations that ensure a perfect flow for your promotion efforts!