Black Friday And Cyber Monday Email Marketing
Autumn is gearing up, which means it’s time for BigCommerce merchants to start stepping up their holiday marketing. Our suggestion for where to start? Email.
Email marketing was a massive ecommerce driver last Black Friday, with 23% (nearly a quarter!) of online sales deriving from a consumer’s inbox. And email drives revenue on every other day of the holiday shopping season, too. A well-crafted and timed email can be a lifeline to busy holiday shoppers, helping them quickly and easily lock down the perfect gift.
Email marketing was a massive ecommerce driver last Black Friday, with 23% of online sales coming from a consumer’s inbox.
But that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic cash-grab. Inboxes are crowded during the holiday season, so you’ve got to have a smart strategy in place to ensure that your efforts pay off. Here are our top tips for email marketing, with a holiday twist.
Inboxes are crowded during the holiday season, so you’ve got to have a smart strategy in place to ensure that your efforts pay off.
Start Early
If you’re planning to kick off your marketing efforts a few days before Black Friday, you aren’t giving yourself enough time. Studies show that customers are more likely to open holiday-themed promotional emails earlier in the season, well before even Thanksgiving. Once you get closer to the actual holidays, customers are overwhelmed and more general emails tend to get deleted.
Studies show that customers are more likely to open holiday-themed promotional emails earlier in the season.
The takeaway? Don’t be afraid to start earlier than you think you might need to. And once Black Friday passes and the shopping season is fully underway, know that you’ll need a compelling incentive or hyper-targeted content to get opens.
Use Customer Segmentation For Targeted Emails
Great email marketing requires customized email experiences. Using customer data to develop segments (subgroups of your larger mailing list) allows you to create targeted campaigns that increase the likelihood of opens and conversions.
Email automation platforms like MailChimp and Klaviyo let you easily create and target customer segments. Klaviyo is especially good for this because it allows you to create segments by customer behavior. This means you can send targeted emails to:
- Customers who signed up for your mailing list but haven’t bought
- Your most loyal or regular customers
- Everyone who’s bought a certain product, or certain combination of products
These segments allow you to build extremely targeted campaigns. You can tailor your content, CTAs – even incentives and promotions – to the specific customer segment, which in turn helps you create useful and enticing emails.
Capture More Emails With Incentives
Incentives are a great way to grow your email list. You’ve definitely seen them on ecommerce sites: those popups that offer you 15% off or access to exclusive products if you sign up for the mailing list.
Creating holiday-themed incentives is a great way to capture more emails during a season where consumers are doing more browsing. Offering a discount is a strong motivator, but if you can’t do that, consider offering early access to a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale. It may be the push customers need to hand over their information.
Shoppable Emails Get Customer Eyes On Products
Customers face a lot of pressure to buy during the holiday season, but they also have a lot of choice. Competition is fierce so it’s important to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd.
What makes customers buy? Convenience and price are the two biggest decision factors. Obviously, pricing is made up of complex factors that you can’t completely control, but you’re certainly in control of how convenient and easy your shopping experience is.
How does email play into this? By bringing curated products right to the customer’s inbox. And shoppable emails with collections of products get customers’ eyes on the most relevant products and make it easy to buy. Bonus points if you use segmentation to tailor what’s in those collections!
And, fortunately, the holiday season offers abundant branding opportunities. Gifts under $50, gifts for mom, gifts curated by our staff or chosen influencers – the list goes on.
Abandoned Carts Recover Lost Sales
Customers are browsing a lot during the holiday season, so make sure they don’t leave anything behind with abandoned cart flows. Tailor your messages to holiday shoppers (“Last chance for holiday discount,” et cetera) and win back some sales in the rush of the season.
Plus, if you use Klaviyo, you can send browse abandonment emails. These are a highly effective type of marketing email that actually shows the customer the items they were previously looking at, plus similar items. It’s basically an automated way of creating a targeted, shoppable email – that level of personalization can’t be beat!
Browse abandonment emails are basically an automated way of creating a hyper-targeted shoppable email.
Get Holiday Marketing For BigCommerce Help!
Want help kicking your holiday marketing into high gear? IntuitSolutions’ digital marketing team works with cutting-edge tools and data-driven strategies to help you win sales. Call us for a free consultation today!
