Getting ready for Black Friday

Christmas is approaching it’s time to get ready…oops! Hold on, Christmas vacation is still a long way off, however, we are nearing Black Friday and we assure you that many people are already starting to get ahead with gifts. Here’s why you’ll need to be as organized as possible to take advantage of this moment.

How to be ready ahead of Black Friday so you don’t miss any opportunities to expand sales and foster customer loyalty for your business?

You will need to work on website and web strategy.

• Do you think your website is ready to deal with high traffic?
  It is very important to make sure your site can handle increased traffic without experiencing slowdowns or abnormal traffic, check page loading speed, and ensure a smooth and easy payment process.
• Do you have a secure site?
  Remember that unfortunately as traffic increases so do cyber attacks so make sure you have an SSL certificate for secure transactions but most important use a system to detect and prevent potential threats. The appearance of a “not secure” warning on your site could screw up your efforts and users will abandon the shopping cart at lightning speed.
• Plan exclusive offers
  Leverage newsletters and social media to promote offers designed for this occasion. Special packages, fixed discount, 2-for-1, exclusive discounts-in short, anything that will catch the attention of a potential customer. The key is to build a sense of great excitement around your promotions.

• Anticipation increases desire
  Better prepare your email marketing strategy by harnessing the power of a well-crafted email campaign. How to do it? Very simple.
  Send out a series of personalized, eye-catching emails before promo days so that you can properly inform your customers about discounts and special offers, in this way you will increase the desire to buy.
  Also plan to send reminders when sales are going on!

Keyword: stand out.

Stand out from the crowd, inboxes during the holidays are always taken by storm, so, try to find that uniqueness factor that only you have and highlight it in all aspects of your campaign.
Let’s start with the main components of an email to pay attention to:

• Subject line
• Content
• Design

You will then move on to:

• how many emails to prepare and depending on the different contacts and which emails to write
• when to send them

The goal is to create a subject line that is so catchy that the user will open the email. It must, of course, be representative of your offer and create a sense of urgency (last chance, limited time).Remember to take into account timing, when the email will be sent (beginning, during or near the end of the campaign) and to create different subject lines based on the different databases of contacts who will receive it (loyal, new or potential customers).

Once you have defined your object, it will be time to create the body of the text.
There are guidelines you will need to follow:

• featured offers and discounts: clear, concise and direct, this is exactly how you should convey your message. Always keep in mind: less is more!
• showcase your bestsellers: do it right away, doing so you will immediately catch your customers’ attention
• a sense of urgency: make the customer afraid of missing this great opportunity.
  Happy tips: to increase the tension a bit and to make it even more effective you might think of including a countdown that informs about the number of products still available
• CTA (Call-To-Action): absolutely necessary to include a call to action based on what you would like the user to do. Insert it where it best fits with the rest of the email.

Last point regarding the structure of the email.
It’s now time for you to be creative: use images or gifs (without exaggeration!).

As already suggested in the previous point put your products in showcased, well in view the offers and we suggest you to include the percentage discount or indicate the initial price compared to the discounted one so as to make it even more perceptible that it is a bargain!

Let’s not forget colors, the palette used should include colors that echo your brand. A big NO to black unless it is within the color scheme of your logo.

Once the emails are ready you will need to do some work on segmenting the contacts into different groups to differentiate the emails that should be sent.
For example, foresee 3 groups:

• engaged: reserve a preview of your upcoming Black Friday deals or products available only for customers who have already been following you for some time.
• new: try to reach people who have recently purchased for the first time on your site by showing what’s new.
• next: attract those who have not yet placed orders by offering free delivery and samples available once they have purchased their first product.

We recommend that you divide your campaign into 3 phases by sending the following communications:

• Preview: to be sent at least one week before the Black Friday deals begin. The goal of this email is to send clear information about when and what will be on discount, the customer in this way will be able to prepare.
• Launch: it’s time to jump into the fray. There are no secrets or shortcuts. You’ll need to send this email on Black Friday like all your competitors. We have a few pointers on the preferred time slots i.e. between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. when you open the emails or when you catch up on the morning one and then from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. when you are getting ready to go home.
• Last chance: when to send it will depend on the duration of the promotion, it goes without saying that it should be sent just before the end of the offer.

We have come to the end, now you have everything you need to create a great email marketing campaign!