Black Friday is becoming an increasingly crucial seasonal event for retailers, with many top brands stepping up their campaigns each year. Email marketing is a key channel to build momentum and maximise Black Friday success. 

We've outlined 5 essential tactics to consider for Black Friday email campaigns. Check them out and then head on over to our Ultimate Guide to Black Friday Email Marketing.

1. Get the jump on your competitors

Major retail brands are starting their Black Friday campaigns earlier and earlier, with some brands starting marketing activity as early as the start of November. And it's not just to give customers a heads up to look out for their upcoming Black Friday deals. Many brands are actually starting their Black Friday sales weeks before the date. This has now become a commonplace tactic.

It's worth considering whether you want to battle it out with all your competitors during the Black Friday weekend, or if you want to encourage customers to grab your seasonal sales in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, to get ahead of the competition. You can still set your campaigns to finish on Cyber Monday, but it just gives people the chance to buy early and avoid the rush. Check out an email example from B&Q below:

This is now for some retail brands, an essential strategy.  Many cannot afford to not be in BFCM sale when their competitors are already live. Even a day late, could be too late...

2. Leverage FOMO with dynamic content

That brings us to using the persuasion tactic of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out) during campaigns, to encourage subscribers to take action on your emails. This is a crucial email marketing tactic for seasonal sales periods, as there's already the notion of a limited-time window for consumers to take advantage of brand discounts and deals, so you need to leverage this in email campaigns with the help of dynamic content.

You need to create super-persuasive marketing copy and compelling calls to action, whilst using email marketing tools like Fresh Relevance and Movable Ink, to deliver dynamic email content and insert live content into your emails.

This example from Adidas leverages urgency, with the use of a countdown timer and persuasive marketing copy ("ENDS TONIGHT" and "you only have a few hours left..."). The placement of these messages in three separate areas of the email creates real urgency, but doesn't feel overbearing and is still on-brand.

3. Craft standout subject lines

If there's a time to stand out from the inbox, it's during the Black Friday period. Whether you're a retailer inviting people to explore sales on your product ranges or a B2B brand looking to leverage the Black Friday trigger to start more conversations or gain more leads via free trials or discounted subscriptions, you need to give your subscribers some convincing reasons to open your emails. 

Use punchy, action-oriented language. Include clear incentives and utilise pre-header text to give recipients a hint of further benefits to be found in the email. Also, employ urgency-based words to entice subscribers to open and not miss out on the opportunity to get top deals and discounts.

• Get Black Friday Deals Before Anyone Else  – Beer Hawk
• Black Friday Flash Sale: 20% Off This Weekend Only! – eFlorist
• Get Up to 35% Off! The stuff Black Friday dreams are made of – Redbubble
• Black Friday just turned orange - Sainsburys
• Today is THE day to shop: 30% off, in stores & online – J.Crew

These retailer subject lines use a range of different triggers and tactics, including seasonal wordplay, emojis, FOMO, capitalisation and big discounts.

If you want more Black Friday subject line tips, check out our blog: Black Friday Email Subject Lines: The Best Tips to Stand Out of the Inbox.

For an extensive guide to optimising your email subject lines for seasonal campaigns like Black Friday, get our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Subject Lines.

4. Offer real value and incentives

When we say real value, we're talking about something more than just the regular incentives offered to customers throughout the customer lifecycle, such as 10% off of a specific range of products. It's Black Friday and consumers expect mega deals and big value. For your brand to encourage customers to spend, as opposed to a host of other brands offering discounts, you need to be generous with your rewards and be clear about the benefits of your Black Friday offerings.

It sounds obvious, but this is the primary reason why brands fail at BFCM - the deal wasn't good enough and the customer goes elsewhere...  

Consider the following tactics:

• Promote sitewide discounts
• Give email subscribers exclusive offers or early access to offers
• Offer free delivery on purchases over certain thresholds
• Throw in gifts with different spend levels
• Combine in-store and online deals and give details of nearest stores, etc

This gorgeous email from Ascot + Hart not only grabs subscriber attention with the neon-sign style Gif, but it offers real value with 25% off everything and makes the Black Friday deal easy to redeem, using a simple promo code to enter at checkout:

5. Ramp up retargeting & remarketing

Retargeting visitors and customers is essential during the Black Friday weekend, as you need to give them nudges towards your deals to achieve conversions. For customers who've purchased, you want to keep them interested and entice them back to your site to shop again. Retargeting prospects and customers is highly-effective for boosting sales. It's even more effective when you integrate email marketing with other channels – especially paid social.

Typical emails that work well on Black Friday are cart abandonment emails, messages about further Black Friday deals and highly personalised emails, with tailored recommendations and relevant content. Remarketing will help you to build momentum and increase campaign performance.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Black Friday Email Marketing for more great inspiration!

Wrap up

The Black Friday weekend is a big opportunity to skyrocket campaign performance, so we hope these tips and tactics help you to take full advantage. Good luck and we hope you get some great results!

Enchant Agency is a leading UK email marketing agency, based in London. We enable brands to reach their full potential with innovative marketing strategies, focusing on the customer lifecycle. If you need help with your email campaigns, you can speak to an email marketing consultant today. Why not get in touch now and see how we can improve your campaign performance today? Check out our service, where we where we explain how best to implement quality design to achieve better results!