Big shopping days like Black Friday are extremely popular and email marketing busiest time of the year! I asked 65+ email marketing experts and designers to give their best tips and strategy for email marketing during BIG shopping days.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Valentines, and the whole holiday shopping season are great excuses to delight your email subscribers and clients. Giving discount and exclusive offers while keeping your Brand intact. And with new events like Prime Day, Giving Tuesday, and Singles Day, there seems to be no end in sight. Due to changing customer behavior, this year’s Shopping events will sure be bigger and a bit different…

Turn browsers into buyers and clicks to cash

What has worked for me in the past was to have email subscribers on alert by informing them a day or so in advance about what is going to be on offer the next day, so they can already take their picks and put them in their shopping carts so as soon as the price drops the next day they will only have to check out instead of starting to look for what they want then, risking the items being sold out before they finish adding them to the shopping cart.

It will make happy customers and give them a sense of exclusivity. Which it actually is, they will have an exclusive sneak peek and a chance to collect their desired items in advance.
I did this myself at Wehkamp. Wishlist and price Watch have the same idea but would still require you to physically click them through to your shopping baskets. To keep the time you need as low as possible so very exclusive offers have the least chance to get sold out before you get one, it’s the best if they are already in your basket.

You could almost accommodate a one-click-checkout immediately when your offer goes live 😊 If a lot of people do this and you don’t you will probably miss out. And will do this the next time for sure. It will also divide traffic load over the actual day and the day before, as lots of people won’t have to search your site for offers anymore on the day itself. Makes your website and app faster with less traffic. And so: more happy customers using it.

Also: don’t fool your subscribers by raising prices in the weeks prior to BFCM, only to make it look like a big offer which it actually isn’t. This is not a rocket science tip, I know. But it still happens.

As companies tend to send much more emails than usual, sometimes even multiple on the same day: check if your recipients have already clicked through (as ‘have opened’ is no longer very trustworthy with Apple MPP) from prior emails. If they haven’t, maybe skip this send. Five offer-loaded emails unread from the same company when checking your email can be quite overwhelming.

Mark Kruisman. Sr. Email Marketing & CRM Specialist at Mark Kruisman Digital Business Solutions

Understand the psychology to create content that nudges action.

I have learnt a lot about behavioral linguistics this year and it is truly fascinating.

– Pay attention to pronouns…switch the benefit to the person: Your deal instead of This deal
– Add power words to your emails – benefit, easy, exclusive, gain, now, proven
– Using scarcity creates a feeling of there not being many of these items available, pushing readers to act fast
– Explain what the recipient will lose out on if they don’t take the offer (FOMO)
– Communicate the convenience of making this purchase – how quickly will they receive the offer once purchased?

Check out our blog post which breaks it down a bit more:

Karyn Strybos. Marketing Manager at Everlytic

Black Friday resource dance break!
1.
We are updating our Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars, go have a look and bookmark it.
2. 2000+ free email templates & direct link to free BlackFriday templates)
3. Free BlackFriday stock images
Now on with more Conversion Tips

My Top 5 Tips:

1. Keep your offer really simple. 30% off. Free shipping. Don’t get crazy here coming up with a creative offer – make it easy for people.

2. Simple emails! The most effective BFCM emails are stupidly simple. Graphic, text, button.

3. Build up the hype. Stop doing promos right now so BFCM can be a big deal.

4. Black Friday might not be your best-selling day. Early November can be awesome as well as early December. Think outside the box!

5. Have fun with your emails!! I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like to laugh. 

Emily Ryan. Co-Founder & Digital Strategist at Westfield Creative

Always create a sense of urgency for shoppers by offering limited-time deals and promotions. My top 2 tips:
1. Offer exclusive deals for online shoppers to give that added motivation to buy from your brand over others.
2. Add countdown timers on your website and display Limited Quantity signs in-store to drive customers to make immediate purchases.

No need to fake scarcity. There are many design elements you can use to create urgency. E.g bright colors around your copy, maybe turn it into a gif. Use repetition of phrases that convey the scarcity and value of your deals.

Rukham Khan. Content Manager at emailMonday

You HAVE to stand out from the crowd around this time.

Go crazy! Go big or go home!

Hank Hoffmeier. Sr. Manager of Marketing and Operations iContact

As I start to see the thousands of ads on social platforms, I urge business to have a strategy to take likes and followers to actual email subscribers. Remember, you don’t own anything on social networks. You have much more control over email.

Giveaways are an excellent way to promote your products to new potential buyers while attracting hundreds of signps to your email list for under $0.50 a subscriber.

Facebook even offers integrated lead forms that connect directly into your email marketing service provider (ESP). Most ESPs offer an integration to add a signup form tab to your Facebook page.

For Instagram, use your profile URL wiseley. Point the URL in your Instagram account to a dedicated landing page. People who land on this page should ONLY come from your Instagram profile. Make sure to place a signup form on this page.

When you achieve the number of followers needed to do the “swipe up” actions, use this to promote your emails by asking subscribers to signup.

Daniel Miller, Co-Founder of goGet Into It Marketing Agency

The biggest area of opportunity I see during this period is to make the most of the increased traffic that’s coming to your site. Focus on the conversions, for sure, but don’t forget that consumers are looking around for the best deals, so they’re visiting lots of sites before making a purchase. The chances of making a conversion immediately from an unknown are not high, so use ALL touchpoints on the site to get permission to market to them.

cotsworld exitintent overlay

Exit popovers work a treat here and also (it may be a bit late to do this for BFCM this year, but will be good for the Holidays in December) – Abandon Basket popovers to unknowns (like the one here) also work a treat – they enable you to gain permission whilst also working towards achieving a conversion.

Kath Pay, CEO & Founder of Holistic Email Marketing

Design your emails for impact

Black Friday should be definitely Mobile First. It might be useful to keep in mind that BF and CM, in many countries are normal working days. People are busy and they are trying to get their deals while they are doing stuff, working, doing housework, etc.

That’s why an accurate mobile version of your campaign could be key, especially during Black Week.

Mattia Arnaù, Creative Director at BEE by MailUp Group

Nando: A partner of ours created an email template based on an advent calendar. Every day leading up to an event (such as BF) you unlock a door with a specific deal. One of the most awesome/playful things I have seen so far. And perfect to spread the email load around BF.
Laurens-Jan adds: Thanks Nando Gevers – that was a spectaculair campaign indeed! A perfect way to warm up for Black Friday!

JR: BF calendar is a great idea – especially if you can fill up all the dates with something valuable. There was an example from DSW that did 30 days of BlackFriday that has a cool design and callbacks / look forward. Yes!!! Found it 😎 :D What do you think about that? And add a video as well.

Laurens-Jan Derijks. Owner of ZJAM, interactive media & Nando Gevers, from Copernica Marketing Software

Now would be a good time to check brand inboxing.

Is the brand logo showing in Gmail? -some subscribers will open purely on logo recognition.

Is the pre-header text working with the subject line?  -look at this fabulous example by Nikki Elbaz

Chris Byrne. CEO of SensorPRO

I’d combine neon and GIFs. And a whole lot of them. Make sure the GIFs vibrate at a really high frequency. This is a sure way to give your subscribers a seizure. Your conversions might suffer, but hey, it’s #BlackFriday ! 

Joking aside, make sure you don’t go overboard with neon and GIFs. Think about your subscribers, don’t let your design distract them, and point attention to the right place.

Mór Mester. Head Of Content Marketing at EmailVendorSelection

First tip (and this applies to email marketing in general but is especially important during a time when you’re competing for attention in the inbox more than ever): Make sure your emails are responsive and display well across a variety of devices. Special events and holidays are times to get creative and flashy with email design and because of this, sometimes responsiveness is forgotten. 

Second: Find something to make your promotions stand out. This is especially great if you can find a way to give back and not make Black Friday all about sales (that truly would be unique!). For example, supporting a special cause with each sale. I’ve also seen some cool examples where companies turn the whole thing into a game or challenge, which adds fun to the campaign.

Amy El, Content Writer at The Remote Company

What a great topic! Why not try something a little different this shopping season?

Roughly 40% of email clients support audio in email, with autoplay supported in Apple Mail. Worth a test. If you’re really interested in setting yourself apart, I’d recommend investing in some AMP powered email shopping experiences. With AMP we can do live inventory, countdowns, and product customization right in the email.

Matthew Harris, Founder of Dyspatch.io

Couple of tips which I use for my Black Friday campaigns:

1. Include the key message/discount in front of your subjectline/snippet. And test whether the message is clear on both mobile and desktop.

2. Use some striking signs in your subjectline. Example, last year Westwing used these black square signs besides their key message: ███. That really stood out among the other BF mails in the inbox which raised extra attention.

3. Choose your sending times wisely. When you mail in the morning. There is a high change that at the end of black friday your mail shifted down in the inboxes of your subscribers. So I normally use reminder(s) for non-openers.

4. Within the email, use countdown timers to create sense of urgency and tell your subsciber how much time their is left to use the BF discount. -> PRO tip: using this with a personalized offer based on purchase history will rase your CTO and CR These are, of course, just a few tips.

Kevin Ruhe, E-mailmarketeer a.i. – Bakker.com, ai at e-village and more.
…and DDMA email marketer of the year (I am not saying which year!)

From a design point of view one of the most important aspects are the product images.

These should match with the existing brand guidelines and further enhance the visual identity and brand personality.

Yuliana Pandelieva, Graphic Designer at BEE by MailUp Group

Less flashing and cheesy, more clean and elegant animated GIFs can add fun to almost all emails at any time.

I like the emails with a clear hierarchy and a clear main message, less-is-more is always a style or a standard that I would like to go with.

Content-wise, I anticipate most sales happen online, so there are no waiting lines and time limits for opening hours. Those are all good selling points other than low prices. BlackFriday doesn’t have to be black this season! A good message.

Muxiang Pajerski, Creative Supervisor at Measured Marketing

Design your email in dark mode 😂

JR: Special #emailgeek prize if you got that one in combo with Black Friday :P

Susanne Sinke, Art Director & Head of Marketing and Communications at Coface

Black Friday resource dance break!
1. We are updating our Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars, go have a look and bookmark it.
2. Here is overview with 2000+ free email templates & direct link to free BlackFriday templates)
3. Free BlackFriday stock images
Now on with more Design tips...

Insert animations! :) Gifs allow you to make BFMC emails with more interactive and visually engaging content that attracts and keeps the readers’ attention. 👀

JR: Do you have an example of one that you made or like (and why)?
Sure

Andrea Dall’Ara, Digital Graphic Designer at BEE by MailUp Group

Email automation: start early and prepare your audience with sequences

#Nonprofit  organizations want a crazy Giving Tuesday idea?

Send communications but don’t ask for money or anything else.

Instead, give your supporters something on Giving Tuesday.

Send them an ebook or video, or a simple thank you note. You will have plenty of time to ask for money during the last weeks of the year. Of course, this works only if you fundraise throughout the year, not only from Giving Tuesday to Dec 31. Want an example: charity: water does this.

John Walsh, Digital fundraising specialist

Best tip is warming up your database by starting with value content prior to deep discounts, offering teasers on specific products before big value on the days. And to pour some rocket fuel on virality, offer deeper discounts for sharing with 5 friends – BF audience loves value exchange 🚀

Oh, and have you got an exit intent popup in place to collect leads on these heavy traffic days? 

Jordan Erasmus, Co-Founder at Surge.Media

Start early. A lot of companies start the promotion 24-48 hours before Black Friday. At that time people’s inboxes are going crazy and it’s hard to stand out. Start early and prepare (hype?) your audience for your discounts.

We are going to start a week or even a month earlier with a simple time-based sequence, share some sneak peeks into the new features we plan to launch on Black Friday and of course, get them pumped for some exciting discounts.

Kalo Yankulov – Founder of Encharge.io

Don’t overlook Halloween it generates high levels of engagement providing marketers with a great opportunity to reactivate customers, as well as create and test customized journeys ahead of the bigger holidays to come.

Use the month of October to reactivate customers before the core holiday push. Go through your unengaged list 2 to 3 times to get customers to start opening messages again. Any revenue you generate is a bonus! The goal is to re-engage your unengaged subscribers in advance of Black Friday.

Dela Quist, Founder and CMO at Alchemy Worx & Touchstone Intelligent Marketing

I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that Black Friday and CyberMonday start way BEFORE its actual date.

Inboxes get really crowded during this special sales event, so you need to warm up and prepare your users beforehand so when the day comes, they’re ready to CONVERT. The sooner, the better. Wishing everyone luck and lots of sales in November 🚀

Matheus Alonso, Country Manager – Brazil and Portugal at Benchmark Email

Don’t overthink it! 🤯 Especially if you are an early stage startup. Create your campaign and launch it!

JR: Where do you think that people mostly overthink it?

When the campaign is prepared and ready to be launched – I have often witnessed that people change their marketing copy many times and try to push it to make it the best campaign in the world. The truth is that’s probably not going to happen. And there are also other important things that you should focus on.

Petr Gadlina, Manager of TOPOL.io

Catchy subject lines and gifs can excite them in the email. But then don’t forget customers will be shopping around for the best deals on lots of different sites.

So have your abandon cart emails ready to go. Reduce the time between the cart being abandoned and the email send to have maximum impact.
After that, make sure you follow up with a post-purchase review email, as there’ll be lots to learn from possibly the two biggest selling days of the year. Use those learnings to boost your strategy going forward.

Gavin Laugenie, Global Head of Content at dotdigital

eCommerce retailers can lose a huge % of sales on abandoned carts, and Black Friday is no different. My tip is to automate your abandoned cart emails, bringing shoppers back by reminding them of the item’s in their cart.

According to research, three- part email abandoned cart workflows are significantly more effective at boosting sales. So if you only have one running, increase it.

You could also look at pulling in some other Black Friday deals into your (abandoned cart or normal) mailers to cross promote.

Karyn Strybos, Marketing Manager at Everlytic

Make sure to switch to a more automated email marketing software that allows automation if you’ve got a large list. It’ll make your life easier. Also look for lead scoring, it’ll be very very helpful.

Palash Nag, Hubspot Certified Freelance SaaS Content Writer

Black Friday SaaS deals dance break!
We bundled over 45 Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars.

If that doesn’t make you dance, I don’t know what will.

Now on with more Automation tips...

If you are not using your shopping cart abandonment series you are missing the boat. 🛥️
It’s guaranteed to bring you more money! (if done right)

Look at these stats from Sleeknote:
The Average Cart Abandonment Rate Across All Industries is 69.57 Percent 
Mobile Users Have an Even Higher Abandonment Rate of 85.65 Percent 
E-Commerce Brands Lose $18 Billion in Sales Revenue Each Year Because of Cart Abandonment 
Extra Costs are the Number One Reason Why Shoppers Abandon
Being Forced to Create an Account is the Number Two Reason People Abandon
57 Percent of Shoppers Will Abandon if They Have to Wait Three Seconds for a Page to Load 
55 Percent of Shoppers Will Abandon if They Have to Re-Enter Their Credit Card or Shipping Information 
46 Percent of Shoppers Abandon Because a Discount Code Doesn’t Work 
Using Retargeted Ads Can Send 26 Percent of Shoppers Back to Your Site 
Personalizing Retargeted Ads Can Lead to ROIs of Over 1,300 Percent 

All great areas where we can sharpen our shopping cart abonnement series.

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief eMail Officer at the eMail company

Frequency and engagement

My tip is to make the offerings personal and relevant. If you know that a customer always buys sneakers but looks at high heels, don’t offer a discount on sneakers, cause she will buy them anyway, offer a discount on the high heels she looks at to convince her to buy a pair for once.

JR: This is very interesting – normally one would go for the product category they bought over one they only looked at. So I am paraphrasing a bit – see if I understand. The opportunity is to inspire your current customers to become cross-category buyers. Show them different type of products, especially if they were “stuck” in one single category but have recently shown interest in others. Try something new, it’s on sale!

Mark van den Berg. Managing Director at Spotler

One of the tactics can be to promote other companies / deals besides your own. For instance in a roundup or copromotion. This works on your website as well as in newsletters. Every year, we build a super list of the hottest SaaS deals where we promote offers for free. We are offering a flat 40% discount on all plans during this season ourselves as well.

It helps others and in turn, you get extra direct traffic and the SERPs (SEO) give heavy weightage to our comprehensive roundup. In a reciprocal setting, most others’ lists also include our offer in their roundups so the traffic to the website during this season spikes decently. :)

Radhika Mohan Singh Roy. Head of Marketing at EngageBay

My advice would be to not let the magic end with Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Use link triggers based on your offers and create new groups / segments to retarget in the future. 

JR: He gives us a reminder that BFCM can be great to gather preferences, interests and later retargeting. But also follow ups on the products they purchased.

Jonas Fischer. Team Lead: Marketing Communications at MailerLite

Don’t forget or wait until the last minute to consider email / sms capture via your popups!
If you’re an ecom brand – you’re about to get a ton of traffic, make sure you capitalise on getting the sale and 2nd best is to create the relationship directly with email and sms!

Makes sense to ramp up list building every single day 💪   – a majorly under utilised growth level, to own the relationship with your client. “Just checking the box” to turn on a free popup is a wasted opportunity that so many overlook.

For list building pre bf/cm, I like using copy like “get the BF/CM discount now by entering your email” is great to avoid saying wait until X date to come back. And definitely “Black Friday week” and “Cyber Week” to keep it going.

Matt Cimino. Founder of Amped

Hey Jordie! I would focus on protecting and increasing revenue, not blindly sending every email to everyone. It needs a bit of planning, but it’s not difficult!

Here’s what I would do:

1) Use the weeks before BF to perform validation, re-engagement, analysis and decision-making. Prepare segments, volumes and timings
2) Instead of last open date use “signed-up”; “visited website/app”, “purchased”, email link click”. And segment into:
a. 0-3 months, 3-12 months last engaged, 12+ months last engaged, AND have previous purchased, d. Everyone else your management team tell you has to be in the list!
3) Send pre-BF mailings. Use to re-engage, test and to advertise what’s coming
4) When mailing (before BF and during the BF weekend) send to the segments that will generate most revenue first, in order of (a,b,c – and “d” if you must).
5) For segment “d” – batch and send in age-descending order. Revenue and risk changes as the data gets older, showing when to stop (or whether you should have even started!)

How many emails to send over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend?

I feel it is more about coming up with a strategy of increasing your reach and exposure, rather than setting a strict figure that is the same for everyone:
A (most-recently active and valuable) : lots
D (inactive and no previous purchase): zero – to – not many
B+C (some activity / purchase): somewhere in between!!

It’s an impossible question to answer without knowing the recipients expectations, the number of unique and genuinely good pieces of content that can be sent. But what I will say is the frequency expectations is one of the things to set in the build up. Let people on your list know that you’ll be sending then 3 or 4 emails over a couple of days. Setting this epectation may help both increase engagement, but also help prevent people clicking unsubscribe!

Another maybe slightly controvertial thing: for segment “A”: don’t be afraid of sending the same message/offer more than once to the people who did not interact.

Steve Henderson. Head of Delivery at Emarsys

IMHO too often old products that have been gathering dust on shelves are sold as ’the best deal ever’. Where is the fun? Where is the candy?

Start early. Have people vote for the product or service they want a discount on. Give them a shortlist with several options, with interactive descriptions in the email. Let the voting be public, and have people activate their friends and family to upvote their product of choice. Make it a two-way street, make it interactive. More fun. Feels more personal. And you create more space for a smart and personalised follow-up.

How about  experimenting with a ‘day after BF campaign’? A creative way of addressing the commercial hangover your clients may have after emptying their savings account, the frustration they feel for deals they missed out on, etc. In my mind this should not be a commercial campaign, but one that focuses on engagement, understanding and fun to extend your relationship.

Mark Kruisman adds: In line with this suggestion I think of – and I am not sure if I recall this correctly – but I thought Marktplaats (for non-Dutch readers, that’s the Dutch version of eBay) did something short after Christmas (Don’t like some of your gifts? Put them on Marktplaats) but I can’t find it though. Maybe you can do that for gifts you got in BFCM. Even ‘Snollebollekes’ sings ‘Al die zooi gaat weer op Marktplaats’ in his Christmas song 😅

Also if you’re a charity that helps people get stuff they can’t afford (toys for children or laptops for students who live in a situation where no money is available), you can ask people to donate gifts they did not like or need.

Ruben Zantingh-Božić. Email Marketing Strategist at Bindinc

Oh dear, that time of year already?! I must admit, I’m not a fan. I find that my inbox gets flooded with emails and offers. I also hate clothes sales. It’s so hard to find and I hate the crowds. That said, some people LOVE them and if companies can find out from their buyers if they love them and want to be notified that would help.

Also if you have a new offer or launch avoid these days as it will get lost in the sea of noise.

JR: Always need to remember – we are not our client. As a marketer, it may be a good idea to actually sit next to a few clients as they go through the campaigns. I did buy some clothes last year and it was an immense eye opener as to the customer experience side.  

Lilach Bullock. Founder of Lilach Bullock Limited

Increase or decrease the number of mails sent based on engagement. Schedule daily mailings or even two mailings per day during black friday week, but…. only for highly engaged recipients.

Measure engagement based on opens and clicks of previous Black Friday content.

For less engaged audiences, slow it down and send one highly focussed mailcontaining the proposition with the highest chance of success per recipient.

JR: Cool to know is that Peter and team have been working on some AI to optimize sending times and schedule for publishers.

Peter van der Schaar, Chief of Marketing & Founder at BaseDriver (dutch ESP for publishers)

These days also offer opportunities for B2B marketing.

My advice: Always approach it from a campaign-perspective, not from an ad-hoc-perspective:

– start months before and plan your campaign
– involve all the stakeholders in the process from the start
– put effort in a distinctive creative concept
– build up a sequence of at least a few weeks
– do something different with the offer: don’t (just) give a discount but give something extra
– don’t forget to have fun setting up your campaign!

Marcel Nanning, Owner at Nanning Marketing

Personalised content always hits the spot!

As a preferred online shopper, I only engage with emails that are personalised to me, emails that are showing me products that I’ve looked at/clicked on and telling me what I’m missing out on (new price, or back in stock etc).

Customers want to be shown content specific to them and for me personally, I want to be able to increase the speed from seeing my product is cheaper or back in stock to clicking through and buying.

Reece Miller, Business Development Representative at Emarsys

Send one more email than you are comfortable sending (to engaged audiences). Especially at the fringe times – earlier on Thanksgiving and later at night on Cyber Monday have yielded big results.

JR: You are saying fringe times, what does that mean – and why do you think that has worked so well?

Many brands start with notions like “no way should we send 3 emails on Cyber Monday” or “we don’t want to send before 3 pm on Thanksgiving day”. By getting in the inbox earlier in the day – or staying competitive later in the day, you get a jump on competitors.

Why? People are going to shop and being at the top of the inbox gives you a greater chance. *** Engaged Audiences!

Scott DeRuyter, VP Marketing at Artful Home

Find a standout subject line that is different to the standard ‘Black Friday deals’ type lines, try personalizing the subject line and offer.

And by the time it gets to late on Cyber Monday I’ll assume you’ve tried reaching everyone you can several times, pushing as far as possible, without damage to reputation and deliverability.

If that’s the case then 7 hours before you close out on cyber Monday, email everyone who clicked during the promotion but didn’t yet convert.

JR: Cool that is like 3 tips in one Tim. I like the follow up especially. “Did click, not convert” is a smart (and easy) way to find those that are interested.

Tim Watson, Founder at Traction Six and Zettaphere

Black Friday SaaS deals dance break!
We bundled over 45 Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars.

If that doesn’t make you dance, I don’t know what will.

Now on with more Conversion tips...

Don’t forget to think ‘post click’. Yes as email marketers we’re great at getting opens and clicks (in the email) but don’t forget to consider the whole purchase/booking process.

Is there something you can tweak in your campaign to make life easier and quicker for recipients who want to get hold of your offers?

Three examples:
1. Help pre-fill forms,
2. Ensure any telephone numbers in the email are clickable.
3. Send existing subscribers down a slicker / quicker route than Joe Bloggs who may be making your website creek due to sheer volumes.

Natalie Rockall, Director & Email Marketing Consultant at eleven11 Digital and Total Email Marketing

Your process, QA, and analytics

Here in Estonia the Cyber Monday isn’t so popular and the same goes to the Black Friday – we have our own e-esmaspäev (a little bit like cyber monday but for everyone – twice in the year) Christmas is mostly the festive thing here! 

Holiday shoppers value shipping highly. From undecided to last-minute shoppers, shipping plays a crucial role in incentivizing holiday purchases. Who doesn’t want to ensure their loved ones get their gifts on time, after all?

You can address shipping as the following:
Shipping fee transparency. First, always offer full shipping fee transparency. Unexpected extra fees like shipping are a bummer, and a big reason for shopping cart abandonment. In busy holiday seasons, this counts double.
Free shipping if possible. To remedy shipping scare and get more holiday shoppers, you can offer free shipping whenever possible. This tactic is valuable all year around.
Overnight shipping. Finally, holiday shoppers really care for fast shipping, and understandably so the more the holiday gifting comes closer. So, if you can, arrange for fast, or even overnight shipping and communicate that their items will arrive on time.

Nasty Gal’s newsletter email best illustrates how you can dedicate entire emails to promoting your shipping conveniences:

Tanel Rand. Sales & Marketing Partner at Smaily
Dmitry Kudrenko

When to start:
Way before BFCM. Weeks before.
First, for collaboration purposes. You share your special deals with each other’s contact base. And do other marketing activities together.
Second, to grow your contact base. You need to learn your new contacts’ preferences to further segment them properly, so you send only relevant offers.
Third, you need to announce your BF sale in advance to make your audience anticipate this sale.
It is best if you build an email sequence. One single email is never enough.

Email content:
We must remember that the BFCM weekend is about discounts and sales, free delivery, cashback service, courses, etc. So, you need to emphasize this visually. GIFs and timers are meant to draw users’ attention to your content.

Please note: sometimes companies run out of product items on sale, which annoys users. Use real-time content (best implemented with AMP or Nifty Images’ Dynamic Content) so that users can always see the actual quantity of product items left in stock).

How to get your emails opened:

How do you get your emails open, given that customers receive hundreds of them a day?

• Work on your subject lines. Describe your super deals in them, in a nutshell, so that users know what they’re gonna get inside.
• Annotation of your emails in Promo tabs (this is when recipients can see the start and end day of your sale and the amount of the sale). And the banner of your email.
• Know your contacts. Segment your contact base. And personalize subject lines.

Dont’s:

• never ever buy a contact base
• never ever send one single email to the entire contact list — segment
• never use extremely low prices as a magic bullet

Dmitry Kudrenko. Founder of Stripo

✔️Segment – You usually run a blanket offer but your messaging varies based on WHO the recipient is.

✔️Create Bundles – Create baskets of products / offers so you gain traction with sales volume.

✔️Start early – countdown series / fun nudges / dropping clues etc.

✅ Take advantage of AMP Emails – Removing friction by letting users edit and finish abandoned cart journeys within their emails. Creating a “be the first to know” or “early access” segment using a simple “thumbs up 👍🏼 or thumbs down 👎🏻” widget to see how many subscribers are truly keen on early access and opening up the sale a few hours earlier for them. Etc.

Kunal B. Customer Success Manager at Mailmodo

Perhaps more than 1 tip :D Don’t only discount articles that’s taking up your shelf storage, there needs to be some candy there as well. 

Also have a plan A, B & C ready. What do you do if you sell out quicker than expected. Or if it is not selling as planned, can you change something? Make sure every department is prepared on what to do to execute the different plans. 

For instance: 
Having a plan what to replace the products with if performing over plan. Of course if you don’t want to discount more. But also it can be valuable to use the momentum you have and add products. 
Also with the plan I’m thinking that it takes preparations from marketing having material, perhaps IT to make changes front-end/backend, Ecommerce to change/add things on site, CRM/MA content to send out etc. It often requires more than you think if changing offers, so important that teams are aligned with what happens if X or Y happens as you need to move fast.

About email specifics, a counter can be a great idea. There are also tools, if you have resources to be really sophisticated, that can replace content afterwards

JR: Plan A-B-C to scale up, scale down and if everything goes sideways.

⏬ Scale down (if you are selling too quick)
Offer different products instead, reducing number of emails, Smaller segments, reserve the products / longer delivery times, agree to have vendor stand by to deliver more products, batched deployment (group by group).

⏫ So for email scale up plan (if not selling) I could imagine:
Pre-registration, sending reminders, extending the offers, increasing the offer discount or product plus. Adding paid channels.

Emil Björnskär. Senior Consultant at Miltton Insights

Great post, my tips would be:
1. Go from #BlackFriday  to #BlackWeek (#BW )
2. Use pre-access to BW-offers as an extra permission incentive
3. Start marketing the BW-list well before BW! (Onsite and in lead ads)
4. Emphasize offers where suppliers co-fund the discounts
5. Set up and schedule all BW communication well in advance
6. Use gamification to make BW communication more engaging and to collect data on customers and their households
7. Include a ‘snooze BW button’ in all BW communication

Cutting through the BFCM cluttered inbox is a must.

Rather than 1 hit on the day, promote and ’tease’ the sale before the day (week etc)
Use the power of multiple channels to promote. Social for email sign up to get the best offer first. Sign up to SMS for a early entry VIP access promoted via email etc. Warm and nurture your base towards the sale.

Convert those thinking of buying by offering them ‘first chance’ to purchase. When working for a Hotel chain we used a SMS ‘VIP’ send as part of the overall BF campaign.
It worked so well the volume of traffic generated pushed the website load management to the limit. Extra tip – throttle your SMS sends ;)

JR: “It worked so well the volume of traffic generated pushed the website load management to the limit.”

Yeah. I’d say to throttle any send (also email) if you expect systems to be pushed to limits, But also have static pages and extra capacity / fallback. If your site goes down, is terrible.

Pro-tip: An ESP where you can change the links after sending CAN save your life. :D

Rasmus Houlind. CXO at Agillic

DON’T saturate your subscribers. Make sure you have suppressions for your regular campaign flows. Or adjust them to fit around BFCM promos.
And this year, in particular, with another world financial crisis, DO NOT guilt potential customers into buying. Get that copy “right” 😉

JR: Very smart, yes you’ll have to go through the automated emails as well. For instance if you have a welcome flow with a discount, but it is lower than the offer in BlackFriday… Abandonned cart, etc, etc.

I am not a fan of making people feel guilty for not buying, although a little bit of urgency and FOMO can work very well.

Simon Harper. eCommerce & WordPress Website Designer at SRH Designs

I guess you could take one of two approaches, or somewhere in between…

You could be slightly more reserved, hold off until the day itself, hyper-personalise your offering, and make your deal feel exclusive and special, OR you could go all-out and super discount entire product lines and SELL SELL SELL.

It really depends on your brand, and also what you’ve been doing all year up until now. If you’ve been running sales all year, chances are no one will be listening, but if you don’t (Apple as a key example), when you do… people listen up.

What we find works best, especially for brands in the luxury/desirable space, is to sell the quality of your products, showcase your company culture and ethics, and project your brand message, throughout the year, then on Black Friday reduce some of your lines slightly. Don’t cheapen your brand by going too low.

Do your homework – understand your target market, check your audience segments, fine-tune your offering to suit.

Doug Dennison, CEO at MailNinja

Bring it on! As an ever prepared marketeer, you have of course saved examples from yourself and your competitors during the 2020 Black Friday stampede. And if you are a dedicated e-mail marketeer, you might even have a separate mail account for that.

And please, please do not just copy paste last years newsletter or offers. Be creative. Be different.

My personal email marketing giveaway here: start testing 2 weeks earlier. Find a target group that wont mind being the guinea pigs for testing. Do a complete run with stuff like different designs, different offers, different subject lines. Sounds tiresome? How about the 20+ % upside for the real campaign that you could generate this way?

Ah and dont forget to celebrate when the sales are coming in. Stampede time!

Taco de Koning, Freelance CRM and e-mail marketing specialist

My number 1 tip is to work with a plan or blueprint (so well organised) with a clear goal in mind.
Act on achieving that goal by following the steps of your plan/blueprint.
And for the content of the plan: dare to be different.

Mark van den Berg, Managing Director at Spotler

Most important is not mentioned yet: look at what happend last year(s). What worked well? What worked less?

Learn from what you did and keep learning. Not sure what to conclude from previous year(s) then put your hypotheses in A/B/C test. But only if your audience is big enough! So sad to see that marketeers sometimes make conclusions based on not – significant test results.

Carijn Meijer, CRM Consultant at TeamITG

You’ll need relevant data in order to analyze if your approach was a success.

Make sure to think of a proper measurement plan and UTM strategy that will help you analyze your success! ⚡. We’ve got some tips on how to do that as well.

Iris Guelen, Content Manager at Yoast

Segmentation and VIPs

One not-so-common approach is to build an exclusive private list of people willing to subscribe to exclusive offers not available on BF or CM for everyone.

You send an exclusive invite to your already regular and best clients, asking them to subscribe to this VIP list, which is not active only for BF and CM but throughout the year.

For BF and CM, you provide discounts and special offers only available to this list. I’ve seen a few brands doing this with amazing results. Especially the more high-end brands like Hugo Boss. They were already doing some closed-door promos when they wanted to get rid of last season’s collection, so this is a plus.

Way too many brands use email as the same messaging distribution channel. Why should people subscribe to their newsletter, then?
Making it a privilege and sending exclusive content to their list makes people want to subscribe. Being valued and wanting to know the scoop before anyone else. 

Rui Nunes. Founder of Sendxmail & Zopply

If you haven’t done already: start enriching and segmenting your database so you can send out emails campaigns with relevant offers/content for the best conversion. If you are a bit behind schedule: run two campaigns at the same time where 1 is focused on generating permissions, and second on segmenting.

We see an increase of companies using ‘low effort, high conversion’ game formats to generate email permissions, and segmenting them in preparation of Black Friday campaigns.

Because not only does email win the challenge of still returning the highest conversion rate, but also prepping email campaigns avoids paying too much for your paid ad campaigns in a period where most are fighting for the attention of their audience. There is of course a lot of focus on SoMe marketing for good reason, but email marketing has a different purpose and is relevant more than ever. It’s not or/or, rather and/and when it comes to allocating budget and time, imho of course.

Osman Polat. Account Executive at Scratcher.io

Hey Jordie, Segment your best customers first – use RFM or customer rating as per your platform. Give them early access to an offer or better again, exclusive offer.

And say thank you. This is a massive generator of revenue. Repeat this process 4-5 times per year. Make customers valued and ensure you actually do value them.

JR: I love that Vinny, coming together as VIP, loyalty and customer appreciation. do you know of any brands doing this (well) or even during BFCM?

Check out Tropicfeel – a truly stunning marketing rhythm -I literally buy on every open. Staggering. ThirdLove do a fantastic job – (though I am not in their category).

Younger brands in the EU are less active in my opinion on mail and it is an afterthought. I think with big privacy changes coming, email strategy will only become more important next year and beyond…

For good community emails, look to crowdfunding companies – community is everything! And look at post “backing surveys” the ultimate up sell tool.

Vinny O’Brien, eCommerce Consultant at Vinny & Co

99% of your success or failure will be on your data segments – How might you prepare?

Get a countdown email funnel going. Mostly preparing your volume for your BIG send and also in case your delivery dumps on that day you have already delivered messages lined up preparing your loyalty (segment) customers for the “Big Payoff” on your sale days and links that can redirect them to the FINAL HOURS, PAYOUT, SALE, BIG BONUS, EXTRA SPIN .. or whatever you chose to do. good luck!

Keith Kouzmanoff, Postmaster of Email at Inter7 Internet Technologies

This is more of a pre #BFCM idea, but it could help a lot with segmentation and personalization for B2C brands.

Heading into the holidays, your subscribers are likely shopping for gifts instead of just themselves. Think of ways to personalize the experience around that fact.

– Do you know enough about subscriber demographics to segment parents, grandparents, spouses, etc?
– Could you use purchase histories from the same time the previous year to improve personalized product recommendations?
– Would a pre-holiday subscriber survey provide insights into how to segment and personalize differently for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
– What if you created a holiday shopping gift guide that helped you collect some data on what subscribers are looking to purchase this year?

Even a newsletter featuring web content with gift ideas for kids, spouses, teens, etc. could provide click data to inform you on how to segment your lists for more targeted holiday email campaigns.

Kasey Steinbrinck, Sr. Content Marketing Manager at Pathwire

May sound basic, but split test. Split test subject lines with a small segment early, split test content, CTAs, you name it.

Start with a smaller segment and send the winner to the remainder of your list. The incremental wins can make a big difference at a time like BF/CM (and Giving Tuesday).

Jesse Kennedy, Creative Director at Aweber

Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation!

If you’re heavily discounting, avoid sending recipients emails of discounted products who had recently purchased items at full price. It leaves a bad taste with consumers and starts to diminish any loyalty.

Instead, segment out recent purchasers of the products that are being featured. Instead, if you can, send those recent purchasers complementary products that are maybe now discounted that would be relevant to their recent purchase.

Jenna Tiffany, Founder and Strategy Director of Let’sTalk Strategy, Chartered Marketer

Segmentation, personalization, heavy discounts (include % in subject lines), GIFs.

Don’t make them choose between too many offers at the same time, and retarget those who did not convert during the holiday season.

Also, by segmenting your database you will reduce deliverability issues with some email clients who are trying to handle a higher volume of emails at the same time.

It has not been an easy time for the (travel) industry, but we keep working hard to make people’s dreams travel. Stay tuned and follow our progress!

Juan-Pablo Botero, Marketing Automation Specialist at International Air Transport Association

Segmentation is the key. This is the time to show how well a business understands its customers and how well customers are segmented on the basis of their history. Now is the time to utilise the segments and run hyper targeted promotions.

So send discount deals to customers who are more keen on discount vs FOMO to those customers who never want to miss on new launches.

Sandeep Saxena, Founder and CEO at PostBox Consultancy Services

Black Friday SaaS deals dance break!
We bundled over 45 Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars.

If that doesn’t make you dance, I don’t know what will.

Now on with more Segmentation tips...

Know your customer!

Clear-cut segmentation & personalization are the way to go.

Markus Beck, CEO & Co-Founder at tye GmbH

JR: Hi Christopher, Which of your tips is the absolute best / most unqiue one you’d like people to see here in the thread?

We just completed an ecommerce study with 2,500 shoppers. 38% said reviews directly on the retailer website influenced their choice. So that’s something to look at! 

It’s a great time to ask questions of your customers. Getting product reviews will help shape your inventory or order plans & add to your customer’s preferences. Carefully construct a survey that will update customer preference & product feedback. Then use the results in your next email campaign.  

A flash sale can burn out your audience so hold something back with an exclusivity offer. For example, show some items in your Black Friday offer as unavailable until Cyber Monday.

We also noticed it’s tricky to get Google reviews on your site so we made a simple tool for this. 

Christopher J Byrne, CEO & Founder at Sensorpro

Cause related marketing and changing the narrative

Surely: if you haven’t started your Holiday / Black Month(!) messaging by Nov 1st yet, you are late! Like I am with this comment 😂 
Reasonably most tactics are about increasing revenue, new subscriptions, enrich profile data, etc. With my retail “hat” on, these are all great.

On the other hand, I would like to also bring a different opinion, which is the total opposite: 

Going “black”. 

More and more brands are not focusing on liquidating old products and their overflowing inventories, or jumping on the BF wagon… because this is that time of the year. 

It is also a time to take a step back and stand for “conscious shopping” with more  hashtag#sustainable  marketing practices if it fits the brand.

Turn #BlackFriday into #GreenFriday like Haglöfs

Stand for #GivingTuesday instead, which is right after #CyberMonday.

Certainly such strategy comes from the brand and not necessarily the CRM/Email teams, but the effect of the right communications via these channels may drive loyalty and deeper relationships with the consumers. 

Beata Linz (Kis). Email Marketing Consultant at Beata Linz 

People worldwide are experiencing financial strain, and many are cutting down on their holiday spending. 1 in 4 Americans are skipping Thanksgiving, and 88% will have fewer dishes on the table to save money 

Focusing your messaging on the ‘blowout sale’ might be seen as insensitive for many brands and harm their image. Although some consumers might take this chance to stock up since they’re expecting huge discounts.

Anyway, I’d suggest doing something different this time.

Focusing on what makes your brand unique. Emphasising how folks can reuse/exchange your products or extend their lifetime. Focus on buying less but higher quality stuff ideally locally/sustainably produced. Perhaps sharing % of your revenue with a charity that’s relevant to your brand?

Here’s an example from a few years back from United by Blue for their Blue Friday where instead of just selling stuff…they organised a cleanup & in their email, they restated their mission and pledge of cleaning up 1 pound of trash for every product they sell.

Michal Leszczynski. Head of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse

For the third year running, it’s a less-than-typical season (thanks inflation).

1. Shopping has already started so get on it now!
2. It’s going to be a long one, but put a high focus on the Cyber 10 (Sun before BF through Giving Tuesday).
3. In email put a heavy focus on your value-adds and things that build consumer confidence. It’s important to grab the sale ASAP. Highlight shipping and return policies, customer testimonials, top-rated products, BOPIS, or anything! This goes for promotional and automated, especially welcome, aban cart, and browse abandon.
4. have fun! 

Greg Zakowicz. Sr. Ecommerce Expert at Omnisend

An underrated move is to team up with other brands.
Regardless of what you do with your discounts, having a “team-up” communication strategy helps to boost and increase the reach of your offer.
And keep your content ENTERTAINING

How would a brand do that? 

Most brands do have a network of either “partners” or brands that work closely with them. If they help with cross-promotion it’s only a win for both.
The entertaining factor will have to go with their tone of voice, and how far and crazy can they go. But remember this is fall/Halloween season, you either stick to the season or go crazy with a pre-Xmas promotion 😜

Marcos Bravo. Founder & Brand Evangelist at The Waterlemon

Ethical marketing prompts – anything linking Black Friday promotions to fair trade, green initiatives, and social activism gets my business.

While it’s been a tough year, consumers still want that feel-good factor when they buy something, knowing that their hard-earned cash is going towards the greater good.

Chris Cano – Content Strategist & Senior Writer at dotdigital

A big takeaway that we concluded from the recent customer sentiment study with Alchemy Worx was that consumers want to deal with companies who are humanized in their tone and ethical in their practices.

They also want companies who just don’t talk about diversity, but actually show it.

BFCM should be a reflection of your brand promise while showing what deals you have. It’s time to change the narrative in email marketing from deals/personalization to showing that you are a “real” company that truly cares about what you do, rather than what is on sale. Harmonize your messaging and be bold.

Andrew Kordek, Vice President of Customer Engagement at iPost

For our B2B investment brands, I’d say either be bold and get creative with your comms on BFCM (it’s an opportunity to humanise your brand) or avoid sending event reminders or product updates on these days completely.

Gavin John, CEO & Co-Founder at Stoneshot

Send more than one email, so building a campaign where you create a sense of urgency and remind customers that this is their last chance.

And since this is a difficult time, I personally find it nice the association with a good cause. Part of the income can be used to support those who need it for example.

JR: Building in empathy, I like it Dalila. What would you set on the foreground still the discount or the cause?
That depends on the campaign goals, I don’t have a personal preference😊

Dalila Bonomi, Design Researcher & Service Designer at BEE by Growens

I love companies that try to change the narrative & speak to specific needs/emotions/values, like REI with their famous #optoutside campaigns. In this challenging 2020, companies that will do so and will resonate with where people are in their lives, will be able to break through the noise.

Massimo Arrigoni CEO at BEE by Growens

I’m gonna keep it real simple – don’t include the words “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” in your subject lines. Every other brand and their mother is going to do the same. Your subject line will get lost in the deluge.

Try putting your own spin on it OR lead with your offer.

JR: We should make a list of spins / original subject lines ~ as inspiration. Being original is HARD! 👀

Emily McGuire, Principal at Flourish & Grit

Next up, Deliverability tips. But first it’s time for a Black Friday SaaS deals dance break!

We bundled over 45 Black Friday SaaS Deals. This will easily save you hundreds of dollars.

If that doesn’t make you dance, I don’t know what will.

Now on to Deliverability...

Deliverability!

My No. 1 tip is- ensure that your audience gets your message.
To do that:
– know your audience and wisely choose receipients,
– check your email set-up (including authentication)
– test, test, test your deliverability.

So you can perform inbox placement (so called seed tests) prior to the campaign.
We are actually gonna host a cool Webinar next week on this ;)

So a high-level advice:
– craft your message,
– perform inbox placement test,
– see how many emails landed in the spam folder for various email service providers,
– fix the issues (in your email setup or in the content)
– repeat ;)

Radek Kaczyński. CEO of Bouncer

From an ESP perspective I certainly agree with most of the suggestions that came up here.
Marketers should take in consideration that with the spike of volumes during BFCM timely delivery of an email shouldn’t be taken for granted. It isn’t only about senders but also receivers, they will be dealing with zillions of emails and some of them may also be — spoiler alert — transactional and not promotional :)

The most common mistake is to use old/stale contacts. This will get you blocked either from the ESP or from the Mailbox Provider and that would really be a bummer…

I have only suggestion:
Have a good email program all year long. Try always to keep your recipients engaged systematically so that BFCM should not be anything to worry about volume-wise and reputation-wise. This will allow you to focus on the creativity and your deals, that is what really matters, instead of all the other stuff that are not really under your control, and let mailbox providers and spam filters do their job.

Alberto Miscia. Head of Deliverability & Compliance at MailUp S.p.A

Here’s my 1 insight about the martech side of the BFCM email campaigns: make sure that your ESP/MAP performs well and the user has access to the content on time.

2 examples from my experience:
1. In some ESPs, the email delivery speed may go down during the BFCM season, leading to poor performance of your campaigns. You want to get to your audience’s inboxes faster than your competitors, right? Always check your delivery time and contact your ESP support if needed, to ensure good delivery speed.

2. Sometimes, the tracking links in your emails may break –  that can lead to errors and slow image / page downloads. A user may open the email, click the link and then just close the tab because the tracking link doesn’t perform as it should. Test the links in your email before sending the campaign.

It’s clear that the tech aspect is important, but if we forget about it, errors like that can kill all the BFCM conversions.

Ivan Ilin. CEO of EmailSoldiers & Blocks

So many tips 👏 Here is one from me:
Many brands still do not authenticate their domains (SPF, DKIM) and use their ESP with “out of the box” domains.
At this point, so close to Black Friday (and SM, etc.), in case a brand is not authenticating, it’s (in most cases) not the time to do so.
I’ll do that slowly and surely warm up the brand domain (or a sub-domain) at least two months before the holiday season.

Sella Yoffe, Founder and CEO at Data Media

I would suggest marketers keep a few things in mind:
> Black friday/cyber monday is not the time to dust off your list and email everyone who has ever purchased something of you in the past 15 years

> Run the best possible offer and send only to those who would be interested

> Ensure you are not still delivering email after the offer expires and do not run flash offers over this period if your esp is not able to deliver in a timely manner… A 24 hour flash offer sitting in a queue for 3 days before delivery will lead to disappointed subscribers.

Ask your ESP how long they retry messages for. Many are set to 3 days or longer by default. How much of your campaign is delivered within 3 hours? How much is still waiting to be delivered 18 hours after you click send? Do you know the answers to these questions? As a marketer I think you should.

Andrew (Suroor) B. Founder of emailexpert

If you have not cleaned your list in the last 6 months, give it a good clean before your #BFCM campaigns! 🧼🧹🧽

JR: What do you say to people that recommend the exact opposite? (BlackFriday is also the time that has biggest chance for reactivation I have heard).

True! I guess the biggest threats are inactive email addresses/ possible spam traps. If you are not cleaning your list, your email might not arrive in the inbox for those recipients to even have the chance to reactivate their subscription. The best thing to do would be to send a re-engagement campaign with some sort of #BFCM offer before any drip campaigns to ensure they still want to hear from you.

Teresa Anne Smith, Social Media Manager at SMTP2GO

Remember those subscribers using AppleMail who have opted-in to the new privacy option will skew opens (depending on their portion size of your list) and also countdown timers based on opens will be effected by the loading of content on proxy servers. Also automations based on open rules will also be effected.

Give your VIP customers early access to BF/CM sales as a thank you and mention to order early as shipping and supply chains may impact product availability.

If you offer Gift Certificates make sure you have a plan to roll them out and promote around the time of your last shipping date for Christmas to give customers an option.

If you might have supply issues, be aggressive with early sales as people will be buying early to avoid sellout of products or shipping issues.

Chris Donald, Managing Partner at InboxArmy

My top 3 takeaways are:

If you send to your engaged and new subscribers all year don’t then decide to send to everyone, goodbye deliverability.

Be different

Understand your data but don’t forget these are likely to be gifts so think about your content.

Ben Harrington, Email Marketing Consultant at Truffleshuffle Media

Intra-day Warmup. I have good expectations it will make a big difference in inbox placement. Start with the high engagers, then spread it out from there in increasing numbers.

JR: With intra-day, you mean on the same day or accross multiple days / sends?
Within the same day, yes. Proving your reputation again and again every day as an extra effort to stand out from less-scrupulous senders.

Johan Terpstra, Managing Director at Yawiss

Time for discounts for the eagerly awaiting audience. Coupled with eye-grabbing content a a subtle element like GIFs does have a good retention as well as conversion. Using the data segmentation to personalise the above does create a good engagement for the same.

Also this is the time to for the periodic clean up of email list for retargeting.

Kshtij Hadke, Cofounder at Philia Solutions

Hi Jordie – Encourage shoppers to get excited and prepared by adding a “wishlist” – this increases the chances of bagging that sale when the big event comes – check out the real life example from Freddy.

Black-friday-wishlist

Everything about this email is striking and engaging. The imagery, the colour, the copy, the CTA, and the overall message.

Komal Helyer, Fractional CMO and Chair Email Council at DMA UK